Mcafee Security Suite vs. Freeware Set-up - Need Help Deciding!

My internet service (AT&T) is offering all their high speed internet customers McAfee Security Suite free for download. I checked it's A.V. Comparative scores and its decent. I currently have a freeware setup that I downloaded from these message boards. Now I need help deciding which one is better for protection, resources and functionality.

My Freeware Setup:

Avast! Antivirus Free Edition
SuperAntiSpyWare Free
Windows Vista Firewall (but was looking into Comodo Pro)
Windows Defender

VS.

McAfee Security Suite


By the way I have an H.P. DV5t with Windows 64bit.


Any comments or suggestions would help greatly!

 

Based upon your set-up I could tell that you are pretty much fine. However, it is crucial that you have a firewall, do not bet on windows firewall for your protection. Get for example Comodo Firewall or Online Armor and both of them are free.

I would also add a behavior blocker like Threatfire. Have peace of mind my friend.


Peace.

 

Are those compatible with Windows 64 bit Vista and which one is better?

 

Nothing wrong with Vista's firewall, it only has no outbound protection

 

That is exactly what is wrong with it. You hit the nail on its head. . No windows firewall for me.

Peace.

 

SAS free ? Does that offer (good) real-time protection ? Does that Avast offer decent/good real-time protection against spyware ?

If not, you might want to choose the McAfee product. It also has a spam filter. But McAfee likes to collect, share and sell your (personal?) data, see EULA, privacy statement or whatever.

 

Are you behind a router by chance? If so, as long as you check your downloads with a good Antivirus and Antispyware program (which you already have covered by SAS Free and Avast), you don't need a software firewall. As far as real-time antispyware, use a different browser like Firefox, add a couple of extensions to it like NoScript and AdBlock Plus, and you can forget needing real-time spyware protection also.

If you want to keep things simple, here you go:

1. Firefox or Opera as an alternative browser.
2. Avast
3. SAS Free
4. Router or actual firewall like Comodo if you don't have a router.
5. SandBoxIE (If it works on 64-bit)
6. Common sense (sorry, you can't download this one, hehe).

That's as simple as it gets for complete security.

 

Well, I do use a wireless router/modem(2wire) provided by my ISP. Is that good enough? I also only use Firefox, My biggest concern at this point is anything that gets downloaded by a p2p program. I know the inherent risks of using those but Im sure there is stuff out there that can virtually eliminate any harm that can happen to the computer. Thats why Sandboxie is so intriguing to me, but I still cant figure out if it works with Vista 64bit

 

I'm sorry, but it does not work with Vista 64-bit: http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?DownloadSandboxie.

 

McAfee is good your freeware also, it is up to your preference. I would add Norton UAC tool to both. Try Vista 64 firewal control when you do not switch to macfee for simple outbound protection.

 

If you wanna keep things simple then just install the mcafee suite. Its a nice all in one package that makes things easy to manage. That combined with vista 64's built in security and some common sense will keep you safe.

 

mcafee suite might be nice and simple, but i hope u enjoy being infected as well. My cousin used to use mcafee, but it got so buggy that it wouldnt even remove any malware found, plus half the time it didnt even detect malware as malware.

mcafee is easy to use, decent support but a bad product.

 

Stick with your free setup. McAfee is a fat hog.

 

IMO it is always the same argument: A suite will be easy to manage, but when something goes wrong the whole thing might stop working. A personal set-up needs more supervision, but one can choose what are the best programs to work together in a particular environment.

 

I'd go with the suite if it runs ok and doesn't slow your system too much. If it does you can always revert to your present setup. I don't know if McAfee requires a special removal tool. You might want to check into that.

 

There is a mcafee removal tool. I have had to use it a number of times.

 

'decent support but a bad product'

From my perspective the product is decent, but support is usually really bad.

 

Stay away from McAfee. My brother had the suite and now his system is infected with Virtumonde. Now I'm in the process of backing up data and 'nuking' the drive. I have tried to get rid of this bad boy with no success.

 

Stick with your freeware setups!
McAfee Security Suite is unreliable.

 

No it is not. I have been infected with Norton and with Avast and with AVG so please do not make it any worse for him. Give arguments not only bad experiences . You can relay on McAfee pretty well. It is not what it was a year ago.Light fast and reliable and good support. Running it for a while and i am very impressed from what i see here. give it a try

 

Never infected w/ Norton running since day 0. I tried McAfee for one day and decided that was enough ... first .. the GUI =\ .. second, the protection

I thought that Vista's firewall had "advanced" options where you could control inbound/outbound access.

 

Which one isn't ?

 

The McAfee suite is fine. Try to add Artemis to it.

 

It's in beta and for enterprise customers as of now.

 

I also have AT&t I would not think that any suite they offer is equal to anything else. They are just offering something to get more subscribers. McAffee might be fine but so is what you have. So why bother. I think that at some point AT&t will insist that their subscribers start to use their software but they have not quite arrived at that point yet. Why change a working systems for something else that you are unfamiliar with?