Labs

Intego NetBarrier has been a solid force in the world of Mac personal firewalls for quite a while now, but it's an unknown quantity to most PC users. Installation proved to be a quick affair, and upon rebooting we were presented with a well thought-out graphical interface, which managed to combine intuitiveness with a sense of colourful design without feeling overdone in any way (apart, perhaps, from the 'gauges' showing activity, which seemed out of place and largely useless).

We applaud the comprehensiveness of the GUI, the use of visual clues that draw the user into making the correct configuration choices and the logical approach to it all. But don't be misled: behind the cute graphics lies a solid depth of configurability. Take the Antivandal section, for example, which protects against ping flooding and other DoS attacks, as well as providing port-scanning

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options and application control. Or the privacy section, which makes it easy to set cookie controls, hide browser click trails and provides a 'vault' for safeguarding personal data in much the same way as ZoneAlarm Pro does.

Some defaults will soon be switched off, though, such as the awful fog-horn 'hooting' of the alarm siren whenever an alert is triggered - a sign perhaps of the immaturity of the Windows product. Another sign is the definite swing towards the lenient with the default settings, which we suspect the target 'beginner' audience for NetBarrier will simply leave on in a fire-and-forget manner.

This is a shame, because with a little tweaking we know it would have passed all our tests. Yet as installed, NetBarrier failed to pass the PC Flank stealth tests, with all tests returning non-stealthed results, and the ShieldsUP! port scanning test revealing ports 1025 and 5000 being left open. Neither of which make this a bad firewall by any means, but it does make it less attractive when measured against competition that ties up all the loose ends straight out of the box.

If you don't mind a bit of tweaking and like the idea of easy-to-understand option screens, the colourful design-led approach of NetBarrier should appeal. But it needs to mature a little more in order to be a serious contender in the Windows market, losing the frivolous activity gauges and concentrating more on the core protection content.