Serious Discussion Quick Play with McAfee

Moonhorse said:
I would take eset over mcafee, the price this day isnt bad from 3rd party keysites. Apparently the sites selling keys that are attached to email of buyers, but it seems that doesnt affect into anything else, you can bind the key to your own email.

Eset looks like serious competer, you can manage it alot more
McAfee has its pros, light, doing good protection wise and installs in 20 seconds, is install & forget. But i miss the customisation with it, even its good it just dont feel like having antivirus at all, personally more the antivirus has settings to mess with its more fun for me
Click to expand...
I still remember the assurance I felt about the next generation of McAfee. Many things about the engines powering the antivirus feel totally forward-looking—relying on the cloud for powerful insights while several layers of behavioral/heuristic analysis give a defense against some of the more evasive malware today.

I just want the UX to catch up. In particular, it created a couple of annoyances in my setup that made it harder to overlook the lean experience and sparse configurability. Simplicity and friendliness don't necessarily have to come at the cost of empowering knowledgeable users. Clever design will go a long way to build on the foundation they already have.

Avast has done many things well when it comes to implementing a UX that tries to work for everyone, IMO. On the surface, it's exceptionally friendly and intuitive. Meanwhile, underneath, there's quite a multitude of meaningful settings that maintain an air of modernity.

ESET does a wonderful job of polishing their interfaces as well.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
  • Applause
  • +Reputation
Reactions: Sorrento, simmerskool, Parkinsond and 4 others
Miravi said:
I still remember the assurance I felt about the next generation of McAfee. Many things about the engines powering the antivirus the feel totally forward-looking—relying on the cloud for powerful insights while several layers of behavioral analysis give a defense against some of the more evasive malware today.

I just want the UX to catch up. In particular, it created a couple of annoyances in my setup that made it harder to overlook the lean experience and sparse configurability. Simplicity and friendliness don't necessarily have to come at the cost of empowering knowledgeable users. Clever design will go a long way to build on the foundation they already have.

Avast has done many things well when it comes to implementing a UX that tries to work for everyone, IMO. On the surface, it's exceptionally friendly and intuitive. Meanwhile, underneath, there's quite a multitude of meaningful settings that maintain an air of modernity.

ESET does a wonderful job of polishing their interfaces as well.
Click to expand...
The Mcafee UI takes around 10 seconds to load on my PC…that’s the only gripe I have with the product. Rest are top notch.
 
  • Like
  • +Reputation
Reactions: Sorrento, Parkinsond, SeriousHoax and 2 others
Dave Russo said:
when in doubt cast it out
Click to expand...
I figured it out. At the top of the page, click on “Manage Profile.” This will give you access to the old download page. That said, it’s disappointing that a company like McAfee has allowed this issue to continue even after it was reported. The product itself is excellent, and its detection rates are better than most competitors. However, that doesn’t help much if users can’t download the product to actually protect themselves.
McAfee, please fix the download issue on the portal page. When logging in and attempting to download the product, the page gets stuck in an endless refresh loop, preventing users from accessing their purchase. -This needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Miraculix, Dave Russo, Sorrento and 1 other person
I can normally download McAfee Total Protection and McAfee Antivirus from the McAfee portal page without any problems. If anyone has problems and the McAfee download does not start automatically, click on the download link and then right-click "Save Link As" and then just choose the location to save the McAfee installer and you're done. ;) Enjoy. (y)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Miraculix, Jonny Quest, Sorrento and 2 others
nickstar1 said:
Is anyone having trouble accessing the McAfee online portal and downloading the product? Every time I try, it keeps redirecting me back to the download page and I’m not able to actually download McAfee.
Click to expand...

Just out of interest I've just logged into my McAfee account & was able to download the installer straight away, this was on the Mullvad browser & with Mullvad VPN running...:)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Miraculix, simmerskool, Jonny Quest and 1 other person
Sorrento said:
Just out of interest I've just logged into my McAfee account & was able to download the installer straight away, this was on the Mullvad browser & with Mullvad VPN running...:)
Click to expand...
Glad it's working for you but not me. No matter where i click to download the software it just keeps bringing me back to this page. Had to manually get the installer from support.
Screenshot 2026-02-22 180749.png
 
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: Miraculix, simmerskool and Sorrento
Nightwalker said:
Tried in my machine and the download worked fine too.

Btw, I changed from Mcafee to Norton 360, I had enough with the former promotional ads that cant be turned off.
Click to expand...
Welcome abord the Norton, AVG Avast train. I feel like gen digital does offer better malware protection. However McAfee has a slight edge on web protection. If you also use an extension like Malwarebytes browser guard, Bitdefender traffic light you got a pretty good setup. It's very hard to beat gen digitals malware protection.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sorrento, Parkinsond and Nightwalker
nickstar1 said:
Welcome abord the Norton, AVG Avast train. I feel like gen digital does offer better malware protection. However McAfee has a slight edge on web protection. If you also use an extension like Malwarebytes browser guard, Bitdefender traffic light you got a pretty good setup. It's very hard to beat gen digitals malware protection.
Click to expand...

Norton/Avast/AVG, at least in my experience, respect the user preference by not sending promotional pop-ups and not notifying again of certain messages. It's a less intrusive experience, quite different from McAfee, which always finds an opportunity to suggest cleaning the system registry, to warn that I only have X% of RAM free, to perform a scan after restarting the machine, and so on. It's simply infernal, and I wonder if this is a regional issue or if other users simply don't receive these pop-ups.

On my machine, the performance impact between McAfee and Norton isn't something I can notice, so everything is fine, and I imagine Norton performs a little better in terms of protection.

Regarding Malwarebytes Browser Guard, in my experience it usually has the best web protection on the market. I just wish it were lighter on resource consumption (same thing with the Windows version, which, although I like it, I don't use).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sorrento, Miraculix, simmerskool and 1 other person
Nightwalker said:
Norton/Avast/AVG, at least in my experience, respect the user preference by not sending promotional pop-ups and not notifying again of certain messages. It's a less intrusive experience, quite different from McAfee, which always finds an opportunity to suggest cleaning the system registry, to warn that I only have X% of RAM free, to perform a scan after restarting the machine, and so on. It's simply infernal, and I wonder if this is a regional issue or if other users simply don't receive these pop-ups.

On my machine, the performance impact between McAfee and Norton isn't something I can notice, so everything is fine, and I imagine Norton performs a little better in terms of protection.

Regarding Malwarebytes Browser Guard, in my experience it usually has the best web protection on the market. I just wish it were lighter on resource consumption (same thing with the Windows version, which, although I like it, I don't use).
Click to expand...
Be prepared to be attacked by messages in Norton for Upselling their other products , Scare tactics to buy Norton Utilities, Norton Driver updater. Gen is #1 in Upselling and scare tactics, check their forum, many people complain. I have 4 years license and i am done, i let it expire, no more Gen products on my laptops.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sorrento, Khushal, Sunqfu and 1 other person
In my opinion, the main reason for this is location-based marketing. I’ve never once received a pop-up ad from McAfee, but I’ve experienced this constantly with the Gen Digital product range. Although I’m not entirely sure, the reason for this might be that many of McAfee’s products aren’t available in my country.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sorrento and Minimalist
Sunqfu said:
In my opinion, the main reason for this is location-based marketing. I’ve never once received a pop-up ad from McAfee, but I’ve experienced this constantly with the Gen Digital product range. Although I’m not entirely sure, the reason for this might be that many of McAfee’s products aren’t available in my country.
Click to expand...
I agree that it might be related to your location. So far I only got two pop ups and both times they appeared right after I connected to VPN server in Switzerland. Pop up was even displayed in German language.
Otherwise I haven't received one single pop up.
Maybe this will change when my license period comes close to end.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sorrento and Sunqfu
For what its worth & I do understand that other members do have popups which I would find very annoying, I have yet to have a single popup & that's since last July, I have used Kaspersky as well (not together) & yes is you like buttons to twiddle there are none on McAfee & for me that makes no difference, the point for me is do you really need them?? I just looked & from cold the UI took 4 seconds to load from a boot & IMHO its pretty much perfect AV, no huge logging telling you of each & every irreverent event, it does does the job - I'm actually a person that likes my install to look good but in McAfee's case I'm really willing to put up with it, I still have 522 days left on a pittance of a payment & its on several others PC's with no apparent issues from anyone :):)
 
  • Applause
Reactions: Miraculix

You may also like...