*NEW!*
McAfee Internet Security 2010
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$49.99 
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For 2010, McAfee promised significant revisions and improvements over their Internet Security 2009.
With the McAfee brand name behind it, you'd think it would be a stellar product by now, but their Internet Security suite is average at best.
In fact in our test labs, McAfee Internet Security 2010 didn't stand up to our rigorous tests like we expected.
We were glad to see McAfee giving attention to real-time antivirus protection, email scanning, and anti-spam, but these aren't enough for a successful Internet Security suite.
IMPROVED FEATURES
Better real-time antivirus protection
Good email protection
Easy anti-spam
While their real-time antivirus detection is excellent, it comes at the expense of resource usage that's higher than we'd like to see
However, the McAfee anti-spam feature was very easy to use, as was the email protection in general, which protects both POP3 and IMAP inboxes, something that's somewhat of a rarity in
antivirus software and Internet security suites. Both the anti-spam and email virus protection performed quite well in our tests.
Parental controls were very basic and provide little real security for today's online threats.
For protection against spyware, the antispyware detection was very inconsistent, picking up between 60% and 75% of the spyware we threw at our test computers.
Arguably the worst, and potentially most dangerous feature though was the firewall. Here's why:
With default settings, the firewall performed very poorly during our tests. When we switched the default settings to "Standard", the firewall performed much better.
The problem stems from very loose default settings, although the settings generally don't provide the type of controls even moderately advanced users may find themselves needing.
These are the types of issues we found ourselves running into with McAfee Internet Security 2010, a program we really wanted to see do well overall because of its strong real-time antivirus protection.
McAfee Internet Security 2010 Features
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- Real-time Protection
Helps keep your PC safe from malware, viruses, spyware and adware. Protects your computer in real-time 24/7.
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- Spyware Removal
Protects your computer from potential spyware and adware threats. Scans your PC for spyware and adware infecting your PC.
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- Email Protection
Keeps your inbox safe from virus and malware threats. Scans incoming and outgoing email for potential threats.
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- Instant Messaging Protection
Helps protects your IM conversations from viruses and other malware threats. Scans incoming file transfers for malicious content.
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- Anti-Phishing
Helps reduce the risk of identity theft and fraud by identifying suspicious phishing sites. Stops criminals from stealing your personal and sensitive information.
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- Parental Controls
Helps keep children safe online by blocking and filtering websites.
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- Firewall
Monitors all incoming and outgoing PC traffic. Your first line of defense against viruses, spyware and other malware.
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- Anti-spam
Helps protect against unwanted email spam.
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- Backup
Lets you create a backup disk in case of a virus attack or computer crash.
McAfee Internet Security Suite 2010 Assessment
Here we've listed a breakdown of each category we've tested for McAfee Internet Security 2010. Each category was given a percentage rating based on those tests.
Antivirus Installation: 89%
$49.99
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McAfee Internet Security took longer than any other Internet security suite to download and install. Over 20 minutes.
The installer file is a downloader that downloads all necessary files. This downloader doesn't seem to serve any purpose to us other than making the process unnecessarily long.
There were no advanced options during the install to choose install location or features to include.
On the plus side, virus and malware definitions were current and didn't need to be manually downloaded.
It's great to have current virus definitions, but we're not sure if the long installation was worth the 20+ minute wait for.
Un-installation: 98%
The uninstallation in contrast was excellent. There's no self-uninstaller, but you can easily uninstall via the Windows ADD/REMOVE Programs control panel.
After a reboot, we found no traces of McAfee left in the registry. Very clean.
Total uninstall took only about 45 seconds.
If there were an un-installer we would have given it a perfect score of 100%, but we took off two points for only being able to remove McAfee from the ADD/REMOVE programs menu of the Control Panel.
User Interface: 92%
The user interface is easy-to-use and straight forward. It's fully functional and well designed, and we're glad to see McAfee avoiding the trend to overly flashly UIs that don't do
anything other than make the software slower.
There are Basic and Advanced options; however, they're really not that different. The Basic menu just hides some of the Advanced options.
We did run across a few link and mousing issues during our tests that were a bit frustrating, but nothing that should interfere with usability.
Real-time Protection: 93%
Our tests showed McAfee Internet Security to have fast-acting real-time virus and malware protection.
All malicious files we tested against it were successfully detected and quarantined regardless of file extension.
While most of the malicious files were only quarantined (and not deleted), we still can give McAfee a high score for adequately dealing with them.
Manual Antivirus Scan: 89%
$49.99
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Manual virus and malware scanning was average at best. Only 75% of computer threats were removed. A full-system, manual scan should perform better than that, especially given the
strength of the McAfee real-time antivirus detection.
