Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Security Suite

• Their world renowned firewall to stop hackers and other criminals from getting into your PC
• Anti-virus software to block and remove viruses
• Anti-Spyware software to block and remove spyware and malware.
• Safeguard for privacy and to protect personal data
• E-mail protection to prevent worms from spamming your address book
• Junk e-mail filter
• Instant message security to secure instant messaging conversations
• Web site filtering to optionally filter out inappropriate websites
• Pop-up blocker to stop pop-up ads

There is a download version available at 26.5MB which is fine if you have broadband.  If you have a dial-up and can't get to a friends' or work computer with a broadband link then because product updates are always a full product download, we wouldn't recommend it for dial-up users - or at least be aware that it will take a couple of hours to download full updates that are released in our experience every 6-8 weeks.  Amazon.com sell this product at the best price we've seen. Make sure it's at least version 6.5 which was released in 2006.

Once the straight forward installation process has completed you'll be taken through their 'Getting Started' tutorial.  This tells you firstly, what you've just installed and then goes through several steps explaining how your computer is protected, what to do when ZoneAlarm warns you that an application it doesn't recognise is trying to access the internet and so on.

Of course it does recognize some applications and if one of those tries to access the internet and ZoneAlarm knows it's safe to do so, assuming that you've taken the recommended options during installation, it won't bother warning you about it.

When you're up and running ZoneAlarm sits in your toolbar at the bottom right of your screen quietly doing its thing.  If you double click its icon then you'll see the overview page letting you know what ZoneAlarm has been up-to whilst sitting down there on the toolbar and its overall status.  I've included a screen shot of that in pictures on right....