Thoughts on Norton Internet Security 2005?

I heard a lot of good things about Norton Internet Security 2005 and was
very impressed by the write-up and comparison to McAfee in PC Magazine.
Norton Antivirus worked well for me, but my BlackIce was starting to give me
problems, so I decided to give it a try. It has been installed less than 2
weeks and it blew me out of the water. After the update on Wednesday night,
Microsoft Outlook was no longer able to send/receive any e-mails. Turning
off the firewall corrected the problem. I tried everything to correct the
problem, but eventually had to uninstall and reinstall NIS 2005 to get
everything working again. In working the problem, NIS 2005 also ended up
hanging number of times when I was trying to make simple changes among the
various options.

I am interested in if others are having similar challenges or if this was
just a fluke and it will be smooth sailing from here???