2012 Antivirus Software Reviews

McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2012

McAfee was once one of the most trusted names in antivirus software, but they've coasted on their name for far too long. This year it really shows.

From virus protection, to usability, to resource usage, McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 is a product that lacks the performance and sophistication of its competitors.

It's not all bad, there are a few things going for it, namely McAfee has good real-time protection, but its deep scanning and virus removal proved to well below par.

On top of that, in both our tests and our survey results, resource usage has become the common complaint that it once was with Norton.

McAfee's technical support is adequate on the self-help side of things. From forums to chat, most issues can be resolved. However, more serious support will cost you, and it gets expensive fast.

Overall, between its horrible user interface and less than stellar virus removal, McAfee leaves a lot to be desired.
McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 had mixed results in virus, spyware, and malware protection. Several of the major testing labs scored McAfee average to poor:

• AV Comparatives
• Anti-Malware Test Lab
• PC Security Labs
• Malware Research Group
• AV-Test
• ICSA

After our own testing we saw a few positive things to report about McAfee. First, McAfee was quite good at blocking threats through its active web-filter. McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 detected and blocked nearly every real-time virus threat that came at it.

The other major thing we saw was poor scanning and virus removal overall. Independent tests confirmed that McAfee missed nearly 50% of known viruses embedded in the computer. As staggering as that number seems (and is higher than what we ourselves saw), it still failed to remove over 20% of the viruses from our test PCs.

Failures came on two fronts. In some cases, it identified a threat, but couldn't remove it; in other cases, it ignored the threats outright, even when we pointed the software directly at the infected files.

So, even though it performed well at defeating real-time threats, its severe system drag and poor scanning and virus removal are just too much for us to make a good recommendation about McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 this year.
A major pitfall to is a severe system hog during realtime web protection. Each time it needs to scan a URL or block a trojan download, McAfee uses up significant resources making normal computer usage nearly unbearable.

In some software, we noticed CPU usage spikes--blips really--when dealing with an evil web site. In this case though, they're not blips. They're noticeable slowdowns.

When the system was running idle, McAfee Antivirus used an unbelievably high 18% CPU on average across our test systems. Most antivirus software rarely use 1% of CPU at idle.

During a full-system, manual scan, McAfee continually lived above 60% CPU with regular leaps to 100%.

For anyone who feels like their computer is slower since they installed McAfee, the answer is probably yes, ours sure were.
Occasionally, an antivirus software company makes a positive leap forward with an innovative design that redefines the standard approach. This usually indicates that a company is really paying attention and focusing on resolving previous issues.

However, that's not the case with McAfee. On the contrary, the user interface for McAfee Antivirus is poorly designed and plain annoying to use.

The entire user interface is small and confined to a tiny box. Yes, you can stretch the box out, but why should you have to reconfigure an interface just to be able to use it?

Next, McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 uses a vertical expansion style navigation rather that a top or left navigational system.

The problems are:

1. huge amounts of wasted space in the already tiny interface
2. you need to use scroll bars to see anything in a given section

Pointless.

The options within each section are then links instead of checkboxes or buttons, and most of these option links open a pop-up window on top of the section you were just in.

This further damages the experience by disorienting because you're forced to close that window to get back to where you were.

If we gave an award for "Worst Interface" this software would win, hands down.
There are two general sections for McAfee's technical support:

1. free, self-help
2. paid premium support

The free options consist of FAQ pages, forums, video tutorials, chat, and email. All of these support resources are extensive enough and should resolve most issues people have ranging from installation to registration.

If these resources don't solve your issue, McAfee has separate software you can download and install called McAfee Virtual Technician. This automated software scans your system for vulnerabilities and tries to resolve anything it can on its own.

Finally, if all else fails, you can call McAfee and pay for their premium services. These get expensive fast, ranging from a one-time fee of $69.95 up to $299.95 for a yearly, unlimited subscription.

How they get away with charging $300 for the same level of support that you get for free with Avira and VIPRE is truly a mystery.
McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 is set by default to automatically download and install updates. You can also choose to be notified before you install the updates as well.

While you can turn updates on or off and there is a timestamp showing you when the last update was (and when the next one is), there's no option to choose how often you'd like McAfee to check for updates. In our case, the next update was four hours later.

However, that's not nearly often enough in today's minute-by-minute virus world, McAfee needs better update control as well as faster intervals to check for virus definition updates, especially when compared to how aggressively other software like Norton updates.

Extra Features

McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 has limited extra features. However, there are a few features that every PC user should have: a good File Shredder, and an easy disk Defragmenter. Both will help security as well as keep your PC running smoothly.

When you delete a file, Windows doesn't actually delete it, it just marks the space the file used to take as being OK to overwrite by new files. And, even after it's overwritten, there are still things left behind that hackers can reconstruct to steal your credit card info, logins, or bank account numbers.

With McAfee's file shredder, you can choose to delete a file permanently. This feature overwrites multiple times the space a file used to take, thus making recovery of data from that file practically impossible.

Over time, as you install and remove programs and files, your hard drive disk becomes less efficient because of the how Windows stores files.

By "de-fraging" your hard drive from time to time, your computer runs more efficiently and thus faster. A handy tool for anyone... were there one not built into all versions of Windows.

Sure, it works, but why they'd bother to include this as a "feature" is puzzling, especially since it does nothing to make your PC safer.
We can't recommend McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012 this year. There are just too many issues (as there were last year, too.)

Even though McAfee is one of the best-known names in antivirus software, their name alone doesn't get the job done.

At its core, McAfee has a good, albeit resource-hungry real-time web-filter. It works but at the expense of a noticeably slowed PC. Resource usage was so high at times that we could barely navigate from window to window.

Further exacerbating things, SiteAdviser needs to be enabled by hand in Internet Explorer for full web protection, yet McAfee doesn't tell you that. For anyone after installing McAfee who believes their web results safe this could be dangerous.

In manual scanning, McAfee was neither able to detect nor fully remove a large portion of the viruses we test with.

McAfee's technical support pages are helpful, but if you need help with virus removal, their premium services can be brutally expensive.

Then there are the usability issues. From installation on it's a product that's frustrating to use.

It may sound harsh, but it's so bad it's hard to believe this is "release quality" product.