McAfee VirusScan Professional 8.0 review: McAfee VirusScan Professional 8.0

Review summary
The boxed version of McAfee VirusScan Professional 8.0 is now identical in appearance and functionality to the online product. A major face-lift has resulted in a streamlined virus fighter that's faster to install, easier to configure, and less of a resource hog than Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional. VirusScan Professional 8.0 also offers enhanced worm-detection tools, better integration with Microsoft Outlook, spyware detection, a shredder, and a temporary file cleaner, plus two user licenses. Unfortunately, McAfee removed its personal firewall from VirusScan Professional 8.0 (current users of version 7.0 can keep their firewall if they choose the $30 upgrade). But of more concern is McAfee's 24/7 free online technical support chat; once one of the best in the business, it's often inaccessible now.

McAfee recently merged its retail version of VirusScan Professional 8.0 with its online version. That's good news for users who want to download and install the program via the Internet. Installation, both online and via CD, was trouble-free and took only a few minutes. Upon start-up, VirusScan Professional downloaded updated virus definitions, as most antivirus programs do.

Last year, we praised VirusScan Professional's browserlike interface but found its multiple Web page-like screens tedious to navigate, particularly when we had to dig through several layers just to change a few basic settings. VirusScan Professional 8.0 replaces the previous version's ungainly, browserlike interface with the McAfee Security Center, an interface from which you can manage all security programs on your PC--including third-party firewall, privacy, and spam-blocking apps. The Center's Security Index uses graphical bars (with a 1 to 10 rating scale) to show how well your PC is protected against all kinds of digital intrusions--viruses, hackers, spam, and so on--and it provides quick access to VirusScan Professional's settings.

Despite Security Center's embrace of third-party security apps, it's still very McAfee-centric. On our test PC, for instance, we use the ZoneAlarm firewall. Security Center accurately detected the presence of ZoneAlarm, as indicated by the 10.0 rating on the AntiHacker index; but by default it stated that McAfee's Personal Firewall Plus was "not installed," a statement that might confuse some novices into thinking they weren't fully protected.

VirusScan Professional 8.0 may be leaner, but its virus-fighting tools retain their muscle. McAfee has improved its worm-detection skills with WormStopper (previously known as HAWK), a PC system behavior-analysis tool. WormStopper blocks malicious, wormlike behavior, often before a signature-file download is available. It's difficult to predict future worms; however, VirusScan Professional detected and deleted the MSBlast worm on our test PC, something our previous antivirus program missed. The ScriptStopper feature, which finds and blocks malicious scripts, is unchanged from version 7.0.

Better integration with Microsoft Outlook includes on-demand scanning of all e-mail folders and archives to find viruses and worms lying dormant there. Like Norton AntiVirus 2004, it scans inbound and outbound IM messages; its predecessor scanned inbound only.

Unfortunately, McAfee has removed its firewall from VirusScan Professional 8.0, something that previously gave the product a competitive edge over the always firewall-free Norton AntiVirus. VirusScan Professional 8.0 users can try a 30-day free trial of McAfee Personal Firewall Plus via the Security Center; however, users can also get the free, and much better, ZoneAlarm firewall from Download.com.

ViusScan Professional also includes McAfee Shredder, which overwrites deleted files with 1s and 0s for added security, and QuickClean lite, an app that deletes temporary Internet files and other garbage that can build up on your PC. Finally, like Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional, two user licenses are included in the $59.99 retail price, with an annual renewal fee of $14.95.

In our CNET Labs' tests, VirusScan Professional 8.0 caused less of a drag on system performance than Norton AntiVirus 2004 did. But McAfee scanned our 1GB drive much more slowly than Norton. Here are our test results:

Test system McAfee VirusScan 8.0 Professional Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional SysMark 2002 Internet-content-creation (ICC) score 233 234 223 Normalized score 100 100 96 Percentage of degradation N/A 0 4 Average boot time (seconds) 40.8 48.38 52.72 Scan 1GB directory, average scan time (minutes) N/A 4.75 3.59

In past "--="" class="c-regularLink" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">&siteid=7&edid=&lop=txt&destcat=ex&destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Evirusbtn%2Ecom%2Fvb100%2Farchives%2Fproducts%2Exml%3Fmcafee%2Exml" target="_blank">VirusBulletin tests, McAfee's VirusScan has been tested and passed only once, back in June 2002. By comparison, Norton AntiVirus has been tested six times and earned the coveted VB 100 percent title each time. It's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from such limited data. Previous versions of VirusScan have also been certified by the independent antivirus testing laboratories at "--="" class="c-regularLink" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">&siteid=7&edid=&lop=txt&destcat=ex&destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Echeck%2Dmark%2Ecom%2Fcheckmark%2Fproducts%2Ehtml" target="_blank">West Coast Checkmark, "--="" rel="noopener nofollow" class="c-regularLink" target="_blank">&siteid=7&edid=&lop=txt&destcat=ex&destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eicsalabs%2Ecom%2Fhtml%2Fcommunities%2Fantivirus%2Fcertification%2Fcertprod%2Eshtml" target="_blank">ICSA Labs, and "--="" rel="noopener nofollow" class="c-regularLink" target="_blank">&siteid=7&edid=&lop=txt&destcat=ex&destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eav%2Dtest%2Eorg%2Fdown%2Fspecial%2F2002%2D07%5Fmarket%2Den%2Exls" target="_blank">AV-test.org.

McAfee, like Symantec, charges for its telephone phone support: $3 per minute (with the first two minutes free) or a flat $39 per incident ($10 more than Symantec's flat fee). A more affordable option, obviously, is McAfee's free online technical chat. On the plus side, McAfee's online support site contains a handy wizardlike Answer Center that helps you pinpoint and resolve technical problems. And the live technicians, once we contacted them via chat, were always polite and helpful.

Unfortunately, we often found the chat queue to be unbearably long, day or night; once we waited 1 hour and 20 minutes. Chat also exhibited flaky behavior: we were once booted off after 15 minutes in the queue, even though we hadn't yet chatted with anyone. Hopefully, McAfee will correct these technical glitches soon.