WELCOME TO THE WEB!

We love announcing new websites and we have three that have been launched this month:

Hockey’s Resource (center) at www.HockeysResource.com is a new website that provides hockey news and information from both amateur and professional leagues around the world. Aimed at the hockey industry, articles vary from general interest to game reviews, scouting reports, camps, tournaments, drafts and more.

Desert Security (right) is a home and business security monitoring and installation company. They also provide home wiring, automation systems, networking and audio-video services. Desert Security has been protecting Arizona home and business owners for over 17 years. They’re service is top-notch and price is hard to beat. Checking out the JDE-designed website at www.DesertSecurityMonitoring.com.

www.AllHomesArizona.com (left) is home to HUD Home specialists Alex and Matt, a team of REALTORS here in the Valley who primarily serve the HUD home buyers. Their new website provides up-to-the-minute listings of HUD homes around the Phoenix area. They have a questions-answers page with a ton of useful information on it, and they also provide comprehensive real estate services for non-HUD clients.

WELCOME TO THE WEB!

VIPRE ANTIVIRUS +ANTISPYWARE : ALL HYPE?

I was fortunate to be able to review this product for free (courtesy of Amazon Vine) . I have to confess that straight upfront, because I’m not sure I’d have purchased it knowing the little I’d read about Vipre and the concern about what it might do to my PC after install.

Unlike other software "applications", protective software tends to get into the "nuts and bolts" of a computer. It needs to in order to protect, but this has been known to go wrong. I wish I could say I were not speaking from experience…

Anyway, Vipre arrived. Cool-looking box. The quick-startup directions suggest you remove existing anti-virus software first. Again, from personal experience, I’d learned this. When I’d made the move from Symantec to McAfee, many years ago, the software didn’t test for other anti-virus products and I ended up with two installations that were both convinced the other was malicious. On the positive side, my PC was probably the best-protected in the universe, but it was unusable.

So, this time I uninstalled McAfee and installed Vipre…fingers crossed…flip to "present tense"…

The installation takes time, mostly because after it installs from the CD, reboots the PC, it then has to download the latest version and definitions and reboot again. I found that doing other tasks while keeping an eye on the installation was a little more productive use of my time. On one PC, the entire installation process took about an hour.

Once installed, it’s almost impossible to tell Vipre is running (apart from the glaring "V" in the windows system toolbox). It certainly lives up to its claim of not slowing down the computer. After moving from McAfee, I noticed a very definite speed increase.

The user interface – FINALLY SOMEONE GOT IT RIGHT – is the best feature (besides the protection), designed for the novice and expert alike. There is a simple "at a glance" screen on startup which shows you what’s happened, what is active and a neat little "Worldwide threat level" box which actually does change as new worms and viruses come out.

As with many products in this category, you can "set it and forget it", just install and let it take over. If you’re like me, the fine-tuning options are a pleasure. You can quite literally tell Vipre what it should consider a "threat", how often and in-depth you want your scans to be, how your email is configured, manage quarantine and so forth. Yes, other products offer all this too, but the way that Sunbelt Software has brought it together in a simple, yet in-depth interface is what makes it stand out for me.

I’ve been a heavy user, both personally and professionally, of anti-virus software since it was invented, when there were products such as "Dr. Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit" – if anyone remembers that, you’re a dinosaur to – and I’ve found that as the solutions have become more integrated, they’ve become a bigger drain on system resources. I moved from Symantec (after 10 years) to McAfee when I found the Symantec interface and stability problematic (and my ISP offered McAfee for free).

- Please note that this review isn’t intended to devalue what McAfee and Symantec security products offer, on the whole, they are very good. I’ve been very happy with McAfee, except for the overhead I feel it places on my computer, even after a lot of tuning and tweaking (and I’m a little technical). My decision to test Vipre was driven by this overhead and my decision to stick with Vipre (despite the promise of free McAfee from my ISP) is due to primarily to the performance. I do miss the anti-spam and firewall from McAfee and will end up getting these as separate products rather than part of an integrated suite -

Unfortunately, I cannot make an "apples to apples" comparison between McAfee and Vipre because Vipre doesn’t offer a "complete Internet security" package, but between it and the Windows firewall, I’m very satisfied. My next step will be to find a firewall application that is a little more robust than the Windows one and see how it integrates with Vipre.

Since installation, Vipre has caught a couple of incoming dangers and found several pieces of spyware during its scans. The nice thing is, it tells me and then leaves me alone, just how I like it. One final thing to point out is the license covers you for every computer in your house. In my case that is 6 – for the price of 1. In this economic climate, that’s certainly worth considering.

So, to conclude, it’s affordable, simple to use, fast and effective. I would recommend giving Vipre a chance if you’re looking to get something a little easier on the system than what you might be using right now…and shame on me for not having considered buying it.

I’ve run Vipre on a Dell Precision (4 processor / 3GB / XPP), Dell Dimension (1 processor / 2 GB / Vista HPE), Dell Dimension (1 processor / 2 GB / XPH) and HP Pavillion (1 processor / 1 GB / XPH).