McAFEE VirusScan Professional 8 review

McAfee has taken its time over the launch of VirusScan Professional 8. It looks similar to the Home edition launched at the start of the year and, on the surface, the only difference is the inclusion of two utilities: QuickClean Lite and Shredder.

QuickClean Lite is designed to free your PC of old and temporary files and other bits of data that clog up your system. Shredder is a secure deletion utility, which prevents files from being recovered at a later date. It's particularly useful if you want to destroy important data that you don't want other people to get their hands on. Neither application adds anything extra to the virus-scanning ability of the software. It's only the inclusion of a second licence for another PC that sets the Professional version apart from the Home edition.

Installation was simple, but registering for updates was a pain. We had to register with a website, install an ActiveX component and reboot before logging back on to the website. Fortunately, once this is done, further updates are carried out automatically in the background.

Once it is working, the software uses a combination of scheduled and real-time scans. Scheduled scans integrate with the Windows Task Scheduler and are easy to create. You can also choose to quarantine or delete infected files.

Of course, it is the quality of the scanner that is of most interest. Previous versions of the software struggled to detect all our test Trojans, but this version had no trouble. It even found the ones we had doctored to avoid detection. It also managed to detect all of our harmful scripts, including the ones we'd tried to disguise. With regular viruses VirusScan Professional's performance was on a par with previous versions of the software.

Should a virus slip through this layer of protection, VirusScan has other methods at its disposal. Its email protection is a good example. As worms often use Outlook or Outlook Express to send copies to other potential victims, VirusScan can detect when your system sends lots of emails in a short period of time or a single one to lots of people, and will block the messages.

McAfee's list price of £44 is expensive but sources such as Amazon.co.uk sell VirusScan Professional 8 for £29 and the Home edition for £25. At this price both products are remarkably good value. However, expect to pay a further £11 a year after the first year to be able to update either program with new virus definitions. This compares to around £21 for Panda Titanium Antivirus, £19 for Kaspersky Personal and £14 per year for Norton AntiVirus.

This is a strong anti-virus program that will keep your PC free from infection. If you don't need the extras, opt for the Home version. If you do, you'll find that VirusScan Professional 8 is very reliable. It does the business, is easy to use and comes with a pair of licences.

Author: Simon Edwards