Rating: 
Summary: absolute junk
Review: 1 star is too much for this product. I have spent 2 entire days trying to install this product. The online support is not helpful and very time consuming. They had me unistalling programs from my registry manually which took forever and did not fix the problem. They indicated that they had currupt files in the virus scan and still never did apologize for any of the incovience. Please do yourself a favor and bypass this as tempted as you might be to purchase it. You will regret the aggrevation that comes with the software.
Rating: 
Summary: It works!
Review: As a computer novice I was looking for an easy to use product and virus scan has been great. It is simple to install, requires no ongoing care and has (to the best of my knowledge) been effective.
Rating: 
Summary: VirusScan 8.0 - One Giant McAfee Advertising Program
Review: Back in the beginning when McAfee VirusScan was a stand alone product, it was one of the best in the business. But then McAfee decided to follow other computer programs into the bundling game, and things went downhill from there. McAfee never could figure out how to bundle all of their programs into one, easy-to-use package. The worst came when their last multi-program bundling started attacking each other. The computer repair program kept trying to fix a properly working VirusScan program, causing the VirusScan to quit working. VirusScan kept trying to indicate that there was a virus in the cleaning program, but if you deleted that "virus" the cleaning program wouldn't work. And let's not get into what the cleaning program kept trying to do (first time in my life I saw a program try to clean itself off the computer).McAfee, thankfully, got out of the bundling game last year with the release of VirusScan 7.0. Out of the box, this Virus program was the best in the business. Easy to set-up. Easy to use. Easy to update. Unforutnately, McAfee started tinkering with the program through the update features, causing many problems for their users. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a virus removal program when the program refuses to try and detect viruses. And so I was looking forward to McAfee's VirusScan 8.0 release. I guess I'll just have to look forward to the 9.0 release. As seems to always be the case with McAfee, they have improved some items and horribly tinkered with others. First the good news: Installation and set-up was even easier than the previous version. In less than 10 minutes, the program was installed and all the settings in place. The layout is much more simplistic and many of the options in the previous version have been combined into the remaining options. This means there are fewer levels of links in the program to sift through to get to what you need. In addition, I like the new "virus map" feature. This map allows you to track viruses around the world through several criteria: as a whole, by a current top 10 virus, by computers, or by files. You can also select an option that would allow your computer to anonymously send virus information to the map system. So now the bad news. To start off with, I'm not that impressed with the new McAfee SecurityCenter that is automtically installed. In effect, this is nothing more than one giant McAfee advertising tool for their Personal Firewall Plus, Privacy Service, and SpamKiller programs. Nevermind if you happen to have non-McAfee versions of these programs. Security Center is not able to recognize them. Unlike the forced update of this program they did with version 7.0, at least this Security Center won't lock your computer up. The other massive problem with this version is the super increased time it takes to update the program. In past versions, the update feature ran off of your computer. It was quick, easy, and rarely gave you problems (except for those caused by McAfee themselves). The same cannot be said for this new version. When you click on the update link, and McAfee sees that there is an update, you are then taken to McAfee's Website to complete the download. This requires you to create a username and password on McAfee's site in order to access it. Unfortunately, there is no option within VirusScan that allows you to program in this username and password, meaning that you will have to manually enter it in each time. In addition, a simple DAT file update now takes at least five times as long to complete. Of course, this is assuming that your update program doesn't lock up on you before you can get there. Each time an update has been available, I have had to make at least 3 attempts before I have been able to successfully start downloading the update. Each and every time, the first attempt results in my update program locking up. The second attempt results in the McAfee Website taking me to a page that has nothing to do with updating my VirusScan. The third attempt usually works correctly. Add on to this the previously mentioned time requirement to download a simple DAT file, and you can guess just how close I get to throwing my entire computer out of my third floor apartment. If you can look past the blatant advertising and the problematic update feature, VirusScan 8.0 is actually a good program. But I wouldn't blame you if you decided to either stick with version 7.0 or go with a competitor product instead. Hopefully the negative response McAfee is sure to get with this version will get them to clean up their act.
Rating:
Summary: Renewal hell
Review: Everything was Ok until I did my annual renewal. Or attempted to, anyway. The offer was $49.99, with a $20 "mail-in" rebate. I thought that was about the stupidest thing I ever heard of in my life. I mean, I renew electronically, download electronically, pay electronically, and then supposedly get a rebate through snail mail. But, I needed the virus protection, held my nose, and paid the money. I emailed McAfee customer support and told them my opinion. They responded to NOTHING that I said and merely noted that my email address was not registered with them as an account. This was strange, since I used that address to log in to their site. Despite having renewed and downloaded the new version, the software didn't know that I had renewed. I was constantly interrupted to be informed that I needed to register. When I tried to register, the registration didn't work because -- miracle of miracles -- my email address was already registered -- the same email address that their customer support had no record of. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Beware ¿ invasive and literally bombards you with ads
Review: For a product that is supposed to protect your privacy, McAfee 8.0 requires a significant amount of personal information just to run. You'll need to input your name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address just to get the product to install.
