McAfee virusscan

[Nathan Johanson]

No, you're right. It is a lesson in futility. I did a full review of all
currently support virus scanners several months ago (in fact, I think
someone posted this review to the FAQ). 

After I posted my review, I received several conflicting pieces of
feedback. Everyone was told a different story by McAfee. No one seems to
know where or how to buy it or how it's licensed. I've been told by
several people that NAI licenses this product by user--not by machine.
This quickly put it out of our price range.

I found the smaller vendors were often the most helpful (which can be
expected). The NOD32 folks were the most responsive but still too
pricey. I settled on CAI eTrust at a little over $100.00 for 5 nodes
(licensed per machine). My only issue with them is their somewhat
lagging OS/distribution support. They still haven't release a version
that's compatible with Red Hat 9 or later, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2.1 or later. They're also RedHat/SUSE centric. No mention of Debian on
their compatibility list. I haven't tried it yet.

Nathan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Yuzik [mailto:chris at FRACTALWEB.COM] 
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 2:56 PM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: McAfee virusscan
> 
> OMG! I'm ready to pull what's left of my hair out.
> 
> NAI and McAfee are virtually impossible to deal with. I have wasted no
> less than 3 hours on the phone over the past couple of days trying to
> get pricing for McAfee Virusscan commandline for Unix (or Linux). I
> managed to download an evaluation version and it seems fine. I have
> talked with 3 resellers that are all "not familiar with that product"
> and all promise to get back to me after talking to McAfee...and, of
> course, they never do.
> 
> I've called McAfee and talked with almost a dozen people. I finally
> talked to one person who told me that the commandline version of
> Virusscan is no longer sold on its own and is only available 
> as part of
> the Virusscan Suite for the Desktop 5-user version. Cost on that is
> apparently US$200 for the first year, then $82 per year thereafter.
> According to the MailScanner FAQ, it should be more like $12 for a
> perpetual license.
> 
> One person I talked with suggested that the Command Line version MIGHT
> be included in the boxed retail package of McAfee Virusscan
> Professional, but all the literature just says Windows. According to
> someone at NAI, it's only the Windows version.
> 
> It looks like there is something called the "McAfee Active VirusScan
> Suite Small Business Edition" that allegedly includes the command line
> scanner for unix/linux. Minimum purchase is 2 nodes, so cost is about
> US$80...but I cannot purchase this product because I am in 
> Canada...and
> apparently, it's not available in Canada unless I purchase 11 
> nodes. Did
> I mention I only have 1 machine? Argh!
> 
> Am I missing something here? Is purchasing software supposed 
> to be this
> difficult?
> 
> Perhaps I'm used to the way good shareware works...I download it,
> install it, and if I like it, pay for it. Then, they send me some sort
> of key file that I put on the machine and it keeps working.
> 
> Can anyone shed any light here? Any McAfee users out there 
> know the secret?
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris
>