McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 (PC)

Ok, so I think it is clear that any anti-virus software is going to slow down your computer. The control you have is in what way you are ground to a near halt! Both Norton and McAfee are easy to use, so no difference there, and both seem to have kept me virus free!

I have been using Norton for about 3 years, and was sick of how slow it made everything, and McAfee was cheaper so I took the plunge. Props to Amazon, I ordered it at lunchtime on Monday and it was with me Tuesday morning!!

I didn't install all the bits that previous reviewers told me not to, which will have helped my experience from the start, but I do prefer it to Norton. Should also be said though, my computer started up in about 1/10 of the time during the transition when I had no anti-virus software installed! And, true to form, Norton is a pain to uninstall!

On startup, Norton stops you from being able to use your computer at all until it has finished faffing around, which is a pretty long time! McAfee faffs for longer, but you can use your computer at a slightly slower speed for this time.

I like the way McAfee doesn't virus scan a Word/Excel document every time I try to open it, this have literally saved me about 30 minutes a day in waiting over Norton!!

Also, McAfee does seem to let you tell it what to do more. I told my mother's computer (which has Norton) to ask her before it runs Windows Update (she's on dial up and it's a pain), but Norton was having none of this, and forced me to change the settings back to automatic update. I was displeased... McAfee, however, has a "disregard this problem" button, so it carries on running happily when you change something. I like this freedom!

I think it totally depends what you want from anti-virus software, but McAfee is definately the one for me! Now if I could only work out how to tell it to virus scan once a month not once a day...

I have been a user of McAfee products for many years, but this is possibly the worst offering from them that I have ever purchased. I originally installed the whole product - what a mistake. I have a high speed broadband connection that instantly slowed to the speed of dial-up. I removed the software, reinstalled just the firewall, virus checker and spamkiller - the speed improved, but was still little better than a slow speed broadband connection. Further digging indicated that a phishing filter was slowing the whole system down - switching that off improved the access speeds considerably. If you want something that works straight out of the box, I suggest looking elsewhere - if you have a bit of knowledge of computers and can spare the time to tweak the programme to obtain an acceptable trade off between protection level and speed, then this product is adequate. However, still expect to see some degradation in your internet access speeds even if you accept lower levels of protection.

I've been running McAfee 2006 for ages, and have been very happy with it. The extra features of the 2007 version looked very tempting, so I went ahead and got it. For anyone considering the same I have this advice- DON'T! Everything seemed fine, Virusscan picked up loads of tracking cookies that 2006 and Windows Defender had left, and I was impressed with the system mantainence and cleaning tools. Then I connected to the internet, and it went rapidly downhill. Most webpages are really slow, slower than dial-up, and some refuse to load at all. Turning off the unsuitable keyword and image scanning features (which I assumed were the culprits) made no difference. I have removed it from my PC and put 2006 back on while I consider different security packages (AVG Internet Security looks good). Very disappointed with McAfee.