On paper, this product looks remarkable because it includes just about everything you would expect to need on your PC in the way of Internet security, i.e.

• Supports up to 3 PCs
• Anti-Virus
• Anti-Spyware
• Personal Firewall
• Anti-Spam
• Anti-Phishing
• Parental Controls
• Data Backup and Transfer

Sounds like a complete wish-list for the small business or home user but like that old saying, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.

This software installed without a glitch, downloaded update files from the CA site without a glitch, scanned my computer for spyware, spam and viruses initially without a glitch and positioned itself in my systray and happily squatted.

I hadn't been paying attention during the scans, was busy doing other things away from my desk and came back to a "secured" message on my screen. A couple of days later I noticed that my Anti-Virus was showing "unsecured" on the menu so I clicked "secure now" and waited .... and waited ... and waited ... I found the anti-virus scan going on too long and decided to abort it, then noticed that next to Anti-Virus on the menu it showed that my system was secure. In short, the software had been "fooled" quite easily and the interaction between components wasn't all that it should be. Which isn't that suprising because all four components, when clicked, open a new window for the underlying portion of the Suite. Probably because the four portions are separate programs which have now been linked together via the "Internet Security Suite" menu, they don't appear to interact at all.

My journey continued as I loaded Outlook to read my mail. And, therein struck another hitch. I have 10 or 12 email accounts and only 2 of them were receiving mail. I needed to inform my new firewall that I was okay with these sites and add them to my whitelist, easy. I did this and received my mail. I also spent some time working through the advanced options and fine-tuning so that Outlook had all the priveleges it needed. Then, a few days later, the same thing happened, I had to turn the firewall off to download my mail because there was no more tweaking able to be done. And, every few days after that I had to do the same thing. I continued to persevere but my colleagues were alarmed at the unhappy mutterings and expletives emanating from my corner of the office. My answer to that was to get them to install the software. Revenge is sweet. I started to hear those unhappy mutterings from other corners of the office and smiled to myself.

The anti-spam software added a CA Junk folder to my Outlook folders and scanned for spam. I found this a little over the top as Outlook has it's own anti-spam scanning and junk folder which does a pretty good job. So, (after four or so weeks) I uninstalled this part of the Suite as I found it very intrusive. Oh, and to uninstall separate elements the whole Suite has to be uninstalled, then reinstalled, selecting only the bits you want. If ever there was a Suite that needed an "Uninstall" feature included in the package, then this is it.

As I surfed the Net over the first few days after install, I began to notice that certain websites acted differently and some didn't work at all, even though they had been added to my "safe sites" list. I tried the CA support centre online and searched through their FAQs unable to find anything new there other than "add to mysites". So, I made a decision and decided to continue using the Firewall to see what else would happen. I began to notice that connection to my LAN became spasmosdic, some days it worked, some days it didn't work, even rebooting didn't resolve the issue at times. After continuing on for several weeks, I decided to uninstall the Firewall component. And, to be honest, I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, everything began working as it had done before. I reinstalled my trusted old firewall and we continue to live happily ever after.

Shame really, as there could be a way to configure this software to work better but as there is no online community, no support online other than those FAQs and technical phone support asks you to try the website first, read the FAQs and then just continues to keep you in a queue ... I hung up and gave up on the Firewall.

I could tell you that the Anti-Phishing and Anti-Spyware were more successful and perhaps as small elements of the Suite they were but the Phishing left the building when I uninstalled the Anti-Spam and I decided to stick with my old faithful Anti-Spyware program.

Which leads me into the CA Anti-Virus portion of the Suite. Intially, this program ran for about an hour and a half on my one-third full but regularly defrag'ed 250gb HD. It grabbed an awful lot of resources from my Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86Ghz 2gb RAM machine and left me with a lagging computer while I tried to work. The obvious solution was to put the virus scanner on after I finished work which worked okay but meant the machine was left on, something I don't like to do.

As the weeks progressed the sad news is that the time frame for the virus scan increased steadily and I'm just about to give up on this portion of the Suite as well.

We weren't contacted to review this software, we purchased it because of an Internet special I noticed offering the Suite, plus a 2gb Flash Drive and a $60.00 cashback offer. It seemed logical to purchase with all those bonuses. Well, it's ten weeks and I still haven't received the $60.00 cashback and I'm just about to uninstall the anti-virus the final piece of the Suite in use ... was the only good thing about this purchase the Flash Drive? If I'm honest, yes.

Overall I give this software a double thumbs down and if we add in my colleague's votes that would add numerous thumbs in the downwards direction. The software is intrusive, the components don't seem to play well together, the anti-virus is resource hungry and takes an age to scan, the firewall is next to useless, the anti-spam superfluous and the rest nondescript. My opinion based upon a 10 week trial.

22ND OCT 2007 FOOTNOTE:
At the end of last week I received a phone call from CA Marketing, this was in answer to an email I sent to them about four weeks before asking about the $60.00 cashback deal. Interestingly, the person I emailed told me that CA did not have any record of my details regarding the cashback. But, it seems that they found me, after I complained, and the Marketing person assured me I would receive a cheque. And, this morning my cheque arrived.

I'd just like to point out that if I had not complained I probably wouldn't have received this cheque as CA's policy was explained to me clearly by the chap I emailed initially ... and that was without the paperwork the claim wouldn't be processed.