Your PC's personal mechanic. Product/Link: Norton SystemWorks™ 2002 Synopsis: A lot more than just anti-virus. Requirements: Windows XP Home/XP Pro/2000 Pro/NT WS/Me/98. Price: USD69.95. Rating: Good, but overkill? Comment: We upgraded from SystemWorks 2001 because of the added features, one being anti-virus checks on outgoing email. Norton made its name years ago with a collection of DOS utilities before there was Windows or an Internet to speak of. SystemWorks 2002 goes way beyond those simple days. It's still includes System Doctor and Disk Doctor which periodically check your machine's performance. It's nice to know if you're running low on memory or that 80GB hard drive is about to crash. WinDoctor looks for Windows-specific problems and offers to repair them. UnErase Wizard will help retrieve those files you really got rid of and now regret doing so. Wipe Info, on the other hand, really, really gets rid of files. Speed Disk and Optimization Wizard do tune-ups to keep your system in NASCAR-running shape. Registry Editor is something we avoid, though Registry Tracker can supposedly undo screw-ups. Norton AntiVirus is very sophisticated. Not only will it periodically check all your files for nasties, sending or receiving a virus will cause Norton to try a repair, or put it into quarantine, keeping the world safe. Script Blocking is new to this version. Many recent viruses have taken the script form which cannot be detected by most virus checkers. CleanSweep allows you do get a lot of garbage out of your system, such as unnecessary files, cookies, caches, unwanted ActiveX controls. Fear not, you have the final say on what goes and what stays. LiveUpdate automatically downloads the most recent virus files and program updates at least once a week. You can schedule the day and time, but we check manually every day before doing any online work. It's free for the first year, then you have to subscribe on an annual basis for USD9.95. Norton encourages users to create Emergency Disks -- floppy copies of pertinent information in case your computer flat-out refuses to boot. These contain a lot more data than the emergency boot disk which came with your computer. There's more, but what we did not install were GoBack 3 and Process Viewer. The former is a nice concept, but if you plan on upgrading your Windows OS, it's a hassle. The latter displays esoteric information of little concern to 99% of computer users. When was the last time you needed to see the full list of DLLs for each running process? Do you need all this stuff? Probably not, unless you spend a lot of time downloading untested files, installing and uninstalling programs, inserting questionable floppies. In short, just looking for trouble the way we do 8 hours a day. But, we cannot stress too strongly the need for virus protection and some form of script blocker. Norton AntiVirus™ for USD49.95, or McAfee VirusScan for USD39.95, will probably suit your needs.