Archive for category Product Reviews
Why a fireproof safe is a wise investment in 2012
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Product Reviews on January 24, 2012
Many of my regular readers know that I advocate for computer security, home security, and privacy on a regular basis. Attached to that is my aggressive passion to encourage everyone everywhere to have a fireproof safe in their homes. Not only is a home safe a wise investment for protecting valuables, but also for key personal documents such as passports, mortgage papers, insurance policies, family photos etc.
If you don’t yet have a fireproof safe in your home, then I want to encourage you to make 2012 the year you purchase and install a safe. Whether your focus is anti-theft, or protecting documents from fire or flood there is a fireproof safe for you. There are literally dozens of types of safes offering all sorts of levels and types of protection so take the time to research which safe would be right for you (An informative read is this article on home safes, a buyers guide to fireproof safes).
A Trustworthy and Affordable Safe
For the purpose of this article however I am going to personally review a safe that is both trustworthy and affordable. the SentrySafe DS3410.
The SentrySafe DS3410 has been a long time best seller at Amazon, and has been consistently rated 5 stars because it fits the basic needs of consumers who want peace of mind, anti-theft and fire protection at an affordable price. I recently purchased the SentrySafe DS3410 from Amazon, the experience was positive and easy. A key element I was looking for in a fireproof safe was the ability to bolt it down. Since a thief will not take the time to fiddle with a safe in your house their logical course of action is to take the safe with them.
The DS3410 offers UL classified 1 hour proven fire-protection. (Essentially meaning that a fire can burn at incredibly hot temperatures right around the safe for up to 1 hour and the items inside will remain protected, since most fires pass through an area rapidly and temperatures drop off, 1 hour is considered reliable protection). This safe is also rated for storage of CDs, DVDs, USB keys and other items for data storage (Rated up to 1700 degrees!) The safe is accessed via a 3 number combination and tubular key lock. The key and dial have been user friendly to me, and work every time without any problems.
Sentry Safe DS3410 review, why I bought it
The main reason I purchased this safe was the combination of both FIRE and THEFT protection and the ability to bolt it down. A lot of fireproof safes do not really offer any anti-theft protection (especially the smaller SentrySafes which could easily be picked up and run off with). At the same time a fair amount of anti-theft safes do not really offer any fire protection. Though there is a large variety of safes available that offer both the majority of them come in at a price point far above the SentrySafe DS3410. For what it offers this is the best safe for the money. If you want to know more you can read some details and see some pictures here, Sentry Safe DS3410 or just go straight to Amazon and buy it now (aff. link).
Are you using a fireproof or anti-theft safe yet?
I’d be curious to hear your experiences with a safe. I’ve heard too many stories from people who only got a safe after they experienced disaster or theft. Don’t let that happen to you. Have you been proactive and purchased a safe for your home yet?
Keep an Eye on Your Home with Smartphone Security Apps
Posted by Sylvia in Guest Posts, Product Reviews, Technology on August 15, 2011
You’re pulling into your office parking lot when suddenly you realize: you forgot to arm your home security system. To make matters worse, the new MacBookPro you just bought is still sitting in its box on top of your desk. You might as well have a put a big red bow around your house for potential burglars targeting your area. But have no fear! There are ways to control your home security system – using your smartphone. Yes, a smartphone isn’t just for listening to music and surfing the Internet; it can actually help you protect your home while you are away.
Here’s how:
Arm your home security system from anywhere
Security systems such as Alarm.Com, Vector Security, and ADT offer smartphone apps to their customers. By using these apps, you would be able to check the status of your home security system anywhere at any time. In addition, homeowners also have the ability to check whether their system is armed or not. If it isn’t, you would be able to activate it right on your smartphone. This functionality will come in handy in the event that your kids forget the passcode or you have to let the neighbor in to walk the dog.
Caught on tape
Smartphone security apps allow you to access live streaming video of your property using your surveillance cameras. You even have the capability to control the cameras so that they pan and tilt, giving you a wider view of your home and property. Keeping an eye on your home while you are away will give you insight into what’s going on when you aren’t there. For example, it’s unlikely that your teenagers will throw a party while you are out for the night if they know you can check up on the house anytime. In addition, these security apps also offer a “history function,” which records events such as what time your cleaning crew arrived and left. If they stayed for 45 minutes when it needed a two-hour cleaning, you’ll know about it.
