Hello,

I know some of you use eSet Smart Security as your antivirus and firewall software of choice, so I thought I'd post this in case it's of any help. Note this mainly focuses on accessibility. The tips are relevant to eSet Smart Security v4, but some of the options may be available in earlier versions.

First, open the main eSet Smart Security program and press F5 to open the advanced options dialog. Note that you may have to allow the F5 keystroke through if using some access software, as many also use this key as a function of the same. A list of option categories is given on the left. Use the tab key and up/down arrow keys to navigate through it, and between it and associated options. Use the spacebar to select/deselect options or to click the OK/Cancel button at the bottom of the screen.

Alerts and Notifications Category: Deselect 'Display notifications on desktop' and Display balloon tips in Taskbar for sec'. This removes the annoying pop-up balloon tips, which steal the focus away from whatever else you're working on at the time. They are also difficult to close with the keyboard and usually require mouse intervention. Mostly, they relate to the daily update of the antivirus definitions and so do not require user intervention. Deselecting these options will cause the notifications to appear as a standard message box on screen. You can hit OK to close it immediately, and usually you will return to the exact place you left off before the interruption. Advanced users can disable the notification altogether, so you will never be prompted when a successful update has been completed.

User Interface category: Deselect 'Show splash screen at startup', 'Use animated controls' and ‘Use animated icons for progress indication'. Select 'Advanced Mode' and 'Display menu in standard mode'. This tidies up the interface a little as well as giving access to the menu through which options can be selected. However, note that the 'Advanced Mode' will override this, but you can disable that if you're more comfortable with a simpler interface with fewer options. I have noticed some slightly faster response times with the animations disabled, and it seems to work better with the screen reader as well.

Some system settings:
Antispam Module category: Use this tip only if you do NOT want to mark messages as spam. Select 'Enable antispam module’ Deselect 'Add text to email subject' and 'move messages to spam folder'. I have noticed that disabling the antispam module causes Outlook 2007 (and possibly earlier versions) to hang for a few minutes at the 50% mark when doing its initial send/receive. I feel this may be down to poor logic in the eSet Outlook add-in, which may be attempting to find the module even if it is disabled in the main program options. Enabling the module resolves this problem. Deselecting the other two options will prevent the module from having any impact on the e-mail messages themselves. I have not noticed any degradation in Outlook performance with this configuration.

System Updates category: Use this tip only if you have Windows set to notify you of or automatically install new updates, or if you check Windows Update manually. Select 'No updates' from the drop down list. This will prevent eSet needlessly notifying you of missing updates and tidies the interface a little.

I hope these will be of some use to you. Note however that these are only a few of the many options you can configure within eSet, but I felt these were the most important. My aim here is to make the program easier to use in terms of accessibility, but also to reduce the interaction level required by the user. I've tested all of these with eSet Smart Security v4 and latest updates, running on Windows 7 with all updates. I use Supernova 11.04 as my screen reader/magnifier.

Feel free to add any comments or suggestions that may help others.