McAfee Office 3

McAfee Office 3.0 now supports Windows ME, but not Windows 2000, and the control panel has been tweaked. However, this does not disguise the fact that several of these utilities were developed in isolation from one another. Some of the cracks still show.

The package claims to be a collection of tools to optimise, troubleshoot, repair, protect, secure and maintain PCs online and off. A new entry is McAfee Firewall, which stops rogue Trojans, and a single click temporarily blocks both incoming and outgoing web traffic.

Guard Dog is more configurable. It prevents personal details being transmitted over the web without permission. During set-up, users fill in the details they would prefer to keep private, and afterwards Guard Dog appears with a blocking screen whenever this information is typed. But it is easy to slip information through the hound's teeth if the user is determined enough.

Email messages are not monitored and, rather frustratingly, the 'zip code' field refuses to accept UK post codes.

The third security component is VirusScan, a perfectly acceptable, if fiddly, antivirus program.

It would have been good to see Firewall, Guard Dog and Virus-Scan working closely together as variations on a theme. PGP is on hand to securely encrypt emails.

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