McAfee Antivirus Plus review

The new update to the 2009 edition McAfee’s flagship antivirus software comes with all the classic features you come to expect as well as some useful new updates.

What we like best

McAfee Antivirus Plus provides one of the toughest software packages against malicious PC threats that you could possibly find.

Rather than waiting for updates at a set time, new threats are analysed and blocked continuously. This is a massive improvement on the 2009 edition which only updated a few times a day.

Quickscan checks for threats in the areas of your computer at the most risk. McAfee has also improved its performance, with faster boot up, scan and shutdown times. The 2009 edition had problems with hogging a lot of operating capacity, but they seem to have improved on this and as a consequence the operating footprint is a lot smaller.

McAfee is also clearly aiming at the laptop market by including a feature which only starts scanning when the computer is plugged in to save on battery power.

The standard features present are antivirus or antispyware, which with the new Active Protection detect, block and remove viruses, spyware, and adware.

A two-way firewall is included in the base package to protect your PC and there is an anti-phishing filter to protect you from websites that are after your data; there are clear alerts on this.

There is also a content manager tool to allow you to set what content your kids can surf online. This however is far easier to do through Windows control panel.

It rates any websites with colour coded warnings according to safety. The shredder digitally disposes of your documents by overwriting them and stealth mode makes your computer invisible to hostile programs.

The McAfee SecurityCenter interface is still easy to use and easy to read, with tools in separate tabs on the left hand side. The Basic Menu is concise and easy for a novice to navigate, while the advanced menu give you access to tools like Disk Defragmenter.

What we like least

Antivirus Plus still has its problems however. It may be faster and use less of your operating capacity, but it has a very slow scanning speed. It’s the price you pay for having such comprehensive coverage but it can become frustrating.

There are still an irritating number of pop-ups and requests to upgrade, some of which are certainly useful notifications, but they are distracting.