There was one problematic piece of software that McAfee couldn't remove, however. We ran a manual scan several times to try to remove it, but McAfee still struggled with it.
Despite this one setback, McAfee Internet Security did an average job with manual scanning, but it really could do much better.
Resource Usage: 79%
Resource usage for McAfee was poor. Memory usage during real-time protection peaked at 90MB.
During a manual, full-system scan, 200MB of memory were used. As with its sibling product
McAfee Antivirus 2010 the high memory usage, even brought up low virtual memory warnings from Windows -- not a good sign.
CPU used during real-time protection was better, usually at 0%-1%. During a manual scan, however, CPU usage shot way up to 85% at some points.
McAfee Internet Security really needs to focus on better resource usage next year.
Spyware/Adware Protection: 89%
Spyware and adware removal fluctuated during our tests. One test showed that McAfee removed 75% of spyware, but another test showed that it only removed 60%.
We rigorously tested McAfee's spyware and adware protection capabilities, and it proved to be unreliable.
Although 75% is a passing score, that was the highest score it ever got, and the fact that different results were reported during our tests leaves us unsure of McAfee's reliability
to correctly handle spyware.
Virus Removal from a Pre-infected Machine: 82%
We infected our testing PC with viruses, spyware, and malware, then installed McAfee to see how well it would perform.
McAfee didn't perform as well as it should.
75% of malicious files were detected. However, the software wasn't able to remove most of them.
The installer scans for spyware and malicious files, but cannot detect viruses or malware that are dormant. You'll need to run a full-system scan for better results.
This isn't all that uncommon; many antivirus software works the same way.
Email Protection: 95%
Email protection caught the same amount of suspicious threats as real-time protection does: 75%. Email protection is only active when real-time protection is enabled.
Outlook, Thunderbird, IMAP and POP3 are all supported email clients and protocols.
Even with an average email protection success rate, McAfee didn't drag down our testing computer. We didn't notice any PC slowing while the software scanned incoming message files.
Anti-spam: 96%
The anti-spam filter is easy to use. There's no significant learning curve like we've seen in other anti-spam features.
A toolbar is installed that marks emails as spam, or you can simply add friendly emails to the safe list.
There are several settings that can adjust how aggressive you want the spam filter to be. However, when set at the highest setting, the spam filter did incorrectly identify some friendly emails. But overall, not a bad result.
We weren't thrilled with the overall spam detection rates; however, it was easy to train and use and did catch quite a bit of the spam to our spammiest test email accounts.
Firewall: 65%
McAfee Internet Security Suite 2010
Firewall Scores
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Firewall Performance
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| Inbound Blocking |
70 |
| Outbound Blocking |
50 |
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Other Firewall Ratings
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| Firewall Ease-of-Use |
70 |
| Configuration Flexibility |
60 |
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The McAfee firewall is easy to configure, but only because it lacks in features.
There's no way to open individual ports or protocols. Traffic is managed by each program setting.
The user can allow specific programs to have access or not. You can also allow only outbound access if you choose.
During our initial tests, no malware was detected by the firewall with its default settings. This is highly alarming.
After changing the settings of the firewall to "Standard", all programs that attempted to access the Internet were detected, including viruses/malware/spyware.
Outbound access was blocked only if the default setting was changed to Standard. In the default mode, no notifications were given.
Having a firewall that doesn't do what it's supposed out of the gate is a dangerous and a poor choice for McAfee Internet Security.
Most users will never know they need to set their firewall to Standard. This means most users will have computers exposed to more threats than they should.
Users expect certain levels of performance and protection from a firewall--even if they don't really understand how it works or why they need it.
Parental Controls: 85%
$49.99
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Parental control features are very basic and limited. You can block websites, limit time on the internet, and filter keywords, but that's about it.
There's no option to monitor IM or email and no keylogger software: all areas that all parental controls should address.
The keyword filter lets you assign an age group to any keyword you choose. If any site has this keyword, the parental controls will block that site from view.
Overall, McAfee's parental controls shouldn't be relied upon for maximum child Internet safety.
IM Protection: 95%
All files that attempt to transfer through IM (Instant Messaging) are scanned for viruses and other threats.
Our tests showed McAfee to be very successful at capturing malicious threats as long as real-time protection was enabled.
Anti-phishing: 98%
McAfee's anti-phishing filter was just as good as the default anti-phishing features in Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer 8.
We're glad that McAfee Internet Security takes anti-phishing seriously, but it makes us wonder if this feature is really needed if it's no better than the anti-phishing you get for free with Chrome or IE8.
