Product: MSN Premium
Direct price: With user-provided broadband, $9.95 per month; with broadband from Microsoft ISP partner, approximately $39.95 to $49.95 per month.
Requires: 500-MHz PC; 256MB RAM; 320MB hard drive space; Microsoft Windows 98, Me, 2000 with SP2, or XP; Internet connection
Company info: Microsoft Corp., 800-373-3676, www.msn.com

Microsoft is readying MSN Premium, its answer to the broadband portion of AOL 9.0 Optimized, America Online's Internet service ($14.95 per month or, with broadband access from AOL, $54.95). Although Microsoft won't unveil this upgraded broadband service until early January, we got our hands on a near-final version and found a broad sweep of incremental changes in protection, communication, and content.

Integrated versions of McAfee VirusScan and McAfee Personal Firewall Plus as well as e-mail filters, a pop-up guard, and parental controls provide security. MSN filters junk e-mail at the server, but you can also categorize items as junk, opting to have some or all reported back to the system's filter to train it. Pop-up Guard, which lets you control the pesky ads that jump up on your screen, has options such as an animated icon thumbnail that can display whenever the utility blocks a pop-up. The parental controls are member-specific and let you manage e-mail, instant messaging, the calendar, and Web browsing remotely. Features include Over the Shoulder approval, a weekly Online Activity Report, and a Kids' Summary Page, which gives an overview of the Parental Control settings.

article and tour here
PC Magazine