McAfee Internet Security Suite

It can set up the firewall to trust a local network, and you can select the amount of feedback on the firewall’s activities. The warnings are clearly written and information can be sent back to McAfee. You can also trace on a map where an attack or IP address is based – an interesting, though unproductive, diversion.

Spyware is handled by the anti-virus software, although when we tested this in our recent anti-spyware group test (PCW November 2005 issue), we were a little disappointed.

There are some decent free packages and we recommend you combine McAfee’s with one of those. Spamkiller deals with one of biggest time wasters in computing and there are the obligatory black and white lists to ensure the right emails get through. Spamkiller can also bounce back a message to the sender or domain, either as a complaint or a fake error message. The former must be handled with care as it will alert spammers that your email address is active.

There are many free security alternatives, but McAfee Internet Security Suite is worth the money because it is unobtrusive and gets updates faster. You can check that everything is up to date in one place and that alone saves a huge amount of time.

The biggest complaint is there is only one year of updates available when the paid-for version of AVG includes two, but this package covers far more ground.

Specifications
Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP
98, 2000: 133MHz or higher; ME: 150MHz or higher; XP (Home and Pro): 300MHz or higher
98, ME, 2000: 64MB of Ram; XP (Home and Pro): 128MB of Ram
100MB hard disk space
Internet Explorer 5.5 or later