Intego's NetBarrier X5 security suite offers several tools to protect your Mac from vandals and criminals. Its centerpiece is the NetBarrier firewall, but the package can also block cookies while your surf the Web, scrub personal data afterwards, and block Trojan horses. While NetBarrier X5's features are generally good, the $50 program has enough peculiarities that some users will be better off with the firewall tools that come with OS X for free.

Intego sells NetBarrier in several different forms: single-seat licenses, multi-user versions with a management console, bundled with antispam and antivirus programs, and a "Dual Protection" package that combines Mac and Windows coverage. I tested just the single-seat NetBarrier X5 itself, not the bundles. You can buy annual updates to the program's filters, but Intego says it will provide free upgrades of the program itself until the next major upgrade.

Firewall foundations

The NetBarrier installer loads the suite itself, plus Intego's NetUpdate service (which keeps Intego software current), and some shared components used by other Intego software. All told, a default installation includes four applications, three widgets, a kernel extension, and various other bits. If you change your mind later, you'll need to use Intego's uninstaller to get rid of it all.

A Setup Assistant walks you through a simplified explanation of the programs' features and suggests some reasonable default settings; for users with more knowledge, those settings are quite configurable.

Once launched, the application is nicely laid out and informative. If you're curious about what your Mac is up to, NetBarrier's Services display, as well as with its Log and Traffic windows, show you network activity on a dozen different gauges. OS X's Activity Monitor offers several of the same traffic metrics, but NetBarrier does a better job of presenting the information in a friendly and intelligible manner.

The biggest question about NetBarrier X5 is: Why? Mac OS X Leopard offers two firewalls of its own (the classic ipfw, which filters network traffic by port and address, and the application firewall introduced in Leopard, which is what you configure from its System Preferences: Security interface). So if OS X has two firewalls of its own, why would you want to spend money on NetBarrier X5?

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