Labs

When we last reviewed McAfee's VirusScan Plus product (web ID: 120455), we found it offered a creditable user experience but, sadly, wasn't terribly good at detecting malware.

This month, McAfee Total Protection put in a similar performance. It excelled in several areas: the SiteAdvisor system warned us away from the links in 90% of our phishing emails and 100% of our actively malicious websites. Its spam filter tied with AVG for first place when used

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in conjunction with the Windows Mail junk filter. And, if you run into trouble, you can open a live chat with a support technician.

Yet, at the fundamental business of detecting malware, McAfee Total Protection was one of the weakest packages we tested, tying with ZoneAlarm in ninth place with a score of 89%. The firewall was a disappointment, too: our scan discovered 15 open TCP ports and six potential vulnerabilities, and our false-positives test prompted six alerts.

Total Protection's generous feature set includes local backup, network management and an "offensive content filter". This may excuse the comparatively high price, but it also carries a cost in terms of system resources: the package's RAM footprint is one of this month's largest, and the boot time one of the slowest.

Total Protection has many good points, but it's hard for us to recommend when other, cheaper, lighter packages are better at the basics. If you do splash out, though, you'll be pleased to know you're entitled not only to signature updates but free upgrades to any new versions of the software that may come out during your licence period.