I agree. I'd uninstall McAfee if it were my laptop (turning on and enabling Defender as default and startup for sure), with an occasional extra scan using one of the lightweight freeware antimalware programs out there (Super AntiSpyware being one of them--disabled between scans). Despite some deserved bad press they got several years ago, I also regularly use CCleaner to eliminate unwanted tracking cookies and other junk. It's astonishing how many trackers are after OUR data.
Using duckduckgo as a search engine and the privacy-mode version of Firefox as a browser are also good self-protection. Some sites only run on Chrome, so Chrome can be started when you need it.
You can adjust your startup and default app settings to choose only those programs you want to use and when you want them active. They don't all deserve to be running every time you start Windows.
Good luck!