Review by Jennifer A. Ray

For years I went back and forth between Nortons security suite and McAfees. Both worked well at times over the years, but the latest versions of both have been problematic for me. Norton has become a resource hog and the version of McAfee I tried a year ago would work for a day or two before the service would completely stop. The only resolution was to uninstall and reinstall McAfee.

I finally moved to Microsofts free Forefront Security that installs through Windows Update and that worked well, but I wanted a more robust, complete solution.

Id heard good things about Kaspersky, but had never before tried it. Nearly a month ago, I obtained the Kaspersky Internet Security Multi Device. That package came with a five user license that allowed me to install it on my laptop PC with Windows 7 x64, my desktop PC with Windows 7 x64, my Kindle Fire HD, ny Android phone running version 4.1.2 (Jellybean) and my Android phone running version 4.3 (also Jellybean.) With each device, the installation was quick and easy.

The software package came with a CD for Windows users and another for Mac users. I do not have any iOS devices, so I cannot rate its effectiveness with those systems. The Windows CD contained the Kaspersky software for Windows and provided links to the Google Play store so you can easily install the software on your Android devices.

One of the main reasons I wanted Kaspersky is because I need a solution that handles spam email when it is delivered to my Outlook client. Even the newest version of Outlook (2013) doesnt do a very good job of trapping spam email even on its most aggressive setting.

The first thing I noticed when I started using Kaspersky Antispam with Outlook is it began searching all of my existing Outlook folders for spam email that had come in long ago. I LOVE that. When I saw it doing that, I almost jumped for joy. Id been trying to tackle these older spam emails in my inbox when I found time but it is a neverending task. The idea that all I had to do is sit back and let Kaspersky handle all of that work for me absolutely made my day. All I had to do was retrieve the occasional email trapped erroneously, training Kaspersky on what I wanted to keep. Easy enough especially when you can import a list of email addresses you want to mark as safe senders. All of this is great in theory. The problem is that as my safe senders list grew in Kaspersky, Outlook started crashing. Within days, I was at a point where Outlook would crash as soon as it had loaded. I removed all of the safe senders from my Kaspersky Antispam configuration, but no luck. I finally disabled Antispam and had to perform a repair install of Outlook on both PCs that Id used Kasperskys Antispam on and was once again able to use Outlook.

Once I disabled Antispam, Kaspersky worked well on both of my Windows PCs. Ive not had any problem with it on any of my Android devices.

I have to say that I am extremely disappointed with Kasperskys Internet Security software simply because without the Antispam feature, I might as well move back to the free Microsoft Forefront Security software. I probably won’t do that until the subscription on Kaspersky expires unless it begins experiencing issues, but at this point I don’t see any need to pay to extend the subscription next year if the tool doesnt provide the full functionality I need.

Kaspersky is certainly much more reliable than McAfee is and it doesnt hog the system resources on my PC like Norton does, but given its failure with Antispam and Outlook, I cant rate it more than three stars. If I were rating just the antivirus tool, I would give it five stars, but the Antispam feature deserves only one star.

If you are looking for just the Antivirus feature and don’t need to use Antispam with Outlook, then you may decide this is the product for you.