Product Reviews

Network Associates has been very busy in the acquisition stakes over the past couple of years, taking McAfee, CyberMedia and Helix Software under its wing. The range of anti-virus, PC diagnostics and tuning utilities provided by this trio of companies puts it in the position of being able to offer a serious alternative to Symantec's excellent Norton SystemWorks (reviewed issue 53, p201).

In terms of sheer quantity, McAfee Office is a software bonanza with nine utilities on offer at a bargain price. CyberMedia makes the largest contribution with UnInstaller, Oil Change, First Aid 98 and Guard Dog. Nuts & Bolts 98, Hurricane 98 and 2000 Toolbox come courtesy of Helix Software, VirusScan is from McAfee itself and, finally, PGP Security, the infamous encryption software, brings up the rear.

McAfee Office is limited to Windows 95/98 users only and is even greedier than SystemWorks with hard disk requirements, as the entire suite needs a whopping 154Mb of space. Installation gets off to a slow start. SystemWorks is a far tidier affair in that it offers the choice of selecting different components or installing everything in one go. Not so with Office; all the utilities must be installed separately and this will take at least two hours to complete.

Nuts & Bolts

Nuts & Bolts 98 provides the bulk of PC diagnostics and groups all the tools under a tidy main interface with four headings. Hard disk problems are dealt with by Repair and Recover, which looks after rescue disk creation and backup of critical areas. Image takes a regular snapshot of the hard disk boot sector, FAT and partition tables. This can be used to recover from hard disk failures. General checking and repair work is carried out by DiskMinder - a souped-up version of ScanDisk - and you can also create a Rescue disk for booting the PC when the hard disk is out of action, although this isn't any different to the Windows 98 Startup disk. SystemWorks scores better here with its floppy/Zip disk combo for booting back into Windows. Discover Pro reveals in-depth information about system hardware and resources, and also supplies some benchmarks to play with. Sadly though, these look remarkably dated as you only get to see how your system compares with a 486/33, a 486/100 and Pentium/100.

The Clean and Optimise tab takes you to the CleanUp Wizard. This scans the hard disk for rarely used programs and old files, displays candidates for deletion and will compress them into a ZIP file first for safety. You can also give the Windows Registry the same treatment, as Nuts & Bolts checks for invalid entries, repairs them and reorders the structure for improved performance.

Office's equivalent to Norton CrashGuard, Bomb Shelter, protects memory from being accidentally overwritten and intercepts program failures. An extra button is added to the Close Program window so you can either close the errant application safely or attempt to restart it. There are plenty of other tools provided, including TrashGuard, which places DOS deleted files in the Recycle Bin, a Fortress encryption tool, file shredder and a ZIP manager. WinGauge Pro displays a dashboard of dials and counters to enable you to keep a real-time check on system status. Strangely enough, you'll find the same utility comes with Hurricane 98, while 2000 Toolbox has the lite version.

Mend, protect and tune

First Aid 98 takes diagnostics a stage further as it gives your PC a full health check and then advises on how best to fix any problems it finds. Check-Up scans hardware and software, returns a detailed description of faults and hands you over to an Advisor for troubleshooting instructions. Video-based tutorials are also on offer, although they're fairly basic and limited to topics such as connecting modems and cleaning printers. The prize for 'Most Amusing' went to the video on networking computers as it lasted 35 seconds, looked briefly at a network adaptor and then advised you to see your network administrator. First Aid also runs a Windows Guardian background task that keeps an eye on system resources but emulates Bomb Shelter too as it provides crash protection and program reactivation.

CyberMedia's UnInstaller offers yet more control over your hard disk and is very similar to Norton Uninstall Deluxe. It loads another background task which looks for typical setup programs being run and will monitor the entire installation. UnInstaller creates a log and uses this to clean the application out if you decide you don't want to keep it. A comprehensive knowledge base is used to keep track of resident applications that haven't been monitored. As with NUD, UnInstaller archives programs so they can be deleted to free up space or moved to another folder or hard disk on the same system without having to be reinstalled. Programs can also be moved to another system using the Transport feature. This analyses the program first to locate all software components and Registry entries and then creates a self-extracting archive which is run on the recipient system. As with NUD, this works fine for small applications but, when you try using it for large suites, it frequently misses important libraries and Registry entries. For more general housekeeping duties, UnInstaller checks your hard disk for duplicate files, old files and orphans suitable for deletion, but there's nothing to help novices keep the Windows Registry in order. Overall, UnInstaller is on a par with NUD for features, but it won't be knocking Quarterdeck's CleanSweep off the number one spot.

Guard Dog is another background task, handling Internet security by checking ActiveX and Java applets in case they contain destructive code. Only specified applications are allowed

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to access an active Internet connection, browser caches and history logs can be cleared at shutdown, and cookie delivery can be controlled. However, it's worth noting that Netscape Navigator has its own cookie controls built in. VirusScan is included in McAfee Office, so its VShield will duplicate some of Guard Dog's work - monitoring ActiveX and Java applets - but Guard Dog adds facilities for blocking specific IP addresses and Internet URLs.

