Eset Smart Security

Decided to take the plunge and splash out on a dedicated, all in one PC security package recently after years of using free anti-virus, spyware & firewall programs.

The benefits of using all in one packages are that you only have one program to install, update and manage so it saves a bit of time and hassle. Theres a few products on the market at the min all doing the same thing, ie – providing Anti-virus, Spyware, Firewall & Spam protection. Some of them provide other services too such as backup, etc..I tried a couple of trial versions over the last few days and I’m going to review them both. First of all here is Irish made Eset Smart Security – www.eset.ie/download/index.php.

I wanted to give this one a bash because its irish and because I had used their nod32 anti-virus package for a while and was pretty impressed with its quality and the lack of system resources it consumed. However I had a pretty bad experience with the Smart Security trial.

On installation and after a restart..the installation got confused with my still installed copy of nod32 and it grabbed this programs licence details and immediately on first usage it told me the trial period had expired! It didn’t say to uninstall any other Eset products first so had to uninstall and start from scratch. When I finally got it in and ran it I found that my email program outlook express kept crashing on start.

After a few emails to Eset support which were answered quick enough and after implementing some of their suggestions I finally got outlook express to open but it couldn’t receive emails and when I tried to reply to one it crashed again. I tried messing around with the pretty complicated and numerous advanced settings but I had no real idea what I was doing and ultimately had to uninstall the program and move on to another. After uninstall, everything worked again with emails so it was obviously smart security’s fault.

My computer is typical enough of most computers so why this program didn’t work on my system is a mystery. Eset support couldn’t shed any light on it either so if you want to try this program, try the trial first before you buy.

Leon