This piece meal review makes it really hard to compare the ratings, good points & bad points, etc of all the suites. With a little more work this might have been useful. As is, it's nearly useless because you have to click on each suite individually !

MBS

The other thing that was not covered by this review is probably the most important thing for a lot of users who don't have the newest computers, and that's the degree to which these programs hog your computer's resources. Nortom/Symantec is probably the absolute worst case for that.

More boat-anchor-ware. See this article to see why these suites make your PC perform like a 3 year old system. http://www.thepcspy.com/read/what_really_slows_windows_down/5. You are better off with a simple virus checker.

Hi all :

Best to AVOID ALL Security "Suite(s)" and use the "Layered" Approach to Security, which is finding

a very good program in EACH Malware-fighting category . For fighting rootkits, definitely need a

program that SPECIALIZES in that "category" . Would encourage all to READ the "Document" I

created in this Forum's "Security" Section at http://forums.pcworld.com/docs/DOC-1141 .

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For the BEST in what COUNTS in LIFE : http://www.tacf.org

I like the ZoneAlarm Firewall but when I needed anti-virus I chose McAfee suite. When you try to install McAfee it complains about the ZoneAlarm product and will not install, you have to remove ZoneAlarm and use their firewall - which defaults to all programs have internet access. Sure enough I had some nice installed programs sharing my computer. I miss ZoneAlarm asking me if its allowed - not for Firefox warnings (duh of course allow), but to stop these bots from taking over. McAfee seems to deliberately want you to remove ZoneAlarm and use their crappy firewall. I am looking for alternatives to McAfee since I am at the renewal period.

I have been using Avast, a security suite that is free to those n\who are not employed. It serves all of my needs for security

I agree with Holmes7 about Trend Micro's PC-Cillin. I've tried practically all the security suites out there, with dismal results...until I loaded PC-Cillin. It doesn't slow my Vista system down signifcantly (certainly not like Norton and Kaspersky did). Norton drove me nuts with the slowness factor and occasional queries on what I would allow onto the 'net. Kaspersky was awful, crashing my Vista system and occasionally freezing my XP system, much less constant queries on allowing programs (even Window's update inquiries) online...I got rid of this PC-World-highly-rated albatross ASAP, you can bet. I've used McAfee for years but the latest editions slowed my computers down tremendously. Even though PC World doesn't care much for Trend Micro's PC-Cillin, I think it's the best of the security suite bunch...so far. I am disappointed in PC World lately because I tried two security products highly recommended by PC World, only to have to dump both (Kaspersky Security Suite and Spyware Doctor) because they were incompatible with Vista (even though they were the latest versions that were advertised to work with Vista) and didn't "gell well" with XP, either.