So I succumbed (to ZoneAlarm 8, not Fifi) and spent the next three hours trying to unpick the carnage that descended on my brand new Dell laptop, after the installation stalled midway through, leaving me with no other option but to reboot the PC.

Upon reboot I found myself in a ZoneAlarm no-man’s land: not quite in ZoneAlarm7, but not fully over the border into ZoneAlarm 8 either. The ZoneAlarm icon sits proudly in my System Tray, informing me the security is “up and running” but that the “UI is still initialising”. Every time I attempt to open the software, I’m met with a Windows error message informing me the application has crashed and Vista is trying to find a solution. Guess what? It doesn’t.

The same happens if I attempt to uninstall the software. Or reinstall the new software. Or reinstall the old software. I am caught in ZoneAlarm hell – as are hundreds of others, judging by the volume of complaints on the ZoneAlarm forums.

So I pinged off an email to ZoneAlarm support (phone support costs $2.95 per minute), asking if they had any idea how I might rid my system of this malady. Four days later, I get a reply with a 27-step guide to removing Internet Security 8, which includes all manner of faintly perilous activities, such as deleting hidden folders and tweaking the Registry.

And guess what step 27 is? “Try to install the latest version again.”

You’ve got to admire such optimism.