PC-cillin Internet Security 2004.

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$49.95 direct; with $25 competitive upgrade (1 year of updates)
Trend Micro Inc., 800-728-5651, www.trendmicro.com. ###@@

No longer available as a standalone antivirus program (only as part of Trend Micro's value-priced PC-cillin Internet Security 2004 suite), PC-cillan now includes spyware detection, URL filtering, privacy Features, spam protection, and a firewall. It's a comprehensive, integrated security solution, but Norton Internet Security 2004 beats it for firewall configurability, spam protection, privacy, and parental controls. Like McAfee Security Center, PC-cillin has a control panel that integrates all aspects of your PC's protection. Targeted at the home set-and-forget market, PC-cillin scans your drive for show-stopping viruses even before it installs. Once you set it up, you can close and forget it, and your antivirus needs are covered, though you will need to spend time setting up the other features. The spam-catching feature prefixes suspect ed e mails' subject line with SPAM. Spam filtering can be set to low, medium, or high, depending on your preference. Allowing messages through that were incorrectly marked as spam (we got a lot), or adding addresses to block requires manually entering them rather than simply right-clicking as in other antispam software. Web filtering is accomplished using good or had URL lists, though it comes with no preset lists of had sites. You can, however, import favorites or cache links.

Privacy protection requires simply entering into you want to protect: credit card numbers, names, addresses, and so on. The feature works well, but its case sensitivity limits its effectiveness. PC-cillin can also scan for spyware in real time.

Taking a chapter from their corporate products, Trend Micro's Outbreak Alert automatically prompts users to update when a virus outbreak occurs in the wild. You can also set PC-cillin to check for updates and install them as often as every 3 hours.

New with PC-cillin is better network worm protection â€" Enhanced Network Virus Protection. Working in concert with its firewall, PC-cillin watches for network virus activity, like that produced by Sohig, and can shut down your Internet connection if there's a problem. The firewall is easier to understand now, with profiles for direct connections to the Internet and wireless, home, or office networks. Profiles come with preconfigured security levels and rules so that you don't have to think about it. But changing the defaults is less straightforward than it is in ZoneAlarm. For a home network, you may find some experimentation with settings is needed to get the shares to work. You can edit and change these settings or create custom profiles.

PC-cillin offers a lot of protection for the money â€" with network virus protection, an easy firewall, and expanded threat scanning â€" but several of its components aren't up to those of the Norton suite.

Norton Internet Security 2004's easy-to-use ad-blocking feature includes a toolbar and an options window to configure ad-blocking to catch specific text on certain sites.