McAfee is well known for its SiteAdvisor module, and that part of the Total Protection suite performed well in this month's web test.
Instead of relying on a simple blacklist, McAfee backed up its warnings with proper details, advising us whether a site was actively hosting malware, had been known to do so in the past, or simply contained links to suspicious sites.
McAfee didn't do badly in our file-based detection test either, although against fierce competition its 96% score was merely acceptable. Infected emails were automatically cleaned, but the software didn't visibly enhance our mail client.
The only real disappointment was the firewall. With default settings, McAfee left our test machine's TCP ports exposed, opening up possibilities for worm-type intrusions.
Both this package and McAfee's standard Internet Security suite include simple parental controls and a standalone backup client without online storage. Total Protection adds a wireless network monitor, a link-checker for email and instant messaging, plus McAfee's "anti-theft" encryption package.
Pleasingly, the suite doesn't hog resources either: its system startup time of nine seconds was the fastest of any fully featured suite, and its RAM footprint of just 45MB was just behind Eset by a negligible 7MB.
The suite has undoubted strengths, but the price is a shock. It's higher than BitDefender and BullGuard, despite those packages coming with online backup storage. Yes, SiteAdvisor is good, but as a complete package McAfee Total Protection simply isn't a good deal.
