Guelder Rose

Just looking at renewing my McAfee virus/firewall subscription and noticed that it cost about $50 in the US and £50 in the UK. So, is there anything to prevent UK users from upgrading via the US site rather than the UK site to save money?

Also wondering if it is worth me upgrading McAfee for $50 or whether there is a virus checker and firewall I can download free of charge instead? I've always tended to pay for this type of software assuming that the free stuff can't be as good .. after all, if the free stuff was just as good then surely the likes of McAfee would be out of business .. but then again that might not be the case when there are mugs like me willing to pay for it!

TRPardoe

Well, you are not UK user so why would you try to renew a UK subscription ?

I have used McAffee for the last 3 years or more, having switched from Norton's. I liked Norton's back in the DOS/98 days but I have grown to hate the interface. McAffee is much nicer and seems to be 100% effective for me.

It is only the AV I purchase, not the whole suite. For a Firewall I have XP and my Router. For Spyware/Malware I use Spybot, which is free and is very good.

I don't think the ($30) charge for just the AV component of McAffee is too much to pay.

Duncan Roberts

I think it depends on where your product was first registered. There may also be slight differences between the UK and US versions, but that I don't know for sure

mickmills

I think there was a thread a few weeks back that mentioned several free anti-virus programs, so you may want to search for that.

TRPardoe

I would guess that the differences are in the language (US vs UK English) used and the legalese in the licensing. It is doubtful that the AV itself is written all over again just for the UK market. Viruses are, of course, international in content.

Eskimo

the product will have been originally registered in the UK and I think that will stop you ..

TRPardoe

True - but he might just as well start again with a US product, pay the $30 or whatever and have done with it. Much better than being ripped off with UK prices.

Duncan Roberts

You would be surprised at how copyright, trade and various other things impact how software is written. They may look the same but that is just down to some strict standards, coding modules and serious QA, the back end can be quite different meaning an update in one country may not work for a version from another country. You see it a lot in games, if you update manually online you will normally have a few different updates to choose from depending on the country the product was purchased in, you don't see it with automatic updates because the correct one is automatically chosen for you.

Guelder Rose

That's exactly what I'm thinking ... why pay £50 for the McAfee Suite if you can pay $50 for it? **US = $50 UK = $87** IMO, it's a total rip off, I can't see how it costs McAfee anymore to download the updates to a computer based in the UK as opposed to one based in the US!!

Bob

I'd ditch Mcafee anyway, and get Avast, it's a much nicer AV, it's free, updated daily, it'll also scan your IM clients including Trillian, which most don't.
Also not such a resource hog as many other AV products are.

www.filehippo.com as for firewall, XP sp 2 jobby ain't to bad, ZoneAlarm is solid, but a resource hog....

Bob

Costs more running the servers? and easier havin' a set price that doesn't need to fluctuate regarding exchange rate, and also keeping inline with other products.

TRPardoe

Come on Bob.

That sounds like the sort of BS that companies in the UK and Europe use to inflate prices compared with elsewhere in the World.

Multi-national companies making multi-national software to solve multi-national problems have no rational reason to charge dramatically different prices for their product.

Other than exchange rate fluctuations there is no rationale to charging UK customers more for this product.

willmore

Or buy a Mac and never have to worry about virus/firewalls again!

Bob

well unlike with music...there is localised versions, not to mention if there paying any royalties to use certain code which might be charged at different rates for different areas especially for international use.

I'm not saying I agree with the big difference in price, but they are some of the reasons.

Bob

You still have to worry about them, especially a firewall, just because you won't get bombardment of spyware/virus, you'll still just as likely to have someone try and hack into your system.