McAfee any good?

[Closingracer]

I just bought a Dell G7 and it came with 1 year free of McAfee. I usually avoid both like the plague but I do have some recent experience with Dell since I got an All on 1 for free to review and liked it so I figured between price and the fact it is the only laptop with the 1060 Max Q under $1,000 I will get this laptop. Probably need to add a HDD since the 256GB SSD ( SATA meh ) is to small for me and gaming. Anyways I thought ill ask for thoughts on McAfee since it is a free year. Do have about 7 months left of AVG premium or whatever I also got for free.

 

[rthonpm]

My experience with both the consumer and enterprise versions of McAfee is that it's a memory intensive application, and the more RAM your device has, the more it will take.

Following best practices of using a non-admin account for regular use, ad blockers for your browsers, and regular updates of all software on your machine along with the built-in Windows Defender is likely going to give you a much better experience.

Overall, we're sort of in the same space with Antivirus that we were with firewalls before XP, when you needed a third-party tool. Once Microsoft added a firewall, the need for third-party ones dropped to nothing at the workstation side.

 

[realwarder]

My experience with both the consumer and enterprise versions of McAfee is that it's a memory intensive application, and the more RAM your device has, the more it will take.

Following best practices of using a non-admin account for regular use, ad blockers for your browsers, and regular updates of all software on your machine along with the built-in Windows Defender is likely going to give you a much better experience.

Overall, we're sort of in the same space with Antivirus that we were with firewalls before XP, when you needed a third-party tool. Once Microsoft added a firewall, the need for third-party ones dropped to nothing at the workstation side.

Second this. Edge with an Ad blocker Extension (like ublock origin) with Windows Defender is very good protection these days.

We have McAfee on some server installs and it eats memory. No idea why but it does. To the point of impacting other applications.

 

[Closingracer]

Second this. Edge with an Ad blocker Extension (like ublock origin) with Windows Defender is very good protection these days.

We have McAfee on some server installs and it eats memory. No idea why but it does. To the point of impacting other applications.

Eh rather have a third party solution

 

[unmorphed]

I wouldn't give McAfee or Norton a dime.

 

[Closingracer]

I wouldn't give McAfee or Norton a dime.

McAfee was free with my purchase for a year. I also got AVG for free for a year.

 

[rthonpm]

Eh rather have a third party solution

Third-party solutions have been found to open even larger security issues. Consider just how deep into the kernel AV applications have to put hooks. McAfee, Symantec, and many other third-party AV suites have all had vulnerabilities discovered that could an attacker full kernel access.

 

[Timbre70]

Conclusion, stick to windows defender.

 

[Closingracer]

Conclusion, stick to windows defender.

And yet I’m not going to . As many issues you find with third party the same can be said with defender

 

[boydtoven]

I installed McAfee bc it comes free with AT&T home internet. It does devour memory.

 

[Steve Ridges]

I'm running McAfee on my Surface Book 2 and it works fine. Does it use more mem than Defender? I don't know and don't care since every other app I use on my PC runs great. Yesterday, it notified me of a suspicious .jar file it had quarantined so it's doing its job. I'm happy.

 

[IdleMind]

Personally I can't stand McAfee. I found it to be very intrusive. I've used Avast free antivirus for years with no problem. Lately I've been using just Windows Defender, along with ad and script blockers in my browser. I have my DNS setup on OpenDNS. So far my system has been working fine with no problems from malicious content or intrusions.

 

[letsfindscams]

I have a lot of experience with McAfee. My company has a contract with Intel to provide McAfee Livesafe with our services. Is it perfect? No, but it gets the job done well and better than most. That being said their Livesafe product does seem to be better coded and run better than their Anti Virus or Internet Security products. It's also miles ahead of that free version your ISP provides. Certainly better than the free alternatives. I can't tell you the number of times clients have come in, completely infected with malware and they were using Avg, Avira, etc because someone they know swears by it. If your knowledgeable and know what your doing online they aren't bad, but certainly not good for most users.
All that being said, when Intel bought McAfee we starting seeing the once crapware version turn into a much better software. With the latest versions of Livesafe at least, we aren't noticing it using very much memory on most machine. Yes, it will run slow on older machines and low end CPUs but most modern security will do. I have Livesafe installed on 30 plus machines (in addition to client installs) without a performance hit.

 

[tgp]

Businesses should use a good enterprise grade 3rd party solution. Consumers should just use the built in solution, which is Windows Defender. There can of course be exceptions, but this is a rule of thumb.

 

[Long Xuyen]

It sure seems to slow my laptop severely and updating virus definitions seems to take forever as does its effect on files or sites being downloaded. Peace of mind? Sure. Deluding myself? Don't know but isn't it better than nothing?

 

[tgp]

It sure seems to slow my laptop severely and updating virus definitions seems to take forever as does its effect on files or sites being downloaded. Peace of mind? Sure. Deluding myself? Don't know but isn't it better than nothing?

Windows Defender is active by default if nothing else is active. You shouldn't need anything else.

The single most important component of your PC's security is between the keyboard and the chair.

 

[RippedOff]

I feel ripped off, I bought a Dell desktop and though maybe I'll give McAfee a go, what a mistake firstly the install out of the box did not work, I purchased 1 years subscription - I should have known better - I then ring McAfee support and spend 20 minutes on the phone until they inform me that they will charge me an hourly rate to fix the problems out of the box! I said no way and then I asked for a refund they said no I had to contact a US number during their business hours! I'm a corporate purchase and as far as I'm concerned McAfee will never get my business - they have been fraudulent to a home user!!!!!! **** you McAfee

 

[Ryujingt3]

I quite like both AVG and Bitdefender. McAfee was good in the post, not so much now.