Antivirus Definition Updates: 85%
We couldn't find any information on how often antivirus definitions are available for download, but there are several other options.
You can set McAfee Internet Security to automatically download and install security definitions when they become available. Or you can have them automatically download then notify you when you're ready to install. Or you can be notified before the antivirus definitions download or install.
Backups: 89%
The file backup feature is very extensive. You can set it to monitor specific directories and modify the archive whenever a file is changed or configured. You can also set the backup to scan and backup on a schedule.
The backup feature can be set to monitor and backup by file type.
You can save the backup file on a network, or burn it to a CD/DVD.
On the negative side, the user interface is poorly designed and very hard to understand. Some buttons are buttons, and some are just text links -- which makes things confusing and hard to navigate.
We could not get McAfee to run a manual backup during our tests. Apparently, only scheduled backups are available.
The help files are hastily written and not very informative.
Despite McAfee's seemingly promising backup feature, we found it to be quite disappointing.
Customer Support: 83%
From the help file the user is directed to the McAfee website. From there the user must run a "Virtual Technician" before gaining access to chat or forums.
The Virtual Technician requires you to download and install a separate program just to work. In fact, during our tests, the Virtual Technician program failed to install several times. Not a good sign for a program designed to detect problems.
Chat and forums are free but they require you to create an account.
Basic customer phone support is free for registration issues, sales issues, etc. But for real technical support, McAfee uses a fee structure ranging from $9.95 - $59.95.
We believe in free, phone technical support without any strings attached. It's unfortunate McAfee is still using this paid support model when other Internet Security software companies have moved on.
McAfee Internet Security Suite 2010
Review Conclusions
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McAfee Internet Security Suite 2010 Scores
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Antivirus
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$49.99
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| Overall Internet Security Protection |
89 |
| Real-time Security Protection |
93 |
| Manual Antivirus Scanning |
89 |
| Resource Utlization |
79 |
| Virus Removal (Pre-infected Machine) |
82 |
| Antivirus Definition Updates |
85 |
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Additional Internet Security Features
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| Spyware/Adware Protection |
89 |
| Email Protection |
95 |
| Anti-Spam Protection |
96 |
| Firewall Software |
65 |
| Parental Controls Software |
85 |
| IM/Instant Message Protection |
95 |
| Anti-Phishing Protection |
98 |
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Other Software Ratings
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| Installation |
89 |
| Un-installation |
98 |
| User Interface |
92 |
| Customer Technical Support |
83 |
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McAfee's Internet Security 2010 should've performed much better this year, but it didn't. While there were improvements in antivirus and malware protection--especially in terms of
real-time protection, there are still too many deficiencies.
Anti-spam and email protection were the most improved features for McAfee this year. Both were very easy to use, and equally effective.
- Improved real-time protection
- Poor firewall settings
- Average user interface
- High resource usage
- Good anti-spam
- Better email protection
It's great to see the entry level of McAfee's antivirus software have a firewall, but we expect more from an Internet Security Suite than an extremely simple and basic software firewall.
The parental controls proved to be far too basic for real online protection, and the high resource usage nearly brought our testing PCs to a grinding halt.
The McAfee firewall software may be enough for some users, but there are far better firewalls available from other companies.
Overall, we can't justify rating McAfee Internet Security 2010 with a higher score.
Their software just isn't keeping up with today's serious virus, spyware, and malware threats.
While some of the core protection might be suitable for some users and it does have excellent real-time antivirus detection, the suite as a whole doesn't quite hit the mark.
McAfee Internet Security Suite 2010
Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7 System Requirements
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- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or higher
- Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or higher
- CD-ROM drive
(NOT required for installation via the Internet)
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| Software
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- Microsoft Windows 2000 (32-bit) with Service Pack 4 (SP4) or higher
- Windows XP (32-bit) with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or higher
- Windows Vista (32- or 64-bit) and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) or higher
- Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)
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| System Memory/RAM
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256 MB
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| Free Disk Space
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150 MB
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| Email
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- POP3 - Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Netscape, IncrediMail and Thunderbird; Japanese only: Shuriken, Becky and PostPet
- MAPI - Outlook
- Web - MSN/Hotmail, or email account with POP3 access
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| Anti-spam Toolbar Requirements
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- Outlook Express 6.0 or later
- Outlook 2000 or later
- Eudora 6.0 or later
- Thunderbird 1.0 or later
- Anti-Spam also supports any other POP3 email client (without SSL) and Web accounts (MSN/Hotmail paid accounts and accounts with POP3 access)
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