A must for network and Internet users who want to keep hackers at bay, firewalls can often be complicated to set up and maintain properly. McAfee's Personal Firewall Plus 5 does a good job of simplifying things for less-experienced home and small business users.

When you install the program it asks for basic information such as the type of network or Internet connection you're using. It also asks if you want to receive alerts when the firewall intercepts an unauthorised 'event', or whether you simply want it to run quietly in the background. As soon as you've filled in these details the defences go up, and if you want to know more about the options there's a new tutorial explaining terms such as 'ports' and 'IP address'.

There's little in the way of exciting new features in this version of Firewall Plus, although many of its existing options have been updated and modified. McAfee has improved options for monitoring applications on your PC, to make sure they don't send or receive unauthorised messages from the Internet. You can select specific programs and limit their incoming or outgoing access to the Internet - perhaps allowing online games to use the Internet, but blocking other applications. If you're not sure which programs should be allowed to access the Internet, Firewall Plus has a database of Trojans and other malicious programs and can automatically block these for you.

There are no big surprises with this new version, but Firewall Plus is easy to use, and provides solid protection at a reasonable price.

Contact: McAfee 020 7949 0107
www.mcafee.com

System requirements:

• Windows 98 or later
• 133MHz processor
• 32MB of Ram
• 35MB of free hard disk space