McAfee Internet Security Suite

For real security mavens, McAfee continues to deliver one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching suites to truly lock down a system (although this protection does come at a hit to performance and convenience). The suite assembles automatic virus scanning that integrates spyware protection. McAfee comes with daily profile updates to thwart the latest threats, but despite McAfee's claims that these updates should download and install without any user interaction, the software often prompted us to reboot the system to make the updates take effect.

 

To its credit, McAfee's firewall protection is less intrusive than in other versions and doesn't pester you too often for obviously permissible network activity. McAfee generally is not as user-friendly for novices as Norton or ZoneAlarm, in that it just doesn't try as hard to explain or walk you through some of its operations. For the experienced user, however, it is easy enough to drop into the details of your firewall. Other operations like the Privacy Service, which blocks the transmission of personally identifiable information and includes parental controls to monitor, control, and log where children surf, are not well explained.

 

Some features, like the Block Ads command, never worked properly for us. We also found the SpamKiller function off-putting; it slowed Outlook noticeably. The new anti-phishing routine is welcome, however, and it bolts nicely onto Internet Explorer as a plug-in to block suspected identify thieves.

 

Overall, McAfee's suite is a powerful and reliable PC bodyguard, but it's a bit of a performance hog and could be easier to use.