5 ms·

My parents Windows laptop came with a free copy of McAfee, which rendered it COMPLETELY useless. That is not an exaggeration. It wasn't a fast laptop but it sho

My parents Windows laptop came with a free copy of McAfee, which rendered it COMPLETELY useless. That is not an exaggeration. It wasn't a fast laptop but it should be able to browse mails and Internet. It couldn't. After Uninstalling the AV software it was like I had replaced the HDD with an SSD. I will never ever use any 3rd party AV software. It's just glorified bloatware as far as I'm concerned.

mjevans 10y ago
I'm upvoting because I agree that, in my experience, you get no more than what you pay for in relation to anti-virus. Those free AVs and ones bundled by mega ISPs? Prepare to pay in computer resources, and even then your protection is probably only mostly adequate. The only true anti-virus is awareness and user education. Risky behavior and unwise reactions to suspicious emails are the two infection vectors that secure software can't stop.
zeta0134 10y ago
This has been my consistent experience with McAfee in particular. I worked for 4 years in low level tech support, fixing computers for people that were sold in retail. We were required to recommend Anti-Virus software to our customers, and the whole store consistently recommended Webroot (which we sold) not because it was particularly good, but because it was the only option we had that didn't slow the machine to a crawl. Replacing McAfee with almost anything else on the market felt like it doubled the machine's speed. I personally haven't run antivirus software for years on my own machines. I recommended that all of my customers learn basic security practice instead, and reminded them that the antivirus program they used is there as a tool to help them, and not a replacement for safe browsing.
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  To be fair, kaspersky is better than the others. It screws up hour machine much less than most av programs.
- eitland 10y ago
  Mine too. Mother-in-law called because she could connect to Internet. Turned out McAfee was just demanding their protection fee. So: McAfee bad. Cannot speak for Kaspersky, haven't used it for years. Defender is OKish. But one that I sometimes recommend is Vipre from Sunbelt Software. My builds are slightly faster with it and on one occasion it took down an infection that no other AV I tried managed. (Of course this can just be because the malware writers didn't care to code in resistance to it but then again it supports Kasperskys claim that diversity is good.)
- vlan0 10y ago
  Do I sense a possible previous GS Agent? If not, I do remember those days well. Clients would constantly come into the store because the trial version of Norton/McAfee etc completely broke the machine's network stack.
  - zeta0134 10y ago
    Once an agent, always an agent. :)
- laumars 10y ago
  I often hear people promoting common sense over antivirus solutions and while I do agree that some degree of common sense is required, there are still a lot of attacks that can bypass safe browsing. In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites. Hosts get hacked too and their sites can then be used to serve malware. You're right to teach your customers safe browsing habits but they do still need an antivirus as well. Disclaimer: antivirus solutions are not perfect either. Particularly with new attacks. So while I do advocate using them it's also good not to take them for granted (e.g. assuming you can get away with running any old binary you've downloaded from Limewire because you have an AV installed). The best approach is common sense with the AV as a safety net.
  - douche 10y ago
    > In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites Just another reason to use an adblocker.
  - GrinningFool 10y ago
    A major part of safe browsing (and safe computer usage in general) is an ad-blocker that defaults to requiring you to whitelist the content you want to let through.
    - cryptarch 10y ago
      Have you found a workable way of doing that? I manually whitelist in uMatrix, but it's pretty inconvenient and does not stop attacks coming from domains previously whitelisted/deemed safe.
      - GrinningFool 10y ago
        uMatrix is the best I have. I've accepted the inconvenience as minor in comparison; but previous whitelisting is a problem that I actually hadn't considered. I can't think of any reasonable way to prevent that - even catching changed/new scripts and requiring approval to run them won't help if all you can see are minimized scripts.
laumars 10y ago
Back in the 90s McAfee was the best AV around. By quite some margin as well from what I recall. But then around 1998/2000 - i forget the exact year - the AV went from being nimble and reliable to a slow and troublesome mess. It went from being a market leader to one of the worst solutions available. And it seem to happen in just one version number jump. Ever since then, it's been consistently awful to the point of ridicule. But sometimes I have flashbacks to when even I would recommend it.
- jobu 10y ago
  Same thing happened with AVG, and then Avast. Fortunately Microsoft Security Essentials came out about the same time every other simple AV became a bloated mess. The problem now is that MSE doesn't seem to keep up with the latest viruses and hacks. My kids wrecked our Windows 7 computer twice by trying to download Minecraft addons. (First time it installed an ad-bot that was running hidden Firefox windows in the background and swamping our internet connection by loading pages and clicking ads. Second time it was a rootkit that added it's own "recovery" partition to the drive; which it used to reinfect the computer even after I wiped and reinstalled Windows 7.) Now we have Windows 10 and they all have their own non-admin accounts, so hopefully they can't install anything super destructive.
  - mark-r 10y ago
    Weren't you running non-admin accounts on Windows 7? That goes a long way to making sure that any damage can be undone.
jrockway 10y ago
Coming in to say the same thing. In my case it was Avast! which says its name through the speakers every 30 seconds while you're using the computer for some reason. I think it also tries to install toolbars in the browser, which is not really the role of antivirus software. With Microsoft in the OEM hardware business, hopefully the end of this era is coming. Sure, Microsoft's own pushes towards Edge and Office 365 are annoying... but easily disabled without any scary warnings. Maybe Edge is better for people than Chrome, I dunno, I like Chrome and haven't bothered to try Edge.

