Installing McAfee was where our problems with the suite began. Meanwhile, the suite's performance on tests both from CNET Labs and independent sources calls into question how effective it really is.
McAfee Total Protection 2012 adds some new features, but these are frankly more about keeping up with the Joneses-or at least, keeping up with the Nortons and Kasperskys-than actually pushing any kind of innovation. Since then, the annual updates have been incremental at best, improving the feature set yet not making substantial changes overall. McAfee released a major overhaul to its security suite back in 2010, coming up with a new vertically oriented interface that made navigating much easier. The bottom line: McAfee takes aim at blocking bots in its latest version, although weak test scores mean that we don't recommend this year's McAfee suite.
