Review by Bob Feeser

Look, I could write a review that tries to coddle those who are having a problem with this McAfee Virus Scan program, but for me, it is like finally arriving after a sea of disappointments. (I am talking about McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008-3 User Newest Version) Make sure you remove all other antivirus programs, and firewalls first before loading this McAfee Virus application. I have never seen an antivirus program that works properly with a 2nd antivirus program loaded at the same time.nIt includes a Security Center, Virus Scan, Personal Firewall, Easy Network, and Site Advisor.

First of all forgive me for writing such a long review, but there is a lot of ground to cover. For those who like the short version, with less information here it is: Norton slowed my DSL connection down by a third. I spent a day with Verizon, couldn’t figure out why all of my other machines in the network were getting 756k, and this one got only 4 or 500 tops. Then I removed Norton, and bingo, instant 756k. AVG free edition is nice but takes a lot of boot up time while it updates upon every single boot up, unless you disable that feature, then it sends out your Outlook email with a message that your antivirus is out of date, and this email could be dangerous, or something like that. Zone Alarm used to be the best, now they are nearing the worst. My Windows 2000 machine went blue screen after an update, took me 2 days to figure out that was the problem, so I removed it after discovering the problem in a forum, and it solved it. Also ZA after recommending it to my friend, would not work at all in a Windows XP Media Center machine. Ask ZA and they say they no longer support it in Media Center. 50 bucks down the drain. Now it takes my XP regular edition SP2 well over 5 minutes to boot with Zone Alarm Security Suite, and I mean WELL over 5 minutes; it’s ridiculous. I removed it to load this McAfee Virus Scan (MVS), and the machine immediately booted in only 2 minutes and 15 seconds to the point I was able to bring a Google page up. So I loaded this MVS and the machine booted in only 2 minutes and 45 seconds, once again to a Google page appearing. In both cases I clicked on a Google desktop icon as soon as it appeared, and then waited for the results. It clicks, goes dark blue, and waits for everything else to load, including MVS before it will allow a page to appear. So MVS took only 30 additional seconds to load, and according to Scotty the watchdog in WinPatrol, it loads about 7 .exe files. So that is fast. Now that is with a machine that is loaded up with a ton of programs.

I first loaded MVS in my home office machine, in the same network, with the same configuration, Asus A8N SLI, AMD 64 3200+, 1Gb ram. The home office machine with MVS loaded, gave me the same results but in approximately one minute before I could get a Google page up. (This is an edit, I actually timed the boot up, and not counting the time to type in my password, it booted in exactly 42 seconds) Boot up to Google in only a minute with MVS, and in 2 minutes and 45 seconds in my overloaded machine that used to take well over 5 minutes with Zone Alarm. I’m sold.

While performing a scan it did not affect the performance of the machine, either in surfing the web, or opening programs, even the intensive programs like Dreamweaver MX 2004, or Photoshop CS2.

When loading do as the quick start guide says, put in the CD, then choose the option of loading from the web. It’s a 45 Meg download, but it’s the latest.

Manage network feature, it recognized all of the other machines, and components with an IP address in my network. It recognized my Windows Server 2003 R2 Edition, but gave me a status message of a request to upgrade to an operating system of at least W2000 or later. I guess that is because of W2003 security, blocking scans.

Before I even acquired MVS I did not understand exactly what they meant by the 3 user allowance, and couldn’t find anything on it, so I want to share that with you. Did they mean that you could load it on one machine sharing a network, and then scan individual drives across the network, the same way early ZA did, or does this mean you can put it in more than one machine for full protection at all times. Fortunately it means the latter. I loaded it in the home office machine, registering it in my name to be able to get virus updates, and created a user name and password. Then I went into the other machine, dropped in the CD, did a complete install, but when the registration page came up, I logged in instead, and it instantly completed the registration for me, reminding me of my user name and password, and congratulating me on the installation. So it is a 3 machine complete install, that is cool, or should I say way cool.

I know this isn’t about MVS but I advise you to get a free copy of CCleaner from the web. (Google it.) It cleans all the junk out of your computer and you can run it quickly before entering sensitive password sites for example. It cleans out your cache, cookies, etc. in only a few seconds. When you run it for the first time, it will take several minutes to remove it all, for example a ton of web pages you have been surfing, that your machine checks first, before drawing it from the distant server. A slooooow way for your machine to have to work.

McAfee has been around for a zillion years, they have been a leader, and from the performance of this product so far, they have totally aced it. You can see all of the other antivirus and firewall programs I have tried, and this one according to boot up time, and scan speed is the best. It scanned my office machine quickly, although I did not time it accurately. It scanned several gigs of data in what seemed like 10 minutes. My other machine with 230 Gigs of data takes about 5 hours with Zone Alarm, because I am using their older 7.0 version, it took 3 times that long with their newer version that works with Vista and XP. I am using it on an XP machine. Once again, had to get rid of the update, and go back to an earlier version.

Look I can’t speak for everyone, or everyone’s machine, but all I know is I am totally impressed with this McAfee product, and hope and pray they don’t go down the tubes like Norton, and Zone Alarm did. (I have not used any recent Norton products, but Norton was the best when Peter Norton was there solving the DOS problems, almost like a miracle man, then from about 10 years ago, everything of theirs I tried was junk.) Sorry for the pointed remarks, but sometimes you find a product, after spending years in frustration, or at least you find something that works, then it goes bad, and finally, finally, something that really works great like this MVS. For me, my hat is off to McAfee. 150 Stars and counting. Highly recommended to say the least.nPS: I noticed another reviewer was having problems logging onto online acounts, so I put it to the test, logged into my bank account, which is a 3 step process, and also my online server, and did not have any problems. If I have any, or notice anything after using this product more, I will come back and edit the review. All of the essentials place this one at the top for now.