Up to the minute text alerts
These home security apps will also provide you with important notices such as a sensor that’s not responding. They can send you text alerts if something has tripped your alarm, and if the police have been notified. In addition, if you’ve installed monitors and alarms for smoke, fire, or even flooding, you can receive alerts when these are tripped as well. These alerts will set your mind at ease not only while you’re out grocery shopping, but also when you’re on vacation.
A home security system will keep your family and home safe. However, a smartphone security app will work hand-in-hand with your system to keep you informed. This will give you the peace of mind you deserve when you’re away.
AVG 2011 Antivirus Review
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Antivirus reviews, Computer Security, Product Reviews on November 4, 2010
AVG my favorite antivirus solution has released their 2011 version, and it comes highly recommended! The aspect of AVG that makes it incredibly successful is the fact that it is really easy on the CPU. AVG does not slow down your computer the way many antivirus solutions do. AVG has a free version which is fantastic and I also recommend for those that are not certain that they want to pay for their antivirus solution yet. 2011 is slicker looking than their previous versions and also features a new social networking protection that helps keep you safe on networks like twitter and facebook, so you can protect yourself from being ‘likejacked’ or from clicking on bad shortlinks!
What makes AVG so great? It stays out of your hair. AVG doesn’t interfere with you or prompt you to do anything unless dealing with a genuine threat. Most days you’ll never even know AVG is there, you won’t get prompted to download things, or need to make decisions. Set your scheduled scanning, set your scheduled updates and forget it.
AVG 2011 Review – Best Features
- Anti-Virus , Anti-Spyware, Smart Anti-Rootkit (ENHANCED)
Makes sure you can’t receive or unintentionally spread even the toughest viruses or spyware. - AVG LinkScanner® (ENHANCED)
Checks web pages in real time before you visit them and shows safety ratings in your search engine results list - AVG Social Networking Protection (NEW and UNIQUE to AVG)
Protects you and your friends on social networks
Should I Get the Pay Version?
People will inevitably ask, should I pay to upgrade? Antivirus companies are successful primarily because of marketing. There is a lot of competition in the antivirus industry and there are some really top notch products (Take a look at my 2010 Top Free Antivirus picks!). Norton is “the world’s best selling antivirus”, that is a big statement, made possible only because Norton has marketed their inferior antivirus product so well, it essentially comes preloaded on most of the world’s box computers. There are definitely free alternatives, but in order to make money Antivirus vendors have successfully held back some of their best features for the pay versions. That doesn’t mean entirely that a free version is weaker or less secure, but simply put – the pay versions include everything necessary to keep the ‘average’ user 100% secure and safe online. So, should you pay to get the full version of AVG 2011. I won’t tell you not to, I think it’s a good idea for peace of mind and security. Less experienced and more average home users who aren’t calling themselves techies or geeks will sincerely benefit from the pay version of AVG.
From the publisher:
AVG Anti-Virus 2011 offers safe surfing, searching, gaming and social networking. You’ll also enjoy risk-free file exchange, secure downloading and online chatting, as well as one of the fastest scanning speeds on the market. Meanwhile, AVG’s Community Protection Network shares the latest threat information with the online community to ensure everyone receives the highest form of protection possible, and AVG’s Protective Cloud Technology serves as an early warning system to block new threats and reduce false positives. AVG Anti-Virus 2011–exceptional protection that won’t get in your way.
MSE about to become major player for AV Solutions
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Antivirus reviews, Computer Security, Product Reviews on August 8, 2010
I write a lot about Antivirus solutions and I’m a big fan of free alternatives to the big name expensive products. My favorite free products being discussed here (Top free antivirus picks) so be sure to read up on them. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of positive response on Microsoft’s Security Essentials so I thought I’d look into it a little further and let you know what’s going on. It appears to me that Microsoft is positioning themselves in such a way that they are about to become a major player in the Antivirus industry, looks like they want to give Norton some competition. I’ve always chuckled over Norton’s claim to fame that they are the biggest selling antivirus solution in the world, it should come as no surprise that this is only a result of successful marketing and not because they have the best product. After all, doesn’t it seem that half the computers in the world that a purchased out of a box come pre-loaded with a free trial of Norton?
Amazing Reviews
MSE was released on September 29, 2009 and since then has received amazing reviews. I for one am all too aware of Microsoft’s notorious security problems which have haunted the company for years on their various operating platforms, but with Windows 7 and the release of Microsoft Security Eseentials it seems pretty apparent that Microsoft has turned a corner. The fact that they have determined to release MSE as a free solution for home users is what is definitely going to make it a major competitor in the antivirus industry. At this point in time there are very few solid free antivirus solutions, in fact off the top of my head I can count all the ones I would trust on one hand.
