If it only had a better firewall.

Pros: Well, if it had a better firewall it would be a good security suite. It has a good anti-virus, above average anti-spyware and a fun to play with but a passive firewall that doesn't do well in penetration teats, can easily be bypassed and, or disabled and it never asked me a single question, not one. If a firewall doesn't ask, I get worried that it's sub par. This is the weak point of this suite.

Cons: Site Adviser is free. There are far better free firewalls then the one in this suite. It misses some infections and can't kill some others. One of my best friends was McAfee since 2007, Her computers were running poorly. I talked her into trying my first choice in a security suite and it found 16 infections, Two were trojans, one virus and the rest were spy cookies. For myself, I'll stick with KIS and Ashampoo anti-spyware v2.

Posted: 16-Jan-2008 10:50:02 AM

Just what the Dr. ordered!

Pros: We have 3 computers in our home. A new Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop, an Dell Inspiron D530 Desktop and a 15" HP laptop that we travel with. The wifes in California with a sick mother so thats where the new Dell was delivered to. I suggested ESET Smart Security for it because it has Vista Ultimate. She bought a 3 user license but the wrong one, It was for NOD32, not the suite. She overnighted me the disks so I could install Vista Ultimate on the Dell desktop (hating Vista Home Premium). Went to install the new suite only to se the mistake. I called and instructed her to upgrade to the suite, now!

In the meantime I installed Kaspersky on the new system. Today I attempted a scan. After 2 hours, it was 15% complete. Noy at all acceptable. She forwarded me the email from ESET with the new license. Angry, I killed Kaspersky with it's built in uninstaller. I installed ESET and things are all good now. Full scan completed in an hour. Thats, 40 Gb on the internal drive & 145 Gb on the external drive.

It has a vastly improved GUI, it's light on resources and at AV comparatives today, I downloaded an AC comparative survey where I found ESET to be the highest one in customer satisfaction and recommendations. like the others, I can , without reservation recommend this product to both Vista and XP users.

Cons: Expensive, no parental controls or data theft protection. Firewall could use a few more settings. Other then those, nothing further.

Posted: 22-May-2008 07:05:42 PM