Furthermore, this information will be asked for again and again each time the product tries to update itself! To add insult to injury, this product will install, without asking, "McAfee Security Center" which is basically this worthless bit of graphical fluff that serves no purpose other than to spam your desktop with ads for other McAfee products. Even worse, and yes it can get worse, this product will frequently pop up alerts that make it look as if your computer is infected with a virus! When you click on them, surprise! They're really just more adds for McAfee antivirus software. Yep, you're getting adds for the product you just bought.
But wait, we're not done yet! There are not less than 5 different boxes you must de-select during the install process to avoid getting e-mail spam from McAfee and their "business partners". This is particularly annoying as you're required to give your name and e-mail address just to load the program in the first place. Finally, if all this wasn't bad enough, the antivirus updates are delivered in a cumbersome series of pop-up windows inside a browser. If you use pop-up blocking software they won't work and you wont get updates. What you will get however, are error messages asking you to reboot your computer endlessly. In short, this is without a doubt, the worst anti-virus product I have ever owned. It is intrusive, invasive and literally bombards you with ads. Do yourself a favor and buy Norton Antivirus instead.
Rating:
Summary: Buy another product. McAfee causes popups.
Review: I bought McAfee VS 8.0, installed it on my computer, ran a virus scan, shut down... and the next morning when I boot up I suddenly have a popup problem after two years of being almost completely free of them (using Panicware Pop-Up stopper and Spybot Searh and Destroy - both free products I WOULD recommend). Basically, there's no way around the fact that these popups were and are caused by McAfee. The popups were bypassing my popup stopper even until I uninstalled, re-installed and updated it. When inquiring on the McAfee msg boards they'll admit to causing this very problem when visiting their own websites (and even try to defend it by saying if popups ads didn't work they wouldn't be used) but play dumb and stop replying to the threads when multiple people state that it's much bigger in scope (the popups occur all the time and are not related to the sites you're visiting). On another thread they (of course) recommended buying the McAfee pop-up stopper. Basically, buying a product such as this and having it cause problems like that is unexcusable in my opinion. It's akin to buying a shampoo that causes constant body odor and having them recommend their own brand of soap to fix the problem. So the low score isn't due to a lack of performance of the product, but rather a lack of morals and ethics displayed by the company.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to use
Review: I bought this without having a previous version of mcafee and installed it. Installation took less then 10 minutes and the software instantly found 2 "trojan horses" on my computer. I am not sure what all the negative comments involving "blatant advertising" are about. There is basically one section on the Security Center that tells you what mcafee product you have installed and then there are tabs to areas describing the other software and providing a way to order them. This definitely is mcafee wanting you to buy their stuff, but not something that ruins the effectiveness of the software itself. However, like I said, I switched from Norton so I was not upgrading from a previous version of mcafee and could not tell you if this is better than previous releases.
Rating:
Summary: Disaster
Review: I can't remember ever having a worse software nightmare. Nothing worked the same once I installed it - this garbage installed a virus on my machine! The pop-ups were horrendous and it disabled my spyware and ad-shield software. An entire day wasted because once I knew I was getting rid of it, then the real hassles started trying to un-install. Of course I could not get through to their phone for 30-day $$ back so I just wrote them a note and called American Express. There should be a law against this software.
Rating:
Summary: They can have it back
Review: I did not experience any major problems with VirusScan 2004 (version 8.0). The only minor issues I had was the registration of the product, which took several tries to register it. The first time I ran VirusScan 2004, it discovered 3 viruses which were infecting 5 files. After downloading the current data files, 17 other infected files were found on my PC, mostly infected by the "DoomJuice" virus. VirusScan also informed me that my PC was being used as a "Spam" generator. VirusScan automatically cleaned all of the viruses/trojan horses that were on my PC. I had been using another major brand's internet security and virus detector but it obviously did not work as well as it should. I am very happy with this product and would highly recommend it over the competition.
Rating: 
Summary: Minor problems but works as designed
Review: I did not experience any major problems with VirusScan 2004 (version 8.0). The only minor issues I had was the registration of the product, which took several tries to register it. The first time I ran VirusScan 2004, it discovered 3 viruses which were infecting 5 files. After downloading the current data files, 17 other infected files were found on my PC, mostly infected by the "DoomJuice" virus. VirusScan also informed me that my PC was being used as a "Spam" generator. VirusScan automatically cleaned all of the viruses/trojan horses that were on my PC. I had been using another major brand's internet security and virus detector but it obviously did not work as well as it should. I am very happy with this product and would highly recommend it over the competition.
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