Overview

McAfee Security Suite 2009 is all in one security protection for your PC.  It includes AntiVirus, Spyware, Email & Network protections, a two way firewall, Parental Controls, Anti-Phishing, and Web Saftey Ratings.  It will run on Windows XP and Vista with a 30 day trial and a cost of $49.99 for a year license.

Walk Through Review

Installation – 8

Installation is very simple and straight forward.  The test machine has an AMD Dual Core 4200+ CPU, 4 GB RAM, and Vista Ultimate x64.  For this test I installed the complete security suite with all options.  Installation did not take very long and the virus database is updated right away.

The problem with most security suites is they take precedence over the existing Windows security settings and you will need disable them.  The main thing to check after installation is the Firewall settings.  McAfee’s is enabled by default and if the Windows Firewall is already on applications which rely on an Internet connection stop working (Web based games like Call of Duty come to mind).

To check this go in the Windows Security Center and take a look at the different settings.

To turn off the Windows Firewall go into Firewall Settings and turn it off.  Notice that Microsoft will try to scare you and say you’re no longer protected, but we already have the McAfee firewall doing its job.  I can see how this could be confusing to some home users.

Go back into Windows Security Center and you can see what firewalls are installed and their status.  You want it to look like this, where the Windows Firewall is off.

Ease Of Use – 7

Running basic functions using the Security Center in McAfee is pretty straight forward.  When getting into some of the more advanced settings is where you might need to pull up the help file.  Running scans is actually very easy.  Here we will look at doing a Quick Scan.

Launch the McAfee Security Center and choose Scan from the menu on the left.  Then click the start button under Quick Scan.

A Quick Scan will look at the most critical system files and memory for malware.  You can minimize this while running the scan so you can work on other applications.  Keep in mind that other applications will run a bit slower while McAfee is doing a scan.  There is also the ability to pause the scan if working on an intensive application.

Another problem to look out for is double protection against malicious software.  Having multiple malware protection programs can lead to false or duplicate detections.  The McAfee Security Suite includes real-time protection against spyware so we can turn Windows Defender off.  Go to our Wiki for more information on Windows Defender and disabling it.

Disable Windows Defender by turning off the service.

Features – 8

Being that it is a security suite McAfee features Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Anti-spam, Anti-phishing, 2 way firewall, Identity Protection, and a Website advisor.

The Website Advisor sits in your browser (IE in this example) as a toolbar and protects against sites that might have malicious code.  The search box uses Yahoo as the search engine.

In Firefox it is installed as an extension that can be updated or disabled if you wish.  McAfee also offers Site Advisor as a free download for Internet Explorer and Firefox users.

McAfee Site Advisor also allows you to pull up detailed reports of the website you’re visiting.  This is just an overview shown here, in fact you can get a detailed look at the site and users can leave comments.

If a bad site comes up you will get a big red warning balloon pop up.

Then when reading the site report you can see why it is considered to be a security risk.  If you think the site is being labeled unsecure wrongly you can add it to approved sites.

There are other features to keep you busy including email protection, Parental Controls, and other tools all which are accessible from the main Security Center.

Of course it integrates into explorer so you can access McAfee from the context menu to scan an individual file.

Performance – 7

I was leery of how the performance of this security suite would be or better put, how it would hinder performance of my PC as a whole.  I was pleasantly surprised as there was very little degradation in performance.  The only times I notices a slow down of my system was during boot up (takes a bit longer) and during a manual virus scan, which is common with any Anti-Virus.  While sitting in the background you can see not a whole lot of resources being used.

I also noticed the firewall was slow in letting me allow access or not.  As with other Firewall utilities you just need to answer it the first time and it will remember after that.

Product Support – 8

McAfee offers several ways to get 24 hour support.  Through the website there is FAQ, Free Phone Support for the first 30 days, email and chat with technicians, forums, and a cool utility called Virtual Technician.  It is a small download from their site and scans your system to find problems.  The Virtual Technician will attempt to fix any issues, but if it cannot you will get instructions on how to manually correct any issue.

Conclusion:

Being a hardcore computer geek who loves to control every aspect of his system, I was pleasantly surprised by the functionality of McAfee Security Suite 2009.  There is a negligible effect on system performance which is not always the case in security suites.   It can accommodate a home user “set it and forget it” approach and even the most discerning computer geek.

Download McAfee Security Suite 2009

Rating

• Installation: 8
• Ease of Use: 7
• Features: 7
• Performance: 7
• Product Support: 8