With less than a year to go now, it's important to know that your hardware and software will take you safely into the next millennium, and the 2000 Toolbox is at hand to see that it does. It runs a barrage of tests on the BIOS, CMOS, real-time clock, DOS and Windows and follows this with a software scan. It compares installed software with a database of popular applications and advises of any problems found. Some patience is required, as 2000 Toolbox takes a long time to check spreadsheets - the 300 Excel files on the test PC took over two hours. Also, there's yet more duplication as a cut-down version that only checks hardware is supplied with Nuts & Bolts.

CyberMedia's Oil Change is McAfee's answer to Norton LiveUpdate Pro. This will scan your system hardware and software, check the Oil Change Web site and display a list of appropriate patches, upgrades and new drivers for you to download and install. This is one area where Office wins the day, as Oil Change revealed a more comprehensive list than LiveUpdate Pro and managed to achieve this in less than half the amount of on-line time too. For your money you get a one-year free subscription, after which you have to pay a fee.

Hurricane 98 aims to improve boot time by analysing the files Windows uses when it loads and re-ordering them so they are read faster. It also creates a separate disk cache that becomes available as soon as the system is started and, when Windows has created its own disk cache, Hurricane hands this over so none of the contents are wasted. It has a few other tricks up its sleeve too. It can increase the size of the Windows cache using Helix Software's RAM compression technology and also predict hard disk access patterns, reading sectors ahead so they're loaded ready for use. However, while this sounds like a good idea, in practice Hurricane failed to make any significant differences. Furthermore, any improvements will be nullified by the sheer number of background tasks loaded by the rest of the Office package - the test PC, a Pentium/200 with 32Mb of memory running Windows 98, had its load time increased from one minute to around three. You'll also have to tell the Windows Guardian to ignore Hurricane's disk cache, as it will see this as a hard disk badly in need of free space and report it as a fault.

VirusScan

Luckily, you'll be better served with VirusScan, as it remains one of the best anti-virus products around, easily matching Norton AntiVirus (NAV) for features. VShield provides real-time scanning facilities and can check files on creation, renaming, copying or execution. It also keeps an eye on floppy disks and makes sure they're scanned if left in the bay at shutdown, effectively blocking the only avenue of attack for boot sector viruses. If a virus is detected, you can decide at the time how you want to deal with it. You can deny access to the infected file, ask VShield to try repairing it, move the infected file to a quarantine area or delete it. During testing, VShield correctly identified all boot sector viruses handed to it, although it uses an ugly DOS screen to alert you. The disk boot sector can be cleaned immediately, but there's also an option to ignore the problem and continue working - though this isn't so smart as it's situations such as these that the enterprising virus is waiting for.

On-demand scanning is dealt with by VirusScan, which, incidentally, is also bundled with Nuts & Bolts. As with NAV, VirusScan successfully spotted all 50 test viruses, including nasties like polymorphics, boot sector and multipartite varieties. Macro viruses including Nuclear and Colours were also successfully detected and the offending code removed, leaving the genuine macro in one piece. However, VirusScan did experience more problems than NAV, as it was unable to repair 14 of the infected files. In a situation like this, the only way the files can be recovered is by reinstating them from the last clean backup copy.

Basic encryption is provided by McAfee Fortress, using the BlowFish and DES (digital encryption standard) ciphers. Just select the files you want encrypted, choose a suitable password and the job is done. However, the recipient will need Fortress to decrypt the file, so you'll only be able to share secure files among other Nuts & Bolts or McAfee Office users. The same applies to PGP Security, which is more complex than Fortress as it uses a combination of public and private keys. You start by generating a key pair and then pass the public key to other PGP users (you'll also need a copy of their public key as well). To send an encrypted message you use the recipient's public key, and on receipt they use their private key to decipher it. The reverse applies when receiving messages, as the sender uses your public key to encrypt and you use the corresponding private key to read it. Thanks to a Wizard, key generation is straightforward, while security is remarkably stiff -æyou even need a special passphrase to access your own private keys.

On the surface, McAfee Office seems to provide a massive amount of utilities for your money, but closer scrutiny shows the whole suite is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. Even though many tools are devoted to improving system performance, having so many background tasks running simultaneously is bound to have the reverse effect. There's little integration and duplication is rife, with four virus scanners, two different encryption options and many hard disk tools mirrored across products.

Norton SystemWorks is marginally more expensive, but it's by far the more carefully integrated, well-proportioned product. McAfee Office looks like the result of a free one-minute dash around a utility supermarket. You certainly get a lot for your money but, overall, the sum of the parts of Norton SystemWorks is far greater than the whole of McAfee's Office.