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(More customer reviews)This applies to all 3 versions of McAfee and Computer Associates Secuirty Suite Software I've used over the past 5 years, therefore I suspect it applies to all of them, more or less. First note that on a 2.3 GHz machine with 1 GB of RAM and Windows XP Home Edition, that passes all hardware tests and runs like a charm with other firewall and anti-virus software; when I start up the machine and log on, I might as well go do something else for at least 5 minutes. If the McAfee's security suite finds it needs updates, I might as well wait for 20 minutes. During these startup times, the hard disk is perpetually busy and the CPU resources being used often reach 100%, with various resources at the top of the use list starting with "Mc" (e.g., Mcshield, mcupdui), when sorted by usage rate. Under this condition, any attempt to do anything else means waiting forever for the system to respond to a mouse-click, programs take forever to start, and file selector dialog pull-down menus and context (right-click) menus may not respond for a minute or more.
Some details:
1. When McAfee's Security Suite is starting up, there is no way to tell what it's actually doing. I can therefore only suspect that these initial 5 minutes have something to do with a startup scan (which most anti-virus software does). But what is being scanned, I don't know. What I do know is that the Security Suite was running when I last shut the system down, so it must be looking for the viruses and trojans that snuck into the computer while it was turned off...or they don't have much confidence in the effectiveness of their software. Maybe they know something they're not telling us.
2. McAfee (and CA) apparently have never heard of incremental updates. When I was still using dial-up, I had to give up on CA Security, because almost every update was around 17 mB and there were several every week! (17 mB at my typical 50.6 kbps connection speed takes about an hour, but a dial-up session that long typically got dropped at least once, and if you didn't sit in front of the computer the whole time, you'd come back to shut down the computer and discover you had to start over. Also, see item 3, below.) Judging from the time the updating icon is visible in the system tray, the downloads are still huge, though with high speed that's not such a problem; however, based on the "tooltips" that update icon displays, I must be getting not just virus (etc.) definition data updates but regular major program updates (sometimes 2 or 3 times in a week, sometimes requiring system restarts). The requirement to be continually updating the programs suggests sloppy programming (yes, that applies to Microsoft, too).
3. McAfee apparently has also never heard of managed downloads. If I'm connected via wireless where the signal isn't strong and clean and/or security is high (e.g., WPA2), there may be interruptions in the wireless signal. I was once connected to a signal that broke off every few minutes and took over 10 seconds to be reacquired. With that connection, McAfee never updated, because at every interruption it had to start over, and the files being downloaded were so large, downloading would not complete in a few minutes. Naturally, McAfee's software kept telling me my protection wasn't up-to-date, but it wasn't smart enough to know there wasn't anything I could do about it. Sure, they could say "get a better connection", but the fact is, the only thing I needed a better connection for was so McAfee's Security Suite could be updated. As it is, I'm paying for a high-speed connection mainly to support the security problems that come from the Internet (Windows updates and Security Suite updates).
4. McAfee appears to take their cue on informing the user from Microsoft. With all that disk grinding and slow system response, it is impossible to determine from their software just what the software is doing that's tying up the machine.
5. The only machine I use on which McAfee Security Suite that doesn't seem to get in the way is a 2.8 gHz Pentium D (dual core) with 2 gB of RAM and Windows XP Professional.
I began typing this while McAfee was doing one of its long updates. Now it's telling me I have to restart the machine, and I'm not looking forward to that, because now I'll have to wait an unknown amount of time for it to finish starting up. Do yourself a favor and avoid McAfee (and Computer Associates) security software. Their philosopy appears to be, "the user's computer exists for the purpose of running our software, and if they don't like the way they have to work when they use our software, they need to get a faster machine". If your machine doesn't at least approximate the capabilities of the machine under 5. above, you will probably curse the day you bought their security software.
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