I have not used the McAfee antivirus program in many years, since the old program I had allowed a major Trojan virus to slip by, but it came installed when I recently bought a new computer. I decided to give it a test run for one month to decide if it would be worth buying. Out of several antivirus software reviews I have written, McAfee was average. It does what it is supposed to be, but I believe there are better programs out there for the same amount of money.

McAfee costs around 70 dollars, which makes it one of the more expensive programs. I’ve found the firewall to be very vigilant, as it was continually notifying me about downloads. In addition, during the time I used the program, I did not receive any viruses on my computer, which is certainly important for positive antivirus software reviews. In fact, during 2010 McAfee’s antivirus reported a 98.9% detection rate, which is quite high.

However, I was more concerned about the antivirus scanner. Several times, the scanner warned me about certain websites, which was strange since at least one of the websites was quite reputable. McAfee has a reputation for giving false alarms. During a test given by the Anti-Virus Comparative group, McAfee scored excessively high on reporting false alarms. While I am happy to have a very vigilant antivirus program on my computer, I dislike the uncertainly of having to deal with false alarms. In addition, it is worth noting that in the past McAfee has had trouble dealing with zero day viruses (a zero day virus is a new virus whose signature the program does not yet recognize as a virus and therefore these viruses are notoriously difficult to detect).

Overall, McAfee’s antivirus program had a good firewall and virus detection, but I was concerned about the rate of false alarms, and due to this, how susceptible the program would be to new threats like zero day viruses. For the same amount of money, you could purchase other programs like ESET or BitDefender, which score better.

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