Microsoft Security Essentials vs McAfee?

[sonyprofessional]

My new Dell system came with McAfee security pre-installed, including a 18 month (?) subscription.

I was a happy McAfee user years ago, but encountered problems and switched to AVG. Now I hear good things about Microsoft Security Essentials (and not so good things about AVG).

Which one would you use: Microsoft Security Essentials or McAfee?

Right now I have both installed (generally considered a bad idea, I know), and plan to get rid of one of them. I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Pro, btw.

Jarle

 

[hotdog321]

I had this same dilemma when I bought my new Win 7 machine. I had been using Trend Micro for years on my old XP machine, but it was bogging down the system horribly until it would take 5 minutes to reboot!

I started using MSE several months ago and love it! Boot times are 60-70 seconds, and it has firewall and AV protection. I also supplement it by using Firefox with WOT, and occasionally run Spybot SD and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware.

By the way, Consumer Reports likes MSE, too.

Lots of posts on this topic.

 

[digitalshooter]

Use it until it expires, then switch. You have basically paid for it, so just dont renew it.

Unless you are having an issue with it, then get rid of it now.
--
Thanks,

Digitalshooter

 

[malch]

Which one would you use: Microsoft Security Essentials or McAfee?

Right now I have both installed (generally considered a bad idea, I know), and plan to get rid of one of them. I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Pro, btw.

Deinstall the McAfee.

1. Security Essentials is better, IMO

2. Don't run two resident scanners. It's asking for trouble. And even if it wasn't, why pay the performance price of scanning every darn thing twice?

 

[jpegman]

As others have said - shut down one of your AV programs.

I used McAfee in the past and had it discover problems and were unable to remove them !!! End McAfee. Comcast offers all customers a FREE McAfee Suite for as long as you use Comcast - NOT, wouldn't even touch it for free.

Recently (April 2010), McAfee shut down millions of WinXP users who updated their OS ( http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362926,00.asp ) - tells you how well McAfee checks thei SW!!!

I switched to AVG (first free, then paid), until 2009, when it got bloated, slow and too many false alerts and hard ways to ignore them.

I'm presently using Avira on Win7-64bit, and am happy - but wil consider MSE when my subscription runs out - too many good reports for MSE to ignore.

I also bought Norton 360 for other home PC's because the price was right - $10 for 3 PC's for a year. Like McAfee, it will not be renewed (even at $3.33 per PC) it's too bloated on startup (don't understand why it has to scan on every startup, even if everything was fine on shutdown - why not just update definitions, and then scan in background? No - it holds my PC hostage until it tells me which programs are bad (all false positives, and no-way to tell the damn program to ignore in the future.

Malewarebytes was worth every cent to register and have online automatically, but SpyBot went into the recycle bin after it never found anything in years as did AD-Aware.

Just my experience.

 

[digitalshooter]

I find that running both: Spybot and Malwarebytes, they each find things the other does not.

Very interesting though.

--
Thanks,

Digitalshooter

 

[lylejk]

Too bad you didn't just get the discount.

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[lylejk]

Malwarebytes free version is an on demand scanners (not real time). Still good to have in your arsenal. SS&D actually has TeaTimer to help stop trojans (if you choose to enable it). I usually used SS&D (not now, but in the past) to block certain websites and did on demand scans with it. I still recommend some form of realtime protection for viruses protection though.

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[Eric Carlson]

You don't have to uninstall either. Just set one (like McAfee) to non-resident, then you can use it as an on-demand scanner when you want a "second opinion".

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• Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/

 

[Sethboy]

For many many many years I used Norton and would swear by it. Eventually I realized it bogged the system down, and I wound up using ZoneAlarm AV (they also make a good free firewall software) but ZA also turns the system to molasses. From using other people's systems and some at work, I think Mcaffee is even more of an elephant in the room when its running. But I guess all the big "suites" tend to slow things down since there is so much going on with them.

I recently switched over to AVG and am happy with the results, for a free program it does a great job, and does not hog a ton of resources.

Every couple weeks I give the system a checkup/tuneup with CCleaner, a defrag, and then run MBAM, SS&D and AdAware scans on the whole system.

 

[malch]

Every couple weeks I give the system a checkup/tuneup with CCleaner, a defrag, and then run MBAM, SS&D and AdAware scans on the whole system.

Here's another free on-demand scanner:

http://download.cnet.com/A-squared-Free/3000-8022_4-10262215.html

This one is not as well known as some others but I have found it to be superb. It's caught a lot of stuff that other AV programs have missed. It's pretty sensitive and I've had a few false positives. But the vendor has released corrected database updates within less than 24 hours of my reporting them.

Highly recommended.