Quick Facts
- Free for home users
- Runs on Windows XP SP2 or SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7 including Windows XP mode on both x86 and x64 PCs.
- Real-Time Protection
- Easy on system resources (does not slow down your system significantly)
- Simple and easy to use interface
- Full anti-malware solution (protection against viruses, spyware, adware, rootkits etc…)
- VB 100 certification (pretty important accolade)
Microsoft is capitalizing on their large customer base and inside knowledge of their consumers knowing that a large majority of home users are unwilling or unable to pay for antivirus solutions, by offering a free product they continue to establish their name as a global leader in technology. With the success of Windows 7 and the amazing improvements they made in terms of security with 7 people are soon to turn to trust in Microsoft for security solutions. Microsoft offers opportunities to OEMs and System Builders who can pre-install Microsoft Security Essentials on their consumer-bound PCs to provide quality malware protection to their customers out of the box and at no cost.
Read the MSE Press release.
So there you have it, I predict MSE could become a key player in the antivirus industry, if they’re not already. What do you think? Would you give MSE a try, or perhaps you’ve tried it already, leave a comment with your thoughts, I’ll be sure to reply!
Spammed by SpamFighter! A review.
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Computer Security, Product Reviews on July 8, 2010
I found this hilarious, more than annoying. But I’ve been recently spammed by the very people who fight spam. I applied for a promotion with SpamFighter in which by linking to them I received a free license key to their product. A few days went by and I ended up forgetting about it, like a lot of things like this on the internet, you’re never really certain if the company will follow through. Well, sure enough a few days later a license key came in my email. At this point I hadn’t yet even downloaded or installed Spam Fighter on my system, and I was a little busy so the email got buried and ignored. Over the next few days however I got four reminder emails from SpamFighter that I’d not yet utilized my license key. Check that, it’s been five now. It appears they are sending a ‘reminder’ every second day. I can understand how and why this process is automated, the average user would have paid for this product, and it would be in their best interest to utilize their investment. Since I didn’t put any money out, but was given the product, my level of interest in using it is probably less.
However, Spam Filter is a Great Product!
SPAMfighter Pro – 30 day free trial. SPAMfighter has partnered up with Microsoft to build the strongest, safest, and most effective anti spam tool on the market. Click Here
SpamFighter is software for Outlook and Express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird and Servers, it is Europe’s leading spam filter developer, providing spam protection across the globe for 7,164,005 home and business users on PC’s and Servers.
I don’t genuinely think they were spamming me, but five reminder emails in a span of about a week is a bit much! Give a guy some space and some time to try your product on his own schedule. Life is busy and things often sit in my email inbox for days (even weeks) at a time! Can anyone relate?
Well, I finally installed SpamFighter Pro to take a look. Wow! Installation was ultra-easy. I use outlook as my email client, and I’ve never experienced a program that installs and integrates so quickly and hassle free. Impressed. Now to see how it works, and what its usability is like. SpamFighter is pretty self-explanatory, it sets itself up, creates a new folder where all your spam will be dumped, of course giving you the option to look through it before they are deleted. It’s got a lot of options for customization, and gives some good statistics. You can find out just how much spam you’ve been saved from, and even what your spam ratio is.
Obviously important is the ability to setup your own blacklist or whitelist, which is really easy to do with SpamFighter. Another feature I liked is that you can remove spam by language. So you can automatically filter out all those Chinese emails you get. Here’s what the SPAMfighter website tells us about auto-filtering. “SPAMfighter exploits the power of a very large community of people that instantly report if they receive a spam mail. When someone blocks a spam mail, it is automatically filtered for the rest of the community in seconds. In this way, very few people in the community will ever see the spam mail. Each time you check your email in your email client, the system automatically checks your mail against the SPAMfighter servers list of known spam messages. If a message is identified as spam, it is automatically moved to the Spam folder.” Pretty simple stuff, but highly effecitve!
The Bottom Line
SpamFighter goes really easy on your system resources. As such I would really recommend you download it and give it a try. If Spam is at all a frustration for you, this will certainly save you the headache. Although I was a bit lazy getting around to trying it, and had to be motivated to install it, the whole install and testing process was short and sweet (less than 20 minutes) and in the end I felt comfortable with it on my system. SpamFighter has won a lot of awards, PC World, Brothersoft, Computer World, ITSecurity have all recognized it (to name a few), and it is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. So, my recommendation: try it today, if you purchase SpamFighter Pro you better install it right away or you may get a few reminder emails!
