McAfee All Access 2012 Review

By Richard Macias

McAfee ’s latest software suite delivers rich features, but carries a heavy footprint that eats away at vital resources during scans.

McAfee has delivered an all in one suite that protects your desktop, laptops and even mobile phones. This is, of course, a great advantage to the user who only has to become familiar with one program and pay for one license for all devices including Mac & PC.   If you are already a McAfee 2010/2011 user worry not since little has changed in the GUI except for some excellent new features.  Below are just some of our favorites. You may see more by going to http://home.McAfee .com/store/all-access-security

• Mobile Lock—Prevent misuse of your tablet and data by remotely locking all data, including the data on your memory (SIM) card, and displaying a “contact me” message on the device.

Anti Baddies Features

• Safe Searching and Shopping—Color-coded icons next to your web search results let you know before you click which sites are safe and which may install malicious code, phish for your identity, or send spam.
• Pre-install Scan—Many people get McAfee protection because they are already infected. To help you salvage your system, McAfee works to remove infections as your software installs.
• Real-time Safeguards—Cybercriminals are masters of disguise. If something new looks suspicious, McAfee Active Protection^™ technology immediately determines its risk to help keep your computer secure.

Parental Features

• Time Limits—Set boundaries on Internet use by scheduling Internet access by day or time or by the number of hours per day.
• Content Filtering—Block up to 35 categories of potentially objectionable websites and filter inappropriate content on YouTube and explicit songs from iTunes.
• Social Network Monitoring—Learn of personal or confidential information postings to reduce risky interactions with strangers.
• Online Activity Monitoring—Activity Reports help you understand what your children are searching for, websites visited, IM conversations, videos viewed, and more.

Mobile Life Features

• Mobile Lock—Prevent misuse of your tablet and data by remotely locking all data, including the data on your memory (SIM) card, and displaying a “contact me” message on the device.
• Remotely Wipe Data—Protect your privacy by remotely deleting all data, including the data on your removable memory card. You can also backup data before a remote wipe so nothing is lost.
• Remotely Wipe Data—Protect your privacy by remotely deleting all data, including the data on your removable memory card. You can also backup data before a remote wipe so nothing is lost.
• Locate and Track—Recover your tablet if it is lost or stolen. View its location on a map, send an SMS to prompt its return, and use a remote alarm to make it “scream”.

McAfee All Access

McAfee   has delivered a bountiful product at the incredible price of just $99.99 for unlimited devices for one user or $149.99 for unlimited devices and five users. The price coupled with some incredible features makes this virtually any users product of choice. If you are a new customer to McAfee no worries the GUI is one simple enough for new customers to learn and use efficiently. The Antivirus scan times have all dramatically decreased so you can enjoy more time with your computer and less time protecting it.

Currently McAfee All Access is available for:

• Windows XP (32-bit) with Service Pack 3 (SP3) or higher
• Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or higher
• Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Mac OS X 10.5 or higher
• Google Android 2.1 or higher (smartphones and tablets)
• BlackBerry 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 5.0, 6.0
• Symbian S60 3rd and 5th Edition

iPhones’ are not supported but not forgotten. According to Gary Davis, director of McAfee’s consumer product marketing, McAfee and Apple are working on iPhone support and will hopefully soon come to an agreement. iPhone users will still have to purchase McAfee WaveSecure iOS Edition.

Customer Service?

We contacted customer service regarding installation issues due to previous installation of McAfee 2010 and Norton on two different computers. McAfee’s phone tree can put you through a wringer and, when a human was finally on the line, I was transferred twice and disconnected.

When the situation was explained regarding all the steps that were taken to solve the problem the representative would ignore the steps we had completed and direct us to redo what had already been done. They basically followed a script and stuck to it. Unfortunately that makes for very lengthy resolutions. We already knew that the solution to both problems was simply using the removal tool for each product and restarting so their customer service leaves much to be desired.

Under the hood

There are some items that require attention.

We ran a test on an Alienware M11x with a 1.8-GHz i5 processor, 8GB of Ram and a 500GB SATA drive, 250GB of which is filled with games, videos, photos and music. During the testing we found the computer suffered some serious performance loss during full and deep scans. Running alone with all startup items turned off the laptop’s CPU peaked to 100% several times and ran hot and RAM usage was higher than normal.

The fan ran hot for 5 minutes even on a Targus AWE57US cooling pad running at 3000rpm. Playing StarCraft, WOW or COH was a no go since the fps went down the tubes. Running standard programs such as MS word and several internet browsers in tandem had no significant performance loss. This does however only happen when running a full or deep scan which is should not have to be done everyday especially since the real time scanner should always be active. One other area where I would like to see some improvements to previous years is with AV Comparatives in which their test had found previous versions to only detect virus threats 80% of the time compared to the average of 84% or higher.  Their false positive rate should also hopefully dramatically decrease with this edition.

Conclusion

McAfee’s All Access has delivered a much needed service to the AV market at a more than reasonable price per year. With excellent parental controls, cleanup tools, pre-install scanning, all in one support for ease of use and countless other features it is a product to be proud of. The product supports a full line of desktops, laptops, tablets and phones but fails to deliver iPhone support. In the future we would love to see some more simple features that are gamer orientated. As for the performance hogging scanning, it may easily be avoided by setting deep scan times when the computer is not in use. Just keep in mind that you should always clear your laptop vents and intake to avoid overheating.

Pros

• Low Price
• Decreased scan times
• Excellent Anti theft protection for your Mobile Life
• Top Notch Parental Controls
• Full Circle support for all your stuff
• Pre-install scanning
• Simple installation process

Cons

• Customer Service (resolved issue but slow and not responsive to customer details)
• Full scan hogs resources
• No iPhone Support
• Long installation process (which is troublesome for IT staff and customers)