2006 Antivirus Review

McAfee Virus Scan 2006

 Below is our review of McAfee's Virus Scan 2006 based off our 2006 Antivirus Review Template.

Installation:

The installation was very standard and straight forward with the exception of the option to participate in 'Virus Map Reporting'. This option was checked by default and reports to McAfee headquarters the virus activity it finds on your computer. You can decide for yourself weather you like this feature, but personally one of my main goals in securing a computer is to prevent information from getting outside. For those that get excited about being apart of something larger than themselves, this feature will be a bonus. Surprisingly there were no reboots during the installation which was nice and at the same time concerned me on how deep the program was, or wasn't, rooting itself into the operating system. There were few options during the installation which helps reduce confusion.

Configuration:

Installation concludes by telling you should perform a full virus scan of computer, but does this before it recommends you update your virus pattern. In my opinion this is strange. I believe you should update your virus patterns before doing a full scan. Although it won't hurt doing the scan before, it will waste time as you should do another full scan after your pattern files have been updated. McAfee's 'Active Shield' runs by default to protect your system in real-time and there are few options to configure. Unfortunately there were no full system scans scheduled by default. I highly recommend the user address this and schedule scans during a down time. The program is configured to scan email and attachments by default.

Resources:

A full system scan took about fourteen minutes to completely check our 4gig drive, while the MGHTML.EXE process used 20% to 95% of the CPU. The program took only 14mb of hard drive space, and ran a normal amount of system processes (although less than Norton.) The following processes were documented, taking a total of 36.5mb of system resources:

MCDETECT.EXE 1.1mb
OASCLNT.EXE 2.1mb
MCTSKSHD.EXE 2.2mb
MCUSESCN.EXE 3.8mb
MCUSSHLD.EXE 4.0mb
MCAGENT.EXE 4.7mb
MSCHIELD.EXE 18.6mb

Ability:

Caught and stopped all viruses quickly and effectively in real-time.

	Real-Time	Full Scan
AOL Trojan	Yes	NA
Backdoor Ambush	Yes	NA
DOS-Misoska	Yes	NA
Email-LoveLetter	Yes	NA
Exploit-GetAdmin	Yes	NA
IM Worm-Jitux	Yes	NA
MSOfficeVirus-Darkstar	Yes	NA
Nuke-Genocide	Yes	NA
Trojan-FakeGina	Yes	NA
Worm-Doomjuice	Yes	NA

(Real-Time: This is the preferred detection method. The virus was stopped as it entered the computer, before it planted itself onto any media such as the hard drive. Full Scan: The virus planted itself onto the media of the computer such as a folder on the hard drive and was found during a scheduled Full Scan. NA means the Full Scan was not needed.)

After McAfee detects a virus, it recommends a full system scan. I personally think that's a great idea. They're the only product we've tested so far that does this.

Uninstalling:

It takes some time to get this product off your system because it actually installs two applications. You have to uninstall virus scan before security center, then complete it with a reboot. Then you go back in and uninstall Security Center and it requires another reboot. Clean uninstall though, leaving not even a directory structure in place.

Support:

Although their technical support could be great, we look at this from an 'option' standpoint. With that said, it is decent if you're willing to pay. Their FAQ is free, but support options range from Bronze (lowest) to Platinum (highest). We didn't take the time to figure out exactly what each option would get us. You also have the option of online chat that will cost between $14.95 and $29.95. And if you need it phone support is also available, but costS even more with a price between $34.95 and $64.95.

Price & Options:

1 year subscription for the download will cost $39.99, while the package that includes a CD will cost $59.99 and they offer a $20 mail-in rebate. They also charge $7.95 for shipping and handling. 2 years will cost $69.98. You also have the option of upgrading to their Internet Security Suite that includes Firewall and Spam filter for $49.99 after a $20 mail-in rebate. They attempt to add a $12.95 'Discover and Recover' CD to your order. They claim this will help recovery times and can be removed easily if you choose.

Other Notes:

McAfee Virus Scan 2006 has a 'heuristic' feature that compares new, unknown, viruses based on known virus signature patterns. This is enabled by default and although we didn't test this ability, it is very proactive and nice to see. The application also has a pretty cool 'World Virus Map' that's fun to investigate.