McAfee Total Protection

The most complete internet security package from McAfee offers 10 in 1 protection to cover just about any threat you will be exposed to online. Additionally, it also includes a set of maintenance tools to keep your pc performing at its peak level.

The McAfee Security Center is the interface that allows the user to access all these features. And these features really seem to be too much for the average pc user. We wonder how many people will actually use all this firepower let alone understand it. Although, when first installed most are already set to a default ready status. You can then tweak them to your liking. By working your way through the different screens of McAfee Security Center you are presented with a large status bar at the top of each screen. Here you will see a large green check mark denoting the feature is configured correctly to perform its stated protection function; a yellow exclamation point denotes marginal protection and lastly a red X which means that this function is compromised and needs immediate attention. Clicking the Fix button resets the status to the green safe mode.

There is the required antivirus, firewall, antispyware and spam protection but it doesn't stop there. They've added Wi-Fi protection, parental control, backup/restore, network control and on and on.

The suite is divided into four categories as follows:

Internet & Network-takes you to the firewall and Wi-Fi protection features
Parental Controls-allows blocking of undesirable websites
Computer & Files-accesses antivirus and spyware scanning
E-mail & IM-scans inbound and outgoing email and IMs for threats

McAfee's VirusScan performance is very highly rated by several independent test labs and we agree with their findings. It's one of the best available. However, its spyware segment or Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUP) as McAfee calls it, is cumbersome to work with. During scanning you receive frequent interruptions when spyware is detected. You are offered the choice of removing this PUP. If you say yes, you are then asked if you agreed to have this PUP installed and again you have to tell it to remove the PUP. It gets really old going through this routine time after time as the scanning continues. Definitely a minus in our opinion.

McAfee's free support is via Live Chat and email and is available 24 hours. They also have an online knowledge base. Telephone support is also available on a charge basis per incident.

As we noted previously,there is a lot to this security and utility suite. But how much of this you will use is questionable. We think you would be better off with a less "complete" internet security suite that confines itself to Internet Security, period.