Mcafee: Slug or new hope?

Hey all!
I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on mcafee new security suite? I remember a while ago that mcafee was a total slug and sucked your system dry. Is this still the case? Have they made any improvements as of late? I guess bank of america is offering a free year and I was hoping that it had improved.

 

We have 2d Dell Inspiron laptops, Vista SP1, 3G RAM each, bought in Aug 2009. Foolishly, I ordered 3 yrs McAfee for each.

When mcafee is updating or running, the laptops are slowed to almost a stop. They've updated mcafee to whatever is current for right now. It's still a dog in my book.

I removed it from my laptop yesterday and went for another security suite. My wife still has it on hers and still complains about how everything stops.

 

Re: Mcafee: Same as it ever was

McAfee 2010 is McAfee 2009 - they put the old product in new boxes - see;

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200938/4469/Is-McAfee-selling-2009-products-in-a-2010-box

and

http://www.thetechherald.com/articl...ee-selling-2009-products-in-a-2010-box-Part-2

Here is the PC Mag review - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332734,00.asp

The short answer - you can do better looking elsewhere

 

I have used McAfee for a long time, and the 2009 version was relatively fast.
Of course, I used VirusscanPlus (not 'Total Security' or anything like that) and had the SiteAdvisor removed. I also disabled Artemis. I believe it's called 'active protection' (an in-the-cloud thing).
You can remove the unnecessary extras from the McAfee SecurityCenter.
I used Windows XP Home Edition SP2, not Vista, but I have an old machine, 512 MB RAM.

While McAfee has many disadvantages (privacy, problems with updates, support etc.), it's worth a try.
You can also try their forum for support/sharing experiences with other McAfee users. It's possible that Dell delivers an older version of McAfee, I don't recall, but you can ask on the forum.

Btw, if you remove it don't forget to run the MCPR tool to remove leftovers.
My experience is based on the past, I don't know the current state of affairs.

 

AH no thanks. I was hoping that it was something free that I could put on my wife's laptop. I just stick with NIS 2010. Seems to be working well and it has 180 days left on the license.

 

From what I have seen and read, NIS 2010 is an excellent product that is very fast because it uses a white list in addition to a black list for anti-malware on access scanning. Simply put, it doesn't scan known good files, unless there are changes to those files. Mcafee has greatly improved, starting from the 2008 version, but the quality still lags in terms of speed, from my experience using it as a freebie from my ISP.

With competition coming from Symantec, McAfee is not justifying their sale price for their software.