McAfee LiveSafe - Who actually kept this and still uses it?

Not me. I would prefer a cleaner machine with a page or dropbox for all the extra options. But we all know that it will most likely never happen because McAfee pays to have it on the OEM machines and the other option would not be paying that much. 

I agree that this is a massive annoyance, and it has been a problem for decades now. A new lawsuit in the US against Google may determine the fate of this practice, and I'm hoping it goes against Google so that this strategy of company's paying to have their apps or programs pre-installed on certain hardware dies a hard death.

Generally speaking, I uninstall most of the pre-installed third-party software after checking that the machine can run fine without it. If it's useful, I may keep it, and I definitely maintain a security program at all times, but it's one of my choosing.

I do use McAfee, but not the paid LiveSafe version. Free antivirus software is a dime a dozen, and all the well-known names have their free versions. Better to stick with those, because as you mentioned, Windows Security itself has gotten better. I don't really see the need to pay a premium for extra security, unless you've got top-secret files on your computer 

The first thing I did whenever I got my old and new Legions was remove it. When I got my Dell laptop many years ago, McAfee only caused issues right when the month trial ended. Maybe it was a coincidence, but considering what I know about Norton, I don't feel like taking chances of something marketed to protect behaving the opposite way (or creating/releasing their own viruses). I've since replaced McAfee with Bitdefender free then later my ISP's own protection. I've considered paying for Bitdefender but I'm already paying for internet so it's probably best I use the security suite offered anyway unless something proves it's not helpful.

My ISP uses Symantec (Norton) which is why I am sticking with Windows Security, they also don't offer enough machines on their license to cover all our tech, so I'd have to pay for additional machines anyway if I did use theirs. Bitdefender Free is a decent alternative if anyone doesn't want to use Windows Security for whatever reason

Agree again. It can be a nuisance and conflict with other preferred security programs, even when you thought you had removed it. Far better to have the option rather than pre-installed.

I just looked mine up and it's owned by F-Secure. Never heard of them before but they aren't McAfee and they aren't Norton so I think I'll be ok for now lol.

F-Secure have been around for a couple of decades, they are fairly decent and score relatively highly in the group tests. there's two independent bodies that test antivirus products (av-test and av-comparatives) one awarded f-secure top marks but it had 5.5/6 for protection and the other awarded it 2/3 stars because of too many false positives but found it was 100% effective during their tests. So my take on that is it should be good enough to protect you but may also require some intervention occasionally to whitelist. If it flags something up and you aren't sure, run the file through virustotal which is an online service that scans against all the malware databases for a wider picture

I uninstall it immediately, I already have norton and it has been very good to me! I know other people say that you only need windows security and that norton is slow but it's what I've always used and gives me peace of mind. Get the deals and don't do auto-renew and you're set!

McAfee I just have a negative opinion of for some reason, maybe it is based off what they did or were like in the past but I don't like change and once I settle on something, unless there is good reason to change I won't!

Never been keen on McAfee, as you say, a bit resource heavy for no real reason.

I use Norton usually. My folks despite my best efforts to educate them are still not entirely tech savvy or web safe, so they use it on everything, a spare license means I get that too lol.

I hate the fact basic versions of any AV claims your machine is 3 mins from death, you upgrade to the better version and without even doing a thing, suddenly all the problems are gone. I think there should be governing bodies for that misleading behaviour and they should get hit with fines.

I constantly get emails regarding an expired McAfee subscription which I've never had. That alone is reason enough to never use it. 

But I've never had a pre installed version of it, neither on my latest Lenovo Laptops. Perhaps you installed it during the initiation?