McAfee had a great reputation for a long time, and has been the main competition for Norton AntiVirus. Their quality and support have been going downhill ever since they sold out to Network Associates. Since that time, they have been trying to use the name recognition as their selling point. And if you are not careful, subscribing to their service locks you in for a long time - they automatically charge your credit card 30 days before the 1 year subscription expires unless you notify them 30 days before that.

But don't take my word for it, here are a couple of comments that have been posted at Lockergnome.com.

These posts are from one of Lockergnome's reporters. Meryl's trial is recorded here:

Is this just a random problem? No.

There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 313967 - titled "Outlook Stops Responding With an Error That References Hawkex.dll When You Start Outlook or When You Open a Message". The article says: "This problem can occur if the McAfee Hawkex add-in is installed on your computer. The McAfee Hawkex add-in is made by Network Associates, Inc. To try and resolve this problem, contact Network Associates, Inc. to see if updates exist for your McAfee Hawkex add-in software. "   If you search Microsoft's support site for McAfee there are 25 entries, and all of them are related to problems with the program.

If I install a program on my computer, I want it to work. If it doesn't, I want to be able to either fix it or uninstall it. McAfee makes both of these options very difficult. And I don't want to trust my security to a program that has problems - especially after I have paid for it!

McAfee has, in my opinion and the opinions of others, made the phrase customer support an oxymoron. Not only do their updates break what is already installed, their support people have no clue as to how to fix all of the problems that their program creates. Until (or if) they fix these problems, you should steer clear of McAfee products.