ATTN: McAfee AntiVirus is NOT a resource hog! I have went above and beyond to test out McAfee SecurityCenter - which includes McAfee AntiVirus and Firewall - on my Windows XP laptop and Windows Vista PC. Conclusion: McAfee AntiVirus/SecurityCenter is NOT a resource hog. From my testing and end-results, Mozilla FireFox actually uses MORE system/user resources than any other application that I am running. Read more about McAfee and my comparison here: McAfee Is Not A Resource Hog McAfee is a good combination of antivirus software and firewall software. Relatively speaking, it is better than both AVG Free and ZoneAlarm free in one combination software package - it offers a lot more protection.
Macfee may not be resource hog but it is also not a good antivirus, there are some spyware/viruses which macfee do not trace.
How exactly do you know this? Are you a Windows security technician? McAfee detects a lot more viruses and trojans than AVG Free did for me, and I was just using AVG Free and ZoneAlarm last week. I feel a lot more secure using McAfee. I support open source but I don't support freeware or shareware. The reason is, freeware and shareware is very limited with what the software is capable of, how much control you have, and most-importantly: it's features. I read somewhere that ZoneAlarm Free has a lot less features and a lot less security than ZoneAlarm Pro (the paid version). ZoneAlarm Pro is an excellent firewall, but I read that McAfee's firewall that comes with its antivirus is equal to it. AVG Free, being freeware, is a very basic antivirus application. It never detected or protected any viruses from my computer from my experience. Once I installed McAfee over it, McAfee scanned my entire PC and picked up 2 viruses - quarantined them immediately - and removed a possible virus/problem. The only problem is installing McAfee - it's no big deal though. The program won't let you have any other antivirus or firewall installed at all on your PC, or even SpyBot, PC-Tools SpyDoctor, etc. You have to uninstall all that first. What I did was I uninstalled everything that McAfee said it couldn't install until it was uninstalled - which included ZoneAlarm, AVG Free, PC Tool's SpyDoctor, and SpyBot Search & Destroy. Once I installed McAfee I reinstalled PC Tool's SpyDoctor and SpyBot Search & Destroy and everything works perfectly. With McAfee SecurityCenter, overall I feel a lot more protected. It's not a resource hog, that's my main point of my article. That's the main reason why everything looks down on McAfee, when it's not a real issue.
Hate to say it, but I went with McAfee a couple of years ago and hated every moment of it. It'd make my old machine overheat if left running. Funnily enough, I scrapped both - and am now firmly in Kaspersky's camp, and haven't been let down once. With McAfee, my best friend became HiJackThis - because it was the only piece of software I could use on my machine that didn't make McAfee cry so I could get rid of the viruses it failed to detect
Perhaps McAfee did prompt a lot a few years ago with "incompatible" software, but so did Norton and most other antivirus software. McAfee still has that prompt upon installation, but after that, there's no annoying prompts etc...I'm running everything as stated above just fine after installation. Don't get me wrong though, Kaspersky is just as good as McAfee - it has a surprisingly great reputation for being so new.
As stated before, this is quite an accusation. Are you a security technician? Anyway, there's other software that work on the side to further prevent unwanted spyware/viruses, including SpyBot Search & Destroy, LavaSoft AdAware & AdWatch, and PC-Tools SpyDoctor.
I know I will never use Norton again. I switched to AVG after a 90 day trial of Norton and I'll be damned if AVG didn't detect a couple things Norton never did. A buddy of mine found a trial of something called Trojan Remover and it found things on there that AVG and Ad Aware both didn't find. It is a shame that Trojan Remover was only a free trial. McAfee I have no experience with but if I remember right Norton and McAfee are the same company and the same thing. If that is the case then I will never use their product.
Thank you for the information. I haven't used McAfee. I used to use Norton, then switched to AVG. AVG runs a lot faster than Norton.
Norton and McAfee are definitely not the same companies nor programs. They have both been around for about a decade - maybe longer. McAfee was the big antivirus suite of the 1990's and then somehow Norton gained popularity. Over the years Norton became filled with unnecessary features and I suppose Norton tried so much to have non-competitive software that their software began to detect and become incompatible with a lot of other software.. I've used Norton before and it's annoying. I've also gotten viruses with Norton before and won't ever be going back to that antivirus software. I used McAfee in the 1990's. Only recently have I switched back to it from AVG Free because it came free for me and I love it.