Review by B. A. Zimmerman

I’ve been a Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS) user for several years and never had a problem. The product worked, and a transition from my older Windows XP systems to 64-bit Windows 7 systems was largely seamless.

I typically shop for security software all year long - when I see a good deal, I buy it, knowing that at some point, my annual subscription will require (expensive) renewal. So it was in June 2011 when I bought PURE on a 100% rebate special. It sat on my shelf for 5 months while my KIS-2011 subscription ran out, then I tried to install PURE, after doing a complete un-install of the expired KIS-2011 product.

While PURE installed OK, updated, ran scans, and appeared to provide firewall protection, it was incompatible with MS Outlook (Office 2010 - 64 bit version). I could not start MS Outlook if PURE was running as Outlook would just hang indefinitely. If I exited PURE, Outlook ran fine. This problem is widely posted now on various forums, and it appears that Kaspersky still has not been able to fix it in the current version of PURE (I had build 152 after it completed all of the updates).

After hours of troubleshooting with Kaspersky techs, they recommended that I try KIS-2012, so I downloaded the Trial version, un-installed PURE, and installed KIS. It works perfectly - no issue with hanging my email client.

So unless you really need the additional features of PURE, I’d recommend staying away from it this year. KIS-2012 has been updated, works fast, unobtrusively, and reliably.

It took me a couple weeks to work out an exchange for the non-usable PURE product, but Kaspersky made good on an exchange and I now have KIS-2012 going for the coming year. Not a big deal for me as there is better Password manager and disc encryption software available, and I don’t need remote management of security in my small business environment.

I gave it 3-stars because the rest of the product appeared to work as advertised – I just could not use the Anti-Spam, nor could I run my email client at all when PURE was installed.