Security SmackDown part.II -- (English vers.)

Hard to believe, but it's been a full month and a half since the last time we had ourselves a good old-fashioned security suite smackdown. As we enter the season of heavy Web traffic, e-commerce, and online credit card transactions, it becomes all the more necessary to deck your PC with the latest pieces of security software. And, of course, once those shiny new computers are unwrapped, it's equally vital to make sure that they're protected from the moment they boot-up. After all, the last thing you want to give that special someone this holiday season is a virus. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving.
This time around, the smackdown is decidedly lower-key in more ways than one. First, there's the lack of name brand recognition. In part I of our smackdown, we brought out the big guns, like McAfee Total Protection, Norton Internet Security 2007, and Windows Live OneCare. Don't let the name game fool you, however. Just because you may not recognize the manufacturer on the box, doesn't mean that the protection offered inside will be sub-par. The three suites smacked down here all offer good PC security some more so than others.

Second, there's the amount of features offered in each suite. Whereas the majority of the programs featured in the last round bundled a privacy/parental control feature (only two of the eight suites lacked the feature), none of the suites contained herein offer it. While for most people privacy/parental control is considered a secondary requirement, after antivirus and antispyware, those who are looking to monitor their children's online activity, as well as the information that it is transferred from their PC, would do best to take a long, hard look at some of the suites mentioned in the first round. Below are teasers for our most recent Security Suite reviews; click the links to see the full text.

HD HeartBeat 2: Track Your Hard Drives' Health -- (English vers.)

Supported Platforms: Windows 98, 2000, ME, & XP
Requirements: PCs running 98 require the Windows Management Instrumention (WMI) core. In addition, the file SMARTVSD.VXD must be located in C:\Windows\System\IoSubsys.

When factory released HD HeartBeat last year they had no idea what a great success it would be. It allowed people to monitor the status and temperature of their hard drives and warn them if the drive was close to failing or getting too hot. Users loved the program and gave us some great feedback. One of the most requested features was to have the ability to monitor all computers within a local area network from a single workstation. This would make it easy for desktop support specialists, small business users, and homeowners with a network to help protect their investment (in their hardware and data).

HD HeartBeat 2 is a two-part program:
    1. A windows service for Windows 2000 & XP that collects data from the local hard disks and sends the data to the local network. Since Windows 98 & ME do not support services, we had to implement a tray application in these operating systems
    2. A client program that listens to the network and receives data and displays it

This new architecture for HD HeartBeat 2 solves two problems:
    1. To gather disk information, HD HeartBeat must have administrative privileges and this could pose some restrictions, especially on corporate networks. Running as a service allows HD HeartBeat to monitor drives without requiring the currently logged on user to have administrative rights
    2.One machine in the network can display data for all the machines gathering data, thus centralizing the disk administration. In other words, you can view all the disk information for all the machines on your network from one machine. In addition, the client does not need administrative rights to run.
The service and client are completely independent; you can install the service on one machine and the client on the same one or on another machine. You will have to install the service on every machine that you'd like to monitor. All clients in the network will show the data from all services.