The Big Daddy Of Internet Security Suites

Kaspersky is another one of the many anti-virus makers that’s gone the complete Internet security system way—not a Bad thing. The suite takes care of all your security worries—files, mail, system network security, etc. All the basic controls for the components can be accessed from the main two-pane layout window.
Modifying settings means you go to another window which houses all the settings for the components, and there are plenty of them. The core anti-virus feature is standard and allows you to scan files and folders along with boot sectors, Registry, memory, startup programs, etc. The Anti-spam has a nifty training feature that learns by looking at mails in your mailbox through a Wizard to provide more accurate spam protection. The firewall monitors for incoming and outgoing threats and notifies you immediately. Any attacks targeted at your computer can be set to have the attacker’s machine blocked for a set period of time. The firewall also takes care of the blocking of ad banners and pop-ups from Web sites as well. The parental control is useful in not only stopping access to inappropriate sites, but also in setting limitations on time spent at the computer and on the Internet. User accounts on Windows can be set to Parent, Teenager, or Child and by default, all users are set to Child. Strictness of all the features can be adjusted using a slider. At the same time, manual changes can be made. This is especially useful for spam filtering, parental control and the firewall. Heuristic scanning is available in most of the modules, but not enabled in all of them by default. The help file doesn’t carry any screenshots, but the explanation is adequate and easy to understand.
Kaspersky’s Internet Security Suite is a pretty good choice for anyone looking for a complete security solution—it’s right up there with the best security suites money can buy. There are no missing features, and everything is implemented well. New users might be a little confused by all the terms and huge list of options, though.
More about Kaspersky here.

War of the browsers

Web browsers have become an integral part of our life. We all use browsers to explore the richness of internet. With so many browsers around we always have doubts as which browser to use. In general, we end up using internet explorer which comes embedded with windows. Of the zillions of browsers available today, only a few of them can be considered everlasting. Some of these ‘over the top browsers’ are: Internet Explorer (with its seventh version; aka IE7.0), Opera (latest release being 9.24), Firefox (with its second version), and Netscape. Apple has just released windows version of its famous browser “Safari”.

Internet Explorer 7.0 is a good browser, for most of the part. Now the best part with internet explorer is that it comes pre-bundled with Windows. The major change with internet explorer 7 is that Microsoft finally moved to tabbed browsing. Anti-phishing technology, an RSS reader are some of the major additions. Although Internet Explorer 7 is a good browser, it still uses the old IE 6 code and doesn’t comply with the new web standards. A slightly more secure version of Internet Explorer 7 is installed in Windows Vista operating system. IE 7 has a built-in Internet search box in the top tier of the interface. The Favorites Center replaces the Favorites sidebar and includes tabs for RSS feeds and History. IE 7 includes zoom technology and the new Clear-type page technology, which Microsoft claims renders page fonts as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper. Printing within IE 7 has also been enhanced; pages are automatically shrunk to fit on the printed page. IE 7 also includes increased malware protection requiring user to opt-in when using Active X components. There are also built-in code protections against Cross-Domain script attacks and malicious URL handling. The rendering engine in IE has also remained unchanged; it still uses the IE 4 web engine. IE 7 includes Microsoft's new “Antiphishing technology”, designed to prevent users from providing personal data to fraudulent Web sites. Although there are many changes with IE 7 but most of them are cosmetic.

Released within a week after the public release of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0 has various enhancements over its successor Firefox 1.5. Many new features available in Firefox 2.0 were already available to user, but as extensions. The new version of Firefox has a few cosmetic changes; the icon and theme of the browser has been changed. Most notable change with the new Firefox browser is the addition of the spell check feature. So, whether it’s writing an email or posting a comment on a forum Firefox will present you with red squiggly when ever a word is misspelled or not in dictionary. Right-clicking on the word will bring up a context menu with spelling suggestions and an option to add the word to the dictionary. The built-in Antiphishing filter, which is on by default prowls pages visited for suspicious characteristics. This feature, updated every half hour, checks against a locally stored list of addresses for known phishing sites. Another great addition to the browser is the session restore feature. Now, after crashing or restarting or adding new extension, Firefox gives you the option of starting over with a new session or starting with the old session. Prior to version 2.0 this feature was available only as an extension. Session restore is smart enough to fill-in user input in some text fields. Firefox 2.0 has support for RSS and Atom and has sports feed preview. It also has the ability to subscribe to feeds as live bookmarks, or through Web services like Bloglines, My Yahoo!, and Google Reader. Opening closed tabs is just another feature added to Firefox 2.0 so if we close a tab by mistake, it can be undone. A major change has been made with the release of Firefox 2.0 and the beta release of the Firefox 3 is already available for download.You can read about Firefox's mobile version here.

Opera is one of the world’s most renowned browsers. It was the first to offer many of the browser features that we commonly use today, such as tabbed browsing and cookie management. With opera 8, again history was made as it was the first browser to embed phishing prevention tools and site security checks. Unlike Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0, which had significant browser interface changes, Opera 9's changes are mainly in the areas of management and configuration options. The most valuable addition to the new version of Opera is its search customization feature. Another most appreciated feature of the opera 9 browser is its ability to block selected content from any site. The new site-settings feature made it possible to define controls and settings on a site-by-site basis. Bit-torrent client has also been integrated with the new version of the browser, although the drawback is that if you close the browser the download stops, in contrast to many other bit-torrent clients which are minimized to desktop when closed. A new widgets feature made it possible to download (or create for developers) small pop-up applications that run within the browser. Opera 9 includes many small interface changes and navigation enhancements that will allow users to more quickly open tabs or access specific search sites. Opera 9 also is one of the few browsers out there that can pass the “Web Standards Project's Acid2 standards test”, something that neither Firefox 2.0 nor Internet Explorer 7.0 can yet claim. With the beta release of opera 9.5 full text history search has been added in case you forgot to add bookmark the site.
With release date for internet explorer 8 and Firefox 3 nearing by it’s going to be a tough battle.

Brand New Internet Explorer

Who needs Internet Explorer 7 when you can just wait for Internet Explorer 8? According to ActiveWin, Microsoft has already been working diligently on Internet Explorer 7's successor, and there are no plans for the team to stop for a service pack. The Internet Explorer development team will supposedly have the next version ready to go out the door within the next two years.

One Microsoft official at CES has told ActiveWin.com that work has already begun for IE 8, the next version of Internet Explorer, and we can expect to see a final product within 18-24 months. In addition, there are reportedly no plans for an interim service pack, but rather focus completely on the next version, which will compete even more directly with Firefox.

ActiveWin's report is completely plausible, but we weren't able to verify the rumor. Instead, a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars that the company is not prepared to discuss future iterations of the browser.

Microsoft is committed to Internet Explorer and is actively working on the next version of the browser. We are excited about the positive reception Internet Explorer 7 has received and are currently looking at market feedback and customer needs as we work on future versions. However we are not commenting on future plans at this time.

How do you feel about Microsoft skipping out on service packs for Internet Explorer 7 and jumping straight into Internet Explorer 8? As long as the browser is kept as secure as possible, I can't see why that would be a problem. If Microsoft is listening, I'd like to see Internet Explorer 8 be a little more developer-friendly. I use Firefox because of all the wonderful Extensions, but I would consider switching back to Internet Explorer if Microsoft had something even close to comparable. I will say that Add-Ons are definitely a step in the right direction, though.

Read about browser’s ACID test here.