Review by Jerry Saperstein

My least favorite computer protection brands are Norton and McAfee. Norton has slightly improved over the past few years, but I still find McAfee to be bloated, intrusive, slow and determined to pound you into submission and renew it when your initial term is up. I also think McAfee is kind of sneaky in not making clearly apparent that you are signing up for an auto-renewal program. You can opt out of it, but it isn’t necessarily intuitive or swift.

The Cloud is everything these days and this program is downloaded from the Cloud. You get no physical media, which many will find disturbing. Download it, hopefully without any hiccups, install it, enter your registration code, which is on a card in the minimalist package and should not be lost, and you’re ready to go. If everything works as planned.

This kind of software is, in my opinion, largely the exploitation of the technologically ignorant. Putting things very simply, if you practice safe computing which I will not describe here, but is fully described all over the internet, the odds of your contracting a true computer virus are low, almost to the point of non-existence. Likewise, there are many effective free or low-cost options available for those who invest the time and effort to research the issue.

So a product like this is a security blanket. Yes, it will protect you from all manner of threats that, if you practice safe computing, you are unlikely to encounter.

Operation of this version of McAfee is largely automatic. There is a significant performance hit when the program is scanning which it does much of the time, though if you’re brave enough, you can restrict it to certain times. Those with older computers or running limited RAM may encounter significant slowdowns.

Overall, though I personally don’t like the brand, the product does the job just as well as any of its direct competitors. I don’t like it because of the endless notifications, warnings and attempts to get you to renew long before the initial term is over.

Should you buy it? If you want it. Youll be just as protected with any of the other major and most of the minor players.

Jerry