Two questions about Kaspersky?

[essential]

1) Want to go with a new security setup. It was between NOD32 and Kaspersky, but I'm going with Kaspersky because I recently had a trojan that Norton didn't catch, so after format this weekend I want to try something new. I've read their antivirus is very good, but I want to know if their firewall is as good? Should I go with Kaspersky Internet Security (Virus+Firewall), or just Kaspersky Anti and look to another program for firewall?

2) How easy is it to uninstall/upgrade Kaspersky? If I don't like it, does it install all it's needed files in it's Program Files folder, or is it like Norton and puts stuff everywhere, so a complete uninstall is near impossible? Also, I read they upgrade a lot, is it just an upgrade install, or a complete uninstall of the program then a complete reinstall of the updated version?

Thanks.

 

[Entropism]

I was using KIS for a while, i got a free license with a product purchase. I uninstalled it about 3 days ago, because it was slowing down access to some sites (anandtech included). It's an awesome product, the AV is of course top notch, the firewall can be configured to be top notch as well, very easy to use, etc. Since you're using XP, I'd go with kaspersky AV, Threatfire free and OnlineArmor free for your firewall. It's a bit of overkill, to be honest, and with OnlineArmor and Threatfire, you can easily save yourself some money and go with Avira AntiVir free, your protection will still be outstanding.

The only reason I suggest against Kaspersky is that it doesn't play nice with other products. NOD32 is an awesome product as well, but version 3.0's internet guard is a proxy (can be disabled, but annoying) which makes your application based firewall useless unless configured correctly.

That being said, the problems I had with Kaspersky:

Had to disabled email scanning
Had to disabled banner blocker
Wanted Comodo Firewall for the HIPS security, and kaspersky doesn't play nice with it (OnlineArmor doesn't work with Vista x64 or I'd use that)
Site slowdowns