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Review by Eugene Tenenbaum... Reluctant Reader
McAfee LiveSafe is a new incarnation of winning McAfee All Access with the addition of the SafeKey password management and the Personal Locker document protection, but without the Safe Eyes parental control system (replaced by rudimentary) or the Mozy-powered online backup. However, McAfee All Access (2014) is readily available.
Not many manual controls. Otherwise, LiveSafe all-in-one suite smoothly protects household (network) devices with various most popular operating systems (OSes) eliminating the need to pay much more for the same for each separately. Not supported are: Windows Mobile and older ones, like Windows XP SP2, original (1st) Vista, Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, Google Android 2.1, BlackBerry 4.4, iOS 4 and below, which could be upgraded mostly for free, and Nokia Symbian. Also anti-phishing is not supported for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 11, Safari 4, and below, but they also can be upgraded for free.
LiveSafe protects against viruses, spyware, phishing (stealing ID), spam, and includes a firewall, website safety rating, content filtering, and more for some; most for PCs including a parental control. Buying a single suite seems economical and conflict free. The installation is very easy and directly from the McAfee website. No CD/DVD drive is needed, but a decent Internet connection. All functions are more or less self-explanatory and typical. Goggling an unclear question provides an answer. An upgrade covering a household of up to 5 is available.
It detects, removes old at the installation, and blocks well new viruses from accessing through email, downloading, or copying, has a small initial footprint, and uninstalls completely unlike one of the competitors, which leaves a residue interfering with superseding security programs, and which requires a special uninstalling program from the Internet. LiveSafe is constantly up-to-date. It works fast and in the background, and allows manual customization in case of an atypical computer setup. A description of virtually every case can be found on the Internet. However, it displays warnings in an intrusive way and some of them considered excessive or unnecessary cannot be customized or prevented.
Initially, LiveSafe takes up less than 100 MB of memory (RAM) that is much less than the competitors. However, not all memory (RAM) used to monitor the running programs is freed after closing them. Subsequently, it tends to increase memory retention during or after using especially Web browsers. That so called memory leakage drains away memory causing the computer to slow down to a crawl and theoretically even to a halt (crash). However, it is unnoticeable in and thus irrelevant to modern, multi-core computers with min. 4 GB of RAM (memory).
LiveSafe automatically updates its new virus data base via the Internet by the included 1-year subscription. Its operations are transparent in the background. It is as fast and thorough as other leading security programs. The installation is simple and fast. Everybody could do it. It is as good as it gets.