Audiotrieve's InBoxer is a Microsoft Outlook email filter that can block more than 99 percent of spam and junk email. InBoxer builds filters that define legitimate messages and junk for each user according to his or her mail folders. The software uses Bayesian and other advanced language analysis techniques to filter email. Users can also define trusted senders and companies. As each new message arrives, InBoxer decides whether to block it. The software places questionable messages in a review folder. InBoxer learns by example, so it can let a newsletter about your favorite hobby come through to your Inbox even if other people consider the message to be spam. InBoxer can also learn the difference between an intimate note from your spouse and offensive mail from a bulk mailer. The product doesn't require an update subscription to remain accurate. InBoxer installs three buttons on your Outlook toolbar so that you can access all of its capabilities. You don't need to launch a separate program or change your email settings. Pricing is $27.95 for one unit. Volume discounts apply and start at $19.99 for 10 units.
Tim Lukehurst of Felixstowe, Suffolk, UK, says, "I want to pass on all credit to InBoxer for painlessly reducing the volume of spam mail I deal with. This product works within Outlook and progressively learns what is spam and quarantines it rather than requiring me to go through a mountain of messages every day. It's worth its weight in gold!"
| Reader | Tim Lukehurst Felixstowe, Suffolk, UK |
| Product | InBoxer |
| Company | Audiotrieve |
| Contract | http://www.inboxer.com 617-499-7700 |
X1 Technologies, developer of business productivity software, released an update to its X1 Search, software that provides a Weblike search experience for personal data on the desktop. Chris Taylor of Nepean, Ontario, nominated X1 as a product that makes his job much easier. Chris says, "X1 indexes your email messages and disk files. It turns finding a needle in the haystack into a breeze! Indexing is quite quick. On my machine, X1 indexed approximately 200,000 files by name, size, path, date, and time; 30,000 files by full content; and 60,000 email messages that included thousands of attachments in a couple of hours. X1 keeps the index up-to-date with only 15 seconds of activity every 10 minutes and yields to the CPU cycles of other applications if necessary. Finding elusive email messages and files is now an operation that takes mere seconds. As fast as I can specify a search term, X1 finds the file or email message. X1 is an excellent product that I would be hard-pressed to do without, and it just keeps getting better!"
The software displays the files' contents and email messages in the format of the program that created them--X1 supports 255 formats--so Microsoft Word files look like Word documents, Microsoft Excel files look like Excel spreadsheets, and PDF files are displayed in .pdf format. New features include the ability to perform phrase searches, Boolean search capabilities, the option to save frequently used searches for future use, full support for attachments in Microsoft Outlook Express and Netscape Mail, and increased maximum individual file size for content indexing from 10MB to 2GB. X1 costs $99. The product supports Windows XP/2000/Me/98 systems.
| Reader | Chris Taylