Labs

Personal firewalls don't get much easier to use than McAfee's latest release. The interface is identical to that of last year's release, which was only marginally different to that of the year before. Personal Firewall Plus 2005 was poor at detecting intrusions, so does McAfee deserve your £35 this time?

There are certainly better-value options on test here. If you buy it directly from McAfee, the price is closer to £40. For £50 you can buy it with McAfee VirusScan 2006, but neither

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the anti-virus program nor the firewall is good enough to justify the enormous price.

Setting up the firewall to work with the web server was a simple matter, because the firewall assumed that the local network was safe and allowed access to all local services, including the ones we wanted to keep private. Locking things down was easy, too, and allowing access to only the web server involved simply opening System Services and ticking Web Server (HTTP) Port 80.

The IDS failed to detect any of our web probes, which is exactly what happened when we tested the previous version of this software. If you are never going to allow incoming connections, this is not important, but McAfee advertises IDS and doesn't deliver enough in this department.

Finally, McAfee's long-winded registration system continues into its 2006 range of software. Windows XP SP 2 complicates matters by blocking pop-ups. There's a lot of messing around before your firewall can be updated.

We can't see much reason to buy this easy-to-use but expensive tool with its poor IDS.