Mcafee Total Protection 2010

Mcafee Total Protection can certainly claim to be comprehensive when it comes to online security. As well as stopping malicious attacks from the outside it includes online backup, parental controls and PC-optimisation tools.

The interface is simple so users should never feel lost in a maze of settings. This is normally only a minor inconvenience accompanied by a slight hesitancy from the computer, but while testing it we were affected by the infamous update that broke certain computers (see below). The fix provided by Mcafee on its website worked, but we needed to use another computer to download it.

Besides anti-virus, spyware and firewall protection there is an anti-spam tool that protects email in Thunderbird, Eudora Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail, and even web email accounts such as Hotmail.

The spam filter can be customised with rules based on the sender, subject line and body. This can be used to allow all emails from a particular email list if there is a common phrase.

The optimising tool, Quick Clean, is a little limited for its title. It removes unwanted files but it doesn’t do much that isn’t done by the Disk Cleanup wizard built into Windows.

Online backup is included with 2GB of online space in the price, which can be upgraded to unlimited storage for an extra £40 a year. There is no ability to backup without using the online storage, which is a shame.

The Parental Control utility gives control children’s web surfing requiring an extra password for access to prohibited sites. Control is set using the Windows user accounts on the computer.

There are five presets based on the kids’ age, such as the ‘under 5 years' profile that only allows access to child-friendly websites and blocks all others. For more detailed control you can create your own profiles. A sensible range of blocking categories is supplied, including ‘school cheating’, ‘multimedia’ and ‘social networking’.

Although the retail price is fairly high, it does cover three computers in the home for one year. Mcafee’s virus protection is good, but the extra features are not as comprehensive as those in, say, Norton 360 (see below).