McAfee VS. AVG

Hi:

 

There are no head-to-head comparisons between paid versions (such as McAfee) and free AVs (such as AVG) that I am aware of. At least not from independent testers that I would trust (forget the magazines' tests). However the paid version of AVG has fared well when compared to McAfee in the past- at least when it comes to detecting viruses. And many in this forum can attest to the effectiveness of AVG Free (I used it for several years without any problems).

 

My personal opinion is that I would never recommend any McAfee AV (or security suite) based on my own experience, and the problems I've seen so often reported. You hit the nail on the head when you said "McAfee kind of takes over".

 

It sounds like Comcast has installed some form of McAfee's Security Suite (AV, firewall,etc). Again, this is just my opinion, but I don't think such suites are the way to go. They are memory hogs, and can slow down your system. They try to do all things at once, and often end up doing nothing particularly well. You can defend your PC just as well by selecting other (often free) defensive applications.

 

As far as AVs go, if you want the very best, you should go with a paid product. I can recommend Nod32, Kaspersky, and a few others.

 

If money is tight, the following free AVs all come highly recommended:
-Avira's AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic, at http://www.free-av.com/
-Alwil's avast! 4 Home Edition, at http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
-Grisoft's AVG Free
(in that order).

 

I have used all at various times, and none have caused me any problem. They all install easily, consume little memory, and are user-friendly. All have excellent support forums for advice by other users. What you don't get, of course, is any paid support. My ranking order is based on several reputable testers reports comparing the free AVs out there, as summarised here (well worth the read!): http://wiki.castlecops.com/AntiVirus_Comparison

 

I think you will find any one of them will meet your needs, and I have no hesitation in recommending any one of them over McAfee.

---

louie088 wrote:
I need some good advice, My Dell E521 came with McAfee, and when the 90 day trial was up I was able to reinstall McAfee from Comcast, it comes free with my monthly internet service. So I was just curious whats better free AVG, or a subscription to McAfee? which is the better anti virus? My Mcafee comes with all kinds of stuff I don't even know if I need. For example, systemguard, McAfee firewall, etc. Do I need all this stuff? It seems like McAfee kind takes over. I don't know thats why I'm asking for some good opinions. Thanx louie088

Message Edited by louie088 on 04-03-2007 07:47 PM

---

Kaspersky has an execellent forum here.  http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?s=5a6d44eb252cd8007250fb6c69bed2e7&act=idx

High, Lou. Told you to alieviate those resources that are hitting your pc, you might want to uninstall the MacAfee products. You have the whole suite installed and you see how much of a resource hog it is compared to AVG running on mine. Neighbor. But I digress, since you got 2 firewalls running, Internet privacy running(your the only user there), and spam filter(you check email off Comcasts site-not Outlook), and you now have 3 spyware programs, DOES it make any sense. No. Just run AVG when you need bro. That's why I showed you all those things in Msconfig and task manager. If you need, I'll be over to hit the registry as well for you. You want less memory intensive programs since you only have the 1 Gig, showed you the difference and you can gain close to a difference of 100 Megs of that ram. By the way we'll be hitting up on the Steam servers tonight bro. Get your Deathmatch on. Not to mention that will fix that pesky registry value change error you get from MacAfee when playing FarCry, bud. It was obvious that after doing the allowance selection your MacAffee was not letting you control the situation.(Readers he is a Neighbor within a mile of me).

 

www.xps-gamer.co.uk     New site from oversees, check us out man. All is welcome with a forum just added.

XPS 600
Pentium D 955 EE OC'able
2 Gigs DDR2 667 Mhz
640 Mb EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS
320Gig SATA primary,250Gig SATA secondary,160Gig SATA3rd,120Gig EIDE 4th backup
Avermedia MCE500 TV dual tuner
Creative XIFI Extreme Music
2007WFP