I have been a McAfee VirusScan user for years, it has always happily sat there in the background and protected my computers from malicious viruses with quiet confidence. But with the war between companies to be the number one, they may have lost sight of the real goal of their software.
I am a freelance Web Developer, and as such, I don't need a particularly powerful computer when it comes to raw processing speed. Portability, responsiveness and the ability to run many applications at once sums up my computing needs for the work I do, and it is of the utmost importance that I keep that platform stable and usable - my business depends on it.
So I am thoroughly disappointed to realise that I have been let down by McAfee, over the last 2 years I have had 2 versions of their software protecting my business, firstly when I bought by laptop, I had a OEM copy of McAfee VirusScan 9 with a year of update, a bargain at only £4.50 taking advantage of the fact I bought it with my computer. Compared to the older version I had on the machine I used before, this should have been a step up in the world. It was obvious that they had done much work to bring the interface into the 21st century and make it more comforting for the novice user, with slick gradients, animations, icons, fades, and functions broken down into tasks with little help features. Although underneath it was essentially the same software, with a few extra tools for looking after your PC.
I ran with this for a year, finding the interface a bit of a hinderance to me using the software, and getting slighly irritated with the "Ding Ding" noise it makes with a popup toast alert everytime it does something - just for the sake of letting you know it has done something and is protecting you.
Toward the end of the products life (because they HAVE to release a new version every year) these toast messages became extremely intrusive with the introduction of adverts popping up with offers on buying new McAfee software, with no controls to supress them.
Anyway I pondered for a while on whether to leave McAfee for the next update cycle, and did some research - They have the features and protection, the software works, and there was a new version. So I put my faith in the fact that they had served me well over the years, and purchased a retail version of McAfee VirusScan Plus 2007, containing the full protection suite - AntiVirus, Firewall, Spyware, email protection, site adviser and parental controls.
To start with there was no way I was going to hand over my firewall protection to this software, I use ZoneAlarm to monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic on my computer and it is a TOP piece of software. So I was already frustrated at the install procedure which flagged up an error message saying that the software was incompatible with ZoneAlarm. But I was determined to get them both to be friends so after a few uninstalls and reinstalls of both programs I had it up and running.
Compared to the previous version, with another totally redone interface, I felt like McAfee could be back on the path to their former glory, some of the configuration and common tasks were still buried in a few menus of reassurace, and the software insisted on taking over the functionality of the Windows Security Center to monitor the protection status of the computer (Which it can only monitor its own software for - I had to supress the error messages about the firewall not being installed even though I had ZoneAlarm) but overall it seem to fairly easy to use and unobtrusive.
But that is a high in my books as this package got, I like to make sure my laptop is running leanly and sweetly, but after installation, my computer started to regularly come to a grinding halt whilst some background McAfee processes stole all my precious CPU time, I was further annoyed when attempting to fix the problem by loading up the McAfee Security Centre to have to sit through a stupid security animation which was obviously powered by flash. My computer is never very happy running flash anyway due to the high CPU requirements, so the security centre was hindering itself from loading just so it could waste my time with its branding!
I monitor the CPU usage and memory footprint of my computer to keep it running well, so when every other task I to performed that required a significant chunk of my system resources made my computer lock up, and me have to sit there until it got over the epiletic fit the CPU was having, I realised it was time to do something drastic.
The culprit? My McAfee monitor everything so much you can't even do anything software! The package was running 20 processes, and using over 300MB of RAM and pagefile, it was slowing me down so much it was actually costing me money. It needed to be replaced, and fast.
I was a little jittery to note that Zonelabs has been bought by Checkpoint, the new version of their free and ever faithful ZoneAlarm software is showing signs that they are attemting to move up there with the big boys when it comes to market infiltration in providing a total security solution. I noted that I had a greyed out "Scan for Viruses with ZoneAlarm" item in the file context menu. As McAfee and Symantec have shown, working too hard on interfaces and user reassurance can blur the goals of any software, and when it is such a integral tool in computing these days, in my opinion there is no room for extravagance when it is at the cost of efficiency and reliability.
So back to the decision, what do I replace McAfee with, that sofware had already cost me a considerable amount of time, money and effort. I had no time to mess about with loads of research and software testing, I needed to bite the bullet and take a risk. Since all these software companies seem to be going down the road of a total security suite all rolled into one package, the choice was fairly simple - I have trusted and advocated the free version of ZoneAlarm as my firewall for 6 years odd now, it was time to pay up and give them a go with the whole sh-bang.
And boy I am I glad I did! It feels like I have got a new computer, all those tasks that made the computer feel drowsy and sluggish have now got a new lease of life, and the interface for the software is so simple, yet extremely comprehensive. I am sure novice users would find the interface and some of the warnings a little daunting, but they have developed the software so it can automatically set security policies for your software, so I think any user could happily use it after getting to know the interface.
So thank-you ZoneAlarm, you have saved my business from me getting so annoyed that I have smashed my computer to bits.
And a word to McAfee and Semantec, you boyz need to get your act together because you are not always going to have it so good, over the years your software has become more and more intrusive and clunky to the point where now, your software is nearly as bad as the security threats you are trying to thwart. I know many people that have totally re-evaluted their allegiance to security products because your software has become so slow and bulky, I even know users who run their computers without any protection except a firewall because your software has made their computers so unresponsive that they cannot do what they want to do (Music production is especially affected by this - a few extra milliseconds lag in one channel of audio can ruin a whole mixdown).
Admittedly most of these people are competant computer users, but this is where the novice user gets their help and knowledge, the opinions of the few will eventually filter down to the many.
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