General post-purchase questions

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EDIT: Sorry, the title should have been 'General PRE-purchase questions'
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1)
I don't know anything about routers or wireless networks. For the last ten years, my cable access simply plugs into the back of my cable modem, and my win2000 box then shares the internet connection through a CAT5 cable to our other (ancient) desktop, as well as LAN filesharing.

We've now bought two vista laptops with wi-fi capability, so I intend to buy some sort of wireless system soon. I imagine (I haven't researched it yet) that the cable from the wall plugs in to the wi-fi router, and then printer, scanner and desktop connect by CAT5 to the router, whilst the laptops connect by wi-fi.

Anyway, if I buy ESS for the two laptops and desktop, will they all play nicely together if networked in a LAN through a wireless router? Will they each be able to access the internet through the router without one of them being a 'gateway'?

2)
At the moment I use Outpost firewall on the 'gateway' desktop. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has moved from Outpost + NOD32 antivirus, to using only ESS. Any features you miss from Outpost? Any clear benefits from using ESS as an integrated solution?

3)
Regarding www.av-comparatives.org for May/August 2008:
NOD32 seems to do well 'overall' - a good all-rounder, especially when also considering heuristics. However, 92% means 50,000 trojans were missed. 98% means 700 viruses were missed. My point being that whilst there is only a 3% difference between ESET and the top scorers, that equates to thousands of pieces of malicious software which the test-computer was not protected against.

The question is, actually how much safer, in real terms, would I be using the top scoring AV and the top scoring firewall together, rather than a security suite like ESS? Is that 3% an actual meaningful difference? Would other aspects of ESS (eg. ease of use, speed, reliability, price, consistency over long periods, etc) outweigh the fact that it isn't always a top-scorer in these tests?

4)
Related to 3), has anyone using ESS had a virus/trojan get past the AV scan, but then caught the 'leak' ('phoning home', etc) by the heuristics and/or firewall?


I know my questions come close to asking 'is A better than B?', but I've tried to keep it as generic as possible and hope the thread doesn't get locked.


One last problem: I live in spain but don't speak spanish yet. The ESET uk website wouldn't email me a trial license because my IP is not in UK. Does anyone know how I can download/trial/buy an *english* version of ESS, even though I'm not geographically in an english speaking country?

Thanks.

 

Hello Antifreeze,

1) Yes, make sure you allow sharing during installation if you want to share files on the network.

Lastly, to get the English version of ESS please go to our support page here and submit your information.

Thank you,

Richard