McAfee Total Protection 2008
$49.99
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McAfee used to be one of the brave pioneers willing to face any danger viruses had to offer. While McAfee still has its hat in the game, those days at the front are fading fast. With McAfee Total Protection 2008, you get enough bells and whistles to keep you busy for hours. But is that what we really want out of a modern PC total protection system?
The antivirus feature is solid as usual, but the other basics like antispyware, personal firewall, and Parental control features leave much to be desired. These features are average at best. The one thing this year's McAfee Total Protection 2008 improves upon is adding more features and generally running much lighter than last year's.
Editor's Overview
- Good antivirus
- Average firewall
- Below average spyware removal
- Poor parental controls
- Average search security
- Light running
- Daily updates
- Lots of extra bells and whistles
Will McAfee Total Protection 2008 protect my PC?
As with their VirusScan Plus, McAfee is still able to cover the basics without too much trouble. However, one major stumbling block for this year's Total Protection is the fact that in tests, the software had a lot of trouble cleaning up an already infected system. Once the system was eventually cleaned, McAfee Total Protection 2008 does a decent job of keeping malware at bay. But most people buy computer protection software
after they've been infected. McAfee Total Protection 2008 just didn't perform as well as other equivalent software packages in this regard.
Total Protection Features
- Safe Search and Surf
- Anti-Virus Protection
- Anti-Hacker Protection
- Anti-Spyware Protection
- PC Maintenance
- Identity Theft Prevention
- Spam & Online Scam Prevention
- Automatically Makes Copies
- Home Network Protection
- SiteAdvisor Plus
Other Issues with McAfee Total Protection 2008
McAfee Total Protection 2008's real-time protection is seriously lacking as well. In independent manual scan tests, the software would identify a piece of malware for the user to disable. However, the same pop-up removal message would continually appear over and over again. It gives the user the impression that the malware has been deleted, but has it? In general, malware isn't McAfee Total Protection 2008's strong point.
McAfee Total Protection 2008 is able to detect keyloggers, but had trouble preventing most of them from installing. That's not a good record.
In its default setting, independent testing shows that the firewall leaves 2 important ports un-stealthed, which makes them vulnerable to attacks. Plus the firewall allows all programs outbound access to the Internet by default. We would rather have the option to choose that.
One other major let-down is the parental control feature. This feature is virtually useless. All a teen has to do to get around these controls is to install an unsupported browser, and the parental controls are instantly ineffective.
Support
Offers online FAQ pages and manuals for troubleshooting. Only offers personal tech support after all other options are exhausted. Fees for tech support. Could be much better, if you ask us.
Conclusion
Overall, McAfee Total Protection 2008 is much better at protecting an already cleaned system. It could use a tune-up when it comes to doing the cleaning up on its own. While there are certainly more options and features in this year's version, however, when it comes to essential features like antispyware and firewall, they aren't quite up to the competition standards.
Try our #1 pick this year:
Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0
Or an equally good all-in-one PC protection package:
BitDefender Total Security 2008
*System Requirements
- Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 (SP4) or higher, Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or higher, Windows Vista* Personal computer with Pentium-compatible processor 500 MHz or higher and 256 RAM or higher
- 800 X 600 or higher resolution
- Internet connection
- .NET Framework version 1.1.4322
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later
- Optional: Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later
- Note: To upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, visit the Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com/.
Supported Email Programs
- POP3 – Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Netscape, IncrediMail, Thunderbird; Japanese only: Shuriken, Becky, PostPet
- MAPI – Outlook
- Web – MSN/Hotmail, or email account with POP3 access
Supported Instant Messaging Programs
- AOL Instant Messenger 2.1 or later
- Yahoo Messenger 4.1 or later
- Microsoft Windows Messenger 3.6 or later
- MSN Messenger 6.0 or later
Required For Anti-Spam Toolbar Plug-In
- Outlook Express 6.0 or later
- Outlook 2000 or later
- Eudora 6.0 or later
- Thunderbird 1.0 or later
* Must meet Windows Vista operating system requirements
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$49.99
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