mjevans 10y ago

I'm upvoting because I agree that, in my experience, you get no more than what you pay for in relation to anti-virus. Those free AVs and ones bundled by mega ISPs? Prepare to pay in computer resources, and even then your protection is probably only mostly adequate. The only true anti-virus is awareness and user education. Risky behavior and unwise reactions to suspicious emails are the two infection vectors that secure software can't stop.

zeta0134 10y ago

This has been my consistent experience with McAfee in particular. I worked for 4 years in low level tech support, fixing computers for people that were sold in retail. We were required to recommend Anti-Virus software to our customers, and the whole store consistently recommended Webroot (which we sold) not because it was particularly good, but because it was the only option we had that didn't slow the machine to a crawl. Replacing McAfee with almost anything else on the market felt like it doubled the machine's speed. I personally haven't run antivirus software for years on my own machines. I recommended that all of my customers learn basic security practice instead, and reminded them that the antivirus program they used is there as a tool to help them, and not a replacement for safe browsing.

PaulHoule 10y ago
To be fair, kaspersky is better than the others. It screws up hour machine much less than most av programs.
eitland 10y ago
Mine too. Mother-in-law called because she could connect to Internet. Turned out McAfee was just demanding their protection fee. So: McAfee bad. Cannot speak for Kaspersky, haven't used it for years. Defender is OKish. But one that I sometimes recommend is Vipre from Sunbelt Software. My builds are slightly faster with it and on one occasion it took down an infection that no other AV I tried managed. (Of course this can just be because the malware writers didn't care to code in resistance to it but then again it supports Kasperskys claim that diversity is good.)
vlan0 10y ago
Do I sense a possible previous GS Agent? If not, I do remember those days well. Clients would constantly come into the store because the trial version of Norton/McAfee etc completely broke the machine's network stack.
- zeta0134 10y ago
  Once an agent, always an agent. :)
laumars 10y ago
I often hear people promoting common sense over antivirus solutions and while I do agree that some degree of common sense is required, there are still a lot of attacks that can bypass safe browsing. In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites. Hosts get hacked too and their sites can then be used to serve malware. You're right to teach your customers safe browsing habits but they do still need an antivirus as well. Disclaimer: antivirus solutions are not perfect either. Particularly with new attacks. So while I do advocate using them it's also good not to take them for granted (e.g. assuming you can get away with running any old binary you've downloaded from Limewire because you have an AV installed). The best approach is common sense with the AV as a safety net.
- douche 10y ago
  > In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites Just another reason to use an adblocker.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  A major part of safe browsing (and safe computer usage in general) is an ad-blocker that defaults to requiring you to whitelist the content you want to let through.
  - cryptarch 10y ago
    Have you found a workable way of doing that? I manually whitelist in uMatrix, but it's pretty inconvenient and does not stop attacks coming from domains previously whitelisted/deemed safe.
    - GrinningFool 10y ago
      uMatrix is the best I have. I've accepted the inconvenience as minor in comparison; but previous whitelisting is a problem that I actually hadn't considered. I can't think of any reasonable way to prevent that - even catching changed/new scripts and requiring approval to run them won't help if all you can see are minimized scripts.

laumars 10y ago

Back in the 90s McAfee was the best AV around. By quite some margin as well from what I recall. But then around 1998/2000 - i forget the exact year - the AV went from being nimble and reliable to a slow and troublesome mess. It went from being a market leader to one of the worst solutions available. And it seem to happen in just one version number jump. Ever since then, it's been consistently awful to the point of ridicule. But sometimes I have flashbacks to when even I would recommend it.

jobu 10y ago
Same thing happened with AVG, and then Avast. Fortunately Microsoft Security Essentials came out about the same time every other simple AV became a bloated mess. The problem now is that MSE doesn't seem to keep up with the latest viruses and hacks. My kids wrecked our Windows 7 computer twice by trying to download Minecraft addons. (First time it installed an ad-bot that was running hidden Firefox windows in the background and swamping our internet connection by loading pages and clicking ads. Second time it was a rootkit that added it's own "recovery" partition to the drive; which it used to reinfect the computer even after I wiped and reinstalled Windows 7.) Now we have Windows 10 and they all have their own non-admin accounts, so hopefully they can't install anything super destructive.
- mark-r 10y ago
  Weren't you running non-admin accounts on Windows 7? That goes a long way to making sure that any damage can be undone.

jrockway 10y ago

Coming in to say the same thing. In my case it was Avast! which says its name through the speakers every 30 seconds while you're using the computer for some reason. I think it also tries to install toolbars in the browser, which is not really the role of antivirus software. With Microsoft in the OEM hardware business, hopefully the end of this era is coming. Sure, Microsoft's own pushes towards Edge and Office 365 are annoying... but easily disabled without any scary warnings. Maybe Edge is better for people than Chrome, I dunno, I like Chrome and haven't bothered to try Edge.