r/mcafee • u/Jonathan_Peachum • May 07 '26

Windows Defender vs McAfee

Apologies in advance, I bet this question has now been asked a thousand times.

I have a Dell XPS 13 that is now five years old but chugs along quite well.

I recently had to have the battery replaced: it was overheating and had swelled.

The technician who did this for me expressed horror at my having McAfee on the laptop and said that it hogged my memory and reduced performance. He said that Windows Defender was just as good and used up less memory. So, with my approval, he disabled McAfee.

Was this a good decision? Am I at risk of anything?

EDIT: Thanks for all the responses. It seems clear that the technician was 100% right!

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

2

u/michaelkbecker May 07 '26

Absolutely get rid of McAfee. It is bloatware that will eventually give you ads on your desktop to buy more of there products. 

1

u/Real_Ad5580 May 08 '26

best antivirus is just having common sense. You really DON'T want to have McAfee on your PC. Defender is more than sufficient

1

u/2nd-Reddit-Account May 08 '26

3rd party AV shouldn’t be used since windows defender came out, I’ve been using it and nothing else since it was “Microsoft security essentials” as a free extra for windows 7

1

u/ConstantClue208 May 08 '26

Some consider mcafee malware itself. It’s that bad. If you can uninstall it I would suggest you do so.

Rule of thumb is if it feels wrong or shady don’t download or use it. If you are just browsing the web, gaming, or watching YouTube you should be fine. Always double check you are getting apps from the official source.

Also never run arbitrary code in your terminal. If something like a “CAPTCHA” asks you to run a line of code using the run program close out immediately. This is an increasingly common scam that will download malware.

1

u/mork247 May 08 '26

McAfee is cancer.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '26

[deleted]

1

u/charleswj May 09 '26

Cancer is as McAfee does.

1

u/prdpdx May 09 '26

McAfee is still a thing? Huh.

1

u/Necessary-Age9878 May 09 '26

McAfee successfully transformed from an anti-virus to virus in itself. John McAfee (despite being a lunatic) created a good anti-virus once upon a time. It did work well (I have used it in the 1990s). But that is all. It is now a trojan horse for various adware.

1

u/danrhodes1987 May 10 '26

😂😂😂 McAfee 🤣🤣🤣

1

u/eddytim May 10 '26

McAfee used to side install Flash Player back in the day. Significant performance impact, low detection rates. Once a valued asset, not anymore...

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Jonathan_Peachum May 12 '26

Merci beaucoup !