Here comes another “it sucks” post about McAfee anti-virus products.
I recently was forced into using McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, due to domain policies at my new employer. This was not what I have wanted! For years I have been using Grisoft AVG both at work and at home (they have a great free product for personal use). AVG is great, I have not had a single virus or similar on any of my machines for six or seven years (that has not been intentionally installed - to see what will happen), and I’m sad to not use it on my primary working machine anymore.
McAfee VirusScan Enterprise is not good in any way (at least I think) and the main reason is how it scans.
It’s slow!!!
Scanning is incredible slow and CPU intensive. Standard schedule is set to scan at 9 a clock in the morning, just about that time when you have read through your mail and have started all you applications and ready to get to work. So you have to abort the scanning process, which is not good.
I had almost the same settings using AVG, of course there was a performance downgrade when scanning, but the machine was still usable.
When you are trying to abort the scanning process, you have to enter the VirusScan Console, which requires elevated privileges. So you have to wait for the UAC to pop up and then confirm, which on a heavy loaded machine can take forever (it feels like forever when your angry). This is of course not only McAfees fault, Vista could be a whole lot faster. Then you have to stop the scanning. I would have preferred a quick access to a Cancel Scan method directly on the icon in the notification area.
I think the scanning process should first of all not run using Normal priority, it should use Below Normal, or at least configurable. It should detect if it’s hogging the system and then pause until the machine is idle.
Now it’s configured to run late at night. Problem is that my machine is not running 24/7 - you have to think about the environment, so it will not run that often that I want to…
Phew, just had to get it out of me…
Have you had any similar experiences? Or can you tip me how to configure it for better performance and a safer experience?