E-Musings Mon Immorata

Will The Real One Please Stand Up? Too many nearly-there and demi-official software releases are irritating Actually Real Player IMNSHO is hardly the best streaming media platform or client available. A fact underlined when just hours after their latest client was released came news that it had this huge vulnerability! With the inevitable patch being released a few days later. But this rant is more about cloned products that appear to contain the worst of the original. Like Computer Associates' e-Trust EZArmor: a complete security suite with antivirus, firewall and mail attachment scanning. Actually as a marketing concept its brilliant. Offer absolutely free software but make consumers pay for upgrades that just happen to be virus signatures. You can download a copy and use free for a year courtesy Microsoft. Do note the software works with all Windows versions except Windows 95 and Windows Server products. Or you can order the Microsoft Security Update CD (for Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP) that includes a bundled copy of EZArmor. And also get the complete set of Windows-related updates and patches released until mid-February 2004. The EZArmor suite includes an antivirus with a year's free updates with a firewall. This is installable either as a full-featured 15-day trial with mail attachment scanning, ad and script blocking and more. Or a feature-limited (lite) version that only stealths your computer. Having been a ZoneAlarm supporter all these months, imagine my surprise when I discovered the EZArmor firewall to be an exact clone down to color schemes, features, arrangement of tabs! Except somewhere in the assimilation things didn't go too well. EZArmor blocked everything and kept causing Internet Explorer on Windows XP to crash. It wasn't IE's fault. The moment I disabled EZArmor my problems vanished! The second product that is interesting but readers should stay away from is Internet Explorer 6.05 Pre-Beta. This bundle appears to have been gouged out of a Longhorn German distribution. And works only on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The interface is more MSN Explorer (included with Windows XP) and although it includes pop-up blocking, it still doesn't appear to support tabs. The beta news group buzz is that this isn't a real (as in Microsoft-released) build, but what some enterprising soul has managed to cobble together. In comparison those of us who've been using MyIE2 have gotten used to the good things in life. Like multiple tabs. Built in search. Pop-up and in-context web page blocking. Plug-ins like a currency converter, a right-click enabler (for sites that try and prevent you from saving pictures), Flash file saver that considerably extend the application. And most of all for users still running PC with 128 MB RAM, a tiny memory footprint. And the latest MyIE2 0.9.26 brings a few more tweaks and enhancements. Also new this week is IrfanView 3.90. This free multimedia viewer also includes advanced image manipulation including resize, color depth controls, color swap, red-eye reduction, and advanced filters. The new version is a combination of long-overdue bug fixes with feature enhancements. You can also use this utility to generate contact sheets from multiple images, or better yet a simple HTML gallery page that links to the relevant images. Most neat! IrfanView also supports a wide range of plug-ins including Adobe 8BF filters as well as popular audio and video formats like MP3, MPEG, MOV (Quicktime) and RA (Real Audio). While you can use IrfanView to watch movies or play MP3s, the feature set is quite basic. Video zoom tends to pixelate text and the MP3 player lacks frills like an equalizer. In my book IrfanView is the best free image viewer available. I depend on it for simple image tweaking too. And images published (coming soon) in this blog have been captured and processed using IView! The just released Spybot Search & Destroy v1.3 RC3 most significant new feature is a resident component to protect you from ad-ware and browser hijackers. However, this resident auto-loads and it can be disconcerting to find it. There's no control within the setup process to choose if you want the protection or not. Spybot also includes an Immunize feature to protect installed browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera) against home page hijack attempts or back door installation of JavaScript and ActiveX controls. Also included is a HOSTS file block, but use this feature with care or you'll begin viewing web-pages with no ads. I also find that blocking HOSTS can cause IE to lockup and crash when accessing certain web sites. However Spybot's immunization features are basic and the developer suggest installing JavaCool's Spyware Blaster. This free for personal and educational use software blocks all ActiveX-based spyware and ad-ware as well as browser hijackers, dialers and other pests. Spyware Blaster 1.3 (2.3 MB, limited freeware, Windows) also blocks spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox and also detects an immunizes potentially dangerous sites in Internet Explorer. The downside of too many resident security software is they all use system resources. So unless you have at least 128 MB (Windows 98/ME) to 256 MB or more (Windows 2000/XP) do limit what applications load at startup so that you can actually use the computer! Also new is Opera 7.5 Preview 4 Build 3714. This is available for Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and Mac. And is definitely an improvement on previous previews released. However to extract the maximum utility, you need to first uninstall a previous Opera version before installing this one as the M2 module has been revamped. Read the change log or wait for my forthcoming preview. Total Commander 6.03 too is new. But is not a must-have since its a minor bug-fix release. And if you are using a pirated copy, upgrading to the new version will need a new license key. But if you have a legal version, then you can upgrade safely. Or you can check out WinNC; another Norton Commander-clone which includes an FTP client, file viewer, as well as a CD burner (Window XP or later only). Let me check it out for myself and post a quick review later. That's it for this week. Stay Safe! Click Here to Email Me