Look Mac, I'm just gonna tell you once - you have to back up to the web with XDrive Try it free
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Miss your computer while away from home? Cheer up, GoToMyPC lets you access it from anywhere.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Review
Created:
April, 2000
Maybe the best feature offered by Zone Labs ZoneAlarm is not that it guards your computer against unwanted intruders or stops Trojan horse programs from exposing your computer to the outside world. The best is that it does all this free for individuals and non-profit organizations.
The product is a personal firewall, a software product that watches all the data traffic between a personal computer and the Internet and blocks data that is unauthorized. This means that you have to do a bit of configuration as you go along. Once ZoneAlarm is installed, it bugs you when any software package makes an effort to contact the outside Internet world. So, when Outlook goes to grab your mail, Zone Alarm stops it and asks permission to let it contact the remote mail server. If you agree, ZoneAlarm lets the activity continue. It will ask you each time mail is checked or it will remember that Outlook is OK if you check off a box that says so.
Trojan horses are programs installed on a computer, illicitly or by trickery, that can be used by someone on the Internet -- or even across a company network -- to take control of your computer. Or they may simply collect data to be mined later by an outsider. Since ZoneAlarm checks with you before it lets any program contact the outside world, you can catch any unwanted data piracy before it happens.
Hackers or script kiddies (non-programmers who use hacker tools made by other people) can also compromise your computer by scanning for vulnerabilities built into operating systems and network connection software. ZoneAlarm blocks this activity, too.
The product also has a kind of digital bicycle lock. Called Internet Lock, it is a feature that, when engaged, disallows any network activity while you are away from you computer. This can be customized to allow only mission-critical connections such as e-mail checks to be performed.
ZoneAlarm can be configured for one of three automatic security levels: low, medium and high. A corporate network versus the Internet can be configured independently of each other.
So, why is all this free?
It's not, for businesses. A business must pay $20 US ($30 Canadian) per computer per year to use the product. But individuals and non-profit corporations can use it for free.
A Zone Labs spokesperson said the product is a first step in a line of products that the company will be introducing this year. They are building a customer base with the freebie product and will make profits on sales of related products purchased by business customers.
Small businesses might well opt for one of Zone Labs competitors' products, given the annual fee, but for everyone else this product is a good deal.
Besides the unpalatable annual pricing, there are two flaws worth noting. One is the absence of an incident log. Competing firewall programs will log illicit activity, including the IP (Internet Protocol) number of the originating machine and the severity, in some cases. ZoneAlarm doesn't do this.
Also, the real-time chat program ICQ and America Online's Instant Messenger can't be used when ZoneAlarm's security level is set on high.
Reviewer's rating: 4 / 5
Comments: Zonealarm's annual fee may be hard to swallow for small businesses that have to pay it but individuals and non-profit organizations get this great firewall computer protection product free. It works well, though it will annoy some AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ users if they don't know about the high-security setting flaw.
System
specifications: If one of these operating systems is on your machine, ZoneAlarm will work: Windows 95/98/NT/2000.
More info: http://www.zonelabs.com
Price: Free for individuals and non-profit corporations. $20 US, $28 Canadian per year per computer for business. Zone Labs will also shortly announce a licensing fee for 10 to 10,000 users.
|
Adding RAM is easy, 
