Horrible company - avoid McAfee products like the plague
Written: Feb 19 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: - Pretty good at detecting most viruses, can be obtained free after mail-in rebates
Cons: Horrible support, annoying product, see main review
The Bottom Line: Avoid, unless you enjoy feeling nervous about your virus protection and like to waste many hours dealing with customer non-support.
|
|
|
| lousygolfer's Full Review: Network Associates McAfee VirusScan Home Edition 7... |
It's funny that the 15-word maximum for listing the pros of this software was more than adequate, yet I couldn't even get started with the cons in that abbreviated space. So, here are my impressions of this software:
Cons:
- It is frequently unable to to delete/disinfect virus files that it detects
- Starting around a month before your update subscription ends, McAfee "Buy New Subscription" pop-ups appear, you click on the x to close and they disappear...... for 60 seconds. Then they reappear, you click on the x ..... a minute later it comes back. There are only two ways to stop these popups - (1) go online with your credit card number to McAfee.com to bribe them to stop... I mean resubscribe to their update service or (2) uninstall the McAfee program. Customer service and tech support both refused to tell me how to disable these continuously reappearing and incredibly annoying pop-ups.
- Tech support is virtually non-existent, unless you call in to their $2.95/minute or $39.99/issue support lines. E-mails get canned, non-responsive answers. The FAQ section of their website has no responses to real questions and the "24/7" tech support chat system is always busy or non-functional - its unavailable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Having registered a previous version of a McAfee product may prevent you from getting updates on subsequent versions that the user legitimately acquires. I bought both Viruscan Professional 8.0 and Personal Firewall Plus, after getting VS Home 7.0 (both were free after rebates - the only reason I purchased them) and when the auto update tries to give me the current update of my new programs when I go online, it tells me "You are not authorized to receive this service." An e-mail to customer support got me back a confirmation that I am properly registered for the two new programs and I should have no problems. I guess continuing to receive the "You are not authorized to receive this service" response when I try to update the virus database isn't a problem for McAfee. However, it is a damn big problem for me.
-Who knows what sort of spy-ware McAfee installs on your computer with its standard installation? A quick check with Windows Explorer reveals that their uninstallation procedure does not uninstall 100% of the components of the McAfee software you have installed, that is for sure.
Avoid this horribly run company and its products. Even though it's not costing me any more than tax and postage after the rebates to upgrade to the latest version, I think that's still the opposite of a bargain and I regret my decision to stay with McAfee. In retrospect, I should have gone with either Norton or one of the several freeware antivirus programs.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
lousygolfer
|
|
Reviews written: 43
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.