CA Internet Security Suite 2007

List Price: $49.95 Discount Price: $2.90

Features:

• Exclusive $6500 Total Internet Protection Offer protecting you against Identity Theft and Virus and Spyware damage
• Includes Anti-Virus Anti-Spyware Firewall Anti-Spam and Parental Controls
• PC Magazine awarded CA Internet Security Suite 4 out of 5 stars in their December 2005 review
• Detects 100% of viruses 100% of the time
• CA provides software to 98% of Fortune 500® companies and millions of home users worldwide

Customer Reviews:

What a piece of Junk. [Posted on 2007-10-17]
As soon as I install this software. Most of the Ajax website won't work anymore, yahoo, netflix. And it only have safe and restricted zone on NIC interface instead of network zone, which is very inconvenient for laptop user. And they want to charge for support. I will never buy any product from CA.

Too many problems to trust my computer to this suite [Posted on 2007-11-02]
I found too many problems with the CA Internet Security Suite 2007 for me to trust my computer to it. Some of the problems I had:

* too intrusive

I found the firewall to be much too intrusive. I chose the default installation, but once installed, I found that Windows Update would not work. Even though I had WU configured for automatic updates, WU could not connect to find or install updates. Manually running WU from the Microsoft site via Internet Explorer also failed. I tried to configure the firewall to allow such connections to the MS sites, but the only way I could run Windows Update would be to shut down the firewall.

I had other applications that showed similar problems. We run Windows XP Home, and use Mozilla Thunderbird as our mail client. Although most users had no trouble, my wife would consistently get timeouts from the mail server when the firewall was running (everyone else uses the same POP3 mail server, just with different user ids.) But if we shut down the firewall, Thunderbird downloads mail fine.

* buggy

I recently had a serious problem with the firewall - it was constantly turning the protection level on my cable internet connection to LOW (meaning it was not really protecting me from outside connections). However, whenever I tried to change the settings to either MEDIUM or HIGH or a custom setting, it would revert automatically to LOW. This persisted across shutdown/reboot.

* slow user interface

I found the UI to be unbearably slow. I have a 2.1GHz PC with 1GB RAM, but most UI operation (switching tabs, initializing a view) would take many seconds.

* insufficient help

I found the help to be too limited and superficial. The online support is not much better.

* poor customer service

I tried the live tech support chat with my serious problem, but after waiting 20 minutes for my turn, my position the queue only went from 17 down to 14... but then increased back up to 16. On line resources did not cover this problem. I submitted a ticket to CA technical support and it took more than two weeks to get a response (which merely told me to reinstall.) Which leads to the final issue:

* uninstall fails

Since the firewall was not working (although I had applied all updates), I decided on my own (CA techsupport had not yet replied) to uninstall/reinstall. However, it turns out that a mere mortal cannot uninstall. Even though I am an Administrator user, the uninstall fails when trying to remove registry keys and the uninstall tells me that I must be an Administrator - but I am! I had to write a script that walked through several dozen CA registry entries and change the permissions on them so that the uninstall could finally remove the suite.

I found the whole experience to be much too negative and risky.
Once I finally uninstalled CA, I was able to install Norton Internet Security 2008 and I find it a much smoother and more reliable product.

Slow as dial-up [Posted on 2007-12-27]
I installed this software, then uninstalled it less than a week later. It slowed my computer down so much I felt like I had dial up internet service. Just starting the computer took so long that I would walk away and come back later to see if it was up yet. Everything took SO long. I couldn't stand it!
I did leave the e-mail filter portion of the software on my computer when I uninstalled though because it does a very nice job of filtering out all the junk mail I get. That's the only good thing I can say about this software!

Poor Quality -- NO Support [Posted on 2008-01-01]
WARNING!!! NEVER USE THIS SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO REBUILD YOUR COMPUTER!! I installed this CA Security Suite on three machines; two FAST desktops and a moderately fast laptop, all running Windows XP Home edition. The product made EACH computer crawl on the Internet. When I tried to uninstall the products so I could replace it with my ISP's newly provided AV solution, the uninstalls promptly FAILED on all three machines. CA technical support wants to charge $29.95 to provide support to FIX the broken uninstall. The Windows Installer tries to run each time the computers are booted TO REINSTALL THIS CRAPPY software!!! And worse, NOTHING ELSE can be successfully installed!! CA will not help me resolve the problem. The only solution that I have found is to RENSTALL WINDOWS XP.

Horrible [Posted on 2008-01-14]
This product will cause more harm than good to your computer. The firewall totally blocks you off from the internet, it slows down the computer, it uses up way too much resources, it cannot be properly uninstalled, and the customer service is poor. This product is highly un-recommended. It not even worth the time or money. Do not buy this software, you will regret your decision of investing in this product.

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