Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (Trial) vs Online Armor Firewall (Free)

With the release of windows 7, many security software such as antivirus, Anti Malware, Firewall, etc seems to start to loose their popularity. At the present moment, I must say, yes Windows 7 has perform very well in the security improvement of their new operating system

I have tested windows 7 for almost 7 months now, it's very stable & secure from outside intruders compare to their previous operating system before. Windows 7 provide their users with the new generation of windows firewall, their most advance & much much better in performance & setting (more experience user will appreciate this)

But still, if you want better protection in the firewall, security company who provide firewall service is still outperform windows 7 firewall

The firewall software from those reputable company who focusing on the development of it's product such as Comodo, Tall Emu/Emisoft (online armor), Agnitum (Outpost Firewall) & Zone Alarm, would be a wise choice to improve your security arsenal.

From my experience & personal test, for personal user/home users, my recommendation will come between two product Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (Trial) vs Online Armor Firewall (Free)

If you're still using 32 bit operating system, the top choice would goes to Online Armor (Free), while very slightly the Agnitum Outpost Firewall pro would come in second, not only because you have to pay for their product (cause the free version is still hasn't been updated since May 2009), but simply because the latest Online Armor (version 4.0.X) provide better HIPS protection than Agnitum Product. On ther hand, if you're using and older PC it would be better if you use Agnitum products, cause Online Armor is more resource hungry compare to Outpost firewall, you WILL feel slowdowns greatly for quite a while in some case when your browsing or downloading the internet.

Since Online Armor is free, I see no harm except the resource hungry thing to put Online Armor as the top choice, but since Online Armor "Mother Company" Tell Emu has been taken over by Emisoft & seems stop their product development on the 32 Bits Operating System only, choosing Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (Trial) wouldn't hurt either except their Price.

If your using 64 Bits Operating System, yeah it's suck, the only top choice is the one that would cost you some money, Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (Trial), but as long as you use your common sense, the build in Windows 7 firewall is just about enough

Outlook Express Alternatives for Windows Vista & Windows 7 Users

It's interesting for me to find out how much people got so attach to microsoft product & how microsoft keep on taking advantage of it! The latest case that I learn is on the product called Outlook Express. As soon as Microsoft realize their user attachment on this product, the Outlook Express development and supported has been stopped by Microsoft. They release their new Operating system (at the time Windows Vista) without the Outlook program, but to make things last suspicious they released a new email client which they called Windows Mail, but most people didn't realize the appearance of this "new free Outlook Express email client substitution"!

Why isn't many people realize the present of this "new free Outlook Express email client substitution"??? Smooth, Smart, Excellent Strategy is the way I view it. Cause as soon as Microsoft release Vista, they also release Microsoft Office 2007(they both release at exactly the same time at January 30, 2007, here is the proof Vista release & MS Office 2007 Release). What made it so worst is that the fact that they cunningly made the name Outlook so visible as the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007!!! But things don't end here, Microsoft again stopped supporting Windows Mail too and released yet another program - Windows Live Mail.

The way I see their strategy, they simply playing this scenario, if you want to continue using Outlook pay for it! the price is a little more around $100, will you pay $109.95 to be precise for it? I know some of you would, but hell not me.

If you buy Windows 7 you won't find the new free version of Outlook. Unfortunately, for those of you who got so attach to it, Microsoft "stopped developing and supporting Outlook Express" after the version 6 of the software, they secretly & silently say: pay, pay, pay if you want it! But if you buy Windows 7 based laptop (VAIO in my case) it has Windows Live Mail preinstalled, and for those of you who wanted to use Windows Live Mail you could download it as the Microsoft Developers Notes web sites offers Windows Live Mail as a free download , or you could directly download from Windows Live Mail Download . I could only found one software that work similar to those Microsoft software it called Pegasus Mail, Ill be looking for more and will put the update when I found one.

Web of Trust

So far the most thing I wrote on this blog is a about security application, specially the free one, such as Free Anti-Virus, Free Anti-Spyware/Malware, Firewall, etc.

Well this time I'm gonna write something called Web of Trust or simply people called it WOT, an add-on program for your web browser, well not all web browser, but it support the most web browser that most people use : Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and... yes, the old very known for it instability, slowness and it's unsafe-tines, the Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Have you ever heard of it? or probably already using it? Probably most of us have already heard or probably already using WOT, but the surprising fact is, that the number of people who never ever heard of it is equally as much as the sand in the sea... Well it's o.k if you never heard of WOT, but how about McAfee SiteAdvisor (MSA)? or Norton Safe Web Ratings(NSWR)? See, some people still doesn't understand what it's all about. But, even for some people who do know what I'm talking about doesn't found it's useful enough and refuse to use it, but please do listen to what most expert say "prevention is better than cure!!!".

So, what is WOT? and how does it protects me from being infected? Well, WOT is simply a tool that rate web site for it's trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and/or child safety of the website. It calculates the reputation of a website through a combination of user ratings and data from trusted sources. WOT uses a traffic-light style rating system to show the safe-tines level of a website (Red, Yellow & Green, there is also Grey for website that they haven't rated yet).

Why do I choose WOT instead of McAfee or Norton or other similar tool? Simply because it's the best one that I have ever used, and because MSA and NSWR come in a bundle with the McAfee or Norton product if you decided to buy one, but if you like to try them, you could download it for free from their website, but with limitation ofcourse, you'll HAVE TO PAY if you want to use the full future of it. Another reason why I choose WOT, is because I found some compatibility issue using MSA or NSWR, so WOT come as my top pick.

When you install WOT, it would directly open a new tab to their web site http://www.mywot.com/, then you will be given a choice about it's setting (I would advise you to choose the basic setting than the advance setting, cause I found that, if you choose the advance setting sometimes, even it rarely so, it would slowdown your browsing experience).
After the setting process you will face some registry form asking you to fill some form in order to joint their community, but you could just simply ignore it and just close the web-page if you're not interested.

If you like to use WOT here's where you could download it:
1. From the collaboration page between WOT and Panda Security
2. Directly from Web of Trust website

If you like to try some other similar tool, here is some list of it:
1. McAfee SiteAdvisor
2. Norton Safe Web Ratings
3. AVG LinkScanner
4. BitDefender Anti-Phishing Free Edition
5. LinkExtend