SpamFighter Screen shots as requested by my friend over at TechMaish:
Below is the screen shot from the main options menu for SpamFighter.
Below is a screen capture from Outlook, showing how SPAMfighter creates a folder where all spam ends up. In this manner you still have the opportunity to look through it.
Spam filter for Outlook and Express. – Download SPAMfighter today. Click Here
Safe Returner 1.24 review
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Product Reviews on July 4, 2010
Safe Returner is a relatively new anti-malware solution for infected PCs. I must say it is somewhat similar to malwarebytes but does at the same time stand alone. It is a useful and effective anti-malware tool. Packed small, installs quickly, and runs incredibly fast with some unique features. I would recommend this program, as a useful addition to your anti-malware arsenal.
I tried it out recently, and was pleasantly surprised with its effectiveness, and especially its quick scan. It works at a high speed and it covers most types of spyware or adware components. However, the product could offer more details as to the severity information about a given spyware component it found. I did also have some minor issues with the software and definitions update feature, which didn’t run properly the first time. I have registered my version, and a minor pet-peeve is the fact that the “register now” button does not go away, even after you’ve entered your product key. Still these minor nuisances aside, the program is effective.
Safe Returner has built in malware detection heuristics so it is able to detect new and unknown in the wild malware threats even before they are detected by other vendors virus scans and signatures updates. You must of course remember that this is not an antivirus solution. Safe Returner is designed strictly for dealing with PCs that you know are infected already.
Since Autorun malwares have been dominate in 2010, Safe Returner is a fantastic program to have as it deal with Autorun malware effectively. It will quickly show you what programs are configured to run during system bootup. Bottom line, this program works at dealing with malware infected PCs. Like any anti-malware tool, it can not be your only tool, but it’s a great addition.
As part of a promotion from the makers of Safe Returner, we are giving away 10 licensed copies of this product, to the first ten people to request one by commenting anywhere on this blog on any post EXCEPT this one. Here’s how…
Get a FREE License key to Safe Returner.
1. Leave a comment
2. On any post EXCEPT this one
3. Include the words “FREE KEY” anywhere in your comment.
4. We will send you a link to request your license key.
Good luck!
Check out the homepage of Safe Returner.
Daniel’s top FREE Antivirus picks for 2010
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Antivirus reviews, Product Reviews on June 29, 2010
I’m a firm believer in FREE antivirus products. And though I do support and recommend some products that cost money, I am confident that the average home user doesn’t NEED to pay for antivirus software. (Now if you don’t follow safe browsing guidelines, you could be asking for trouble!) Following are my top picks for FREE antivirus products in 2010 with ultra-brief reviews for each. I wholeheartedly recommend any of these products all of them have passed the Virus Bulletin’s latest comparative and are therefore recipients of the VB100 an award that is widely recognized within the industry. All products also received either two or three stars (three being the highest award) in their advanced performance testing and in their advanced retrospective pro-active testing from AV-Comparatives for their December 2009 and May 2010 testing. My reasons for recommending the three programs below are simple:
1. They are free
2. They are effective
3. They are not known to slow down your computer (noticeably)
4. They are simple to use.
5. They all offer ‘pay’ versions, for those who feel more comfortable upgrading to something with internet security.
AVG 9 FREE
AVG Is my number one pick. I have an extended review on AVG 9 Free which you can read here. In short AVG 9 is rock solid, and scans 50% faster than previous versions. Nice interface, easy to use, lots of features, custom scans, automated scans and more.
AVIRA (AntiVir personal FREE)
Avira is known for having very strong detection rates. It has great features, and the backing of years of testing and industry support. It’s user interface is however lacking somewhat, and may appear slightly confusing at first.
AVAST Free Antivirus
It is somewhat of a toss up between AVG and AVAST (though as you can tell I’m partial to AVG). Avast gets five stars from CNET editors review, and “provides steadfast protection and a robust selection of features” (CNET). Avast is known for performing well, and having strong detection rates, it is also great for dealing with spyware and adware (as are all of these mentions).
Honorable Mention:
BitDefender FREE edition
Bit Defender’s scanning engine is excellent, but it only gets a honorable mention because their free edition is only an on-demand scanner. This is a good product to have in addition to one of the three I mention above.
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Product Reviews category.
Welcome & About Info Carnivore
Top Commenters