Les,

I had a subscription to Mcafee for years.

When I was asked to renew, I asked what I always ask, do you support Firefox and Thunderbird.

The answer was a firm NO. They do strongly recommend Internet Explorer.

I called them later and mentioned to them how their largest customer, Microsoft very publically fired Mcafee as the anti-virus tool for HOTMAIL.

Once again, I was told that they have no intention of ever support Firefox and Thunderbird and strongly recommend using IE.

After using Mcafee, when I first installed avant!, it found a bunch of worms and garbage that McAfee did not find. I was not surprised. They have offshored their support teams so they are not the product they once was.
Last time I looked, they did not check my Thunderbird mail that was going in and out.

I hope they changed.

Les, what would be great, in case of them being pressured into supporting products OTHER than Microsoft is to ask them directly like I have. I firmly told them months ago that I would not renew my subscription because of that.

Also, avant! is not a free product and I did have to register. But what is great is that even thouogh you need to register, that their fee for home, non-commercial users is 0 !!

They have avant! Pro which they do charge for which is targeted to commercial sites as well as networks.

It is a very strong product and I have had considerably less issues since I left McAfee and of course use Internet Explorer and Thunderbird.

It is possible Les that some items you think are being checked are not, or maybe they have changed. !!

I think many of the tools use Active X which is a big giant security hole in Explorer and Firefox will normally block.

Les, please let me know what you find out. I will tell you that for the most part, my primary software is open source software which seems to focus more on functionality, constant enhancements (it is open), and growth instead of friendly front ends which most of the commercial software seems to be the most important feature.
I find this especially true in the muli-media section of the industry. But I do donate to the open source products that I use to keep up the development. (for example, for compressed music format that I listen to on my portable, I use the license free, open source ogg.vorbis which to me sounds a lot fuller than MP3 and certainly a whole lot better than any of the Microsoft "W" formats. Ugh. Everyone also should know that people like the bozos at Apple refuse to support anything but Microsoft's format and MP3 in their overated, inflated yuppie tool, the iPOD. The iRIVER players support many more formats and have a far superior sound output than the Ipod.

Also be very aware of totally free software, which sometimes comes loaded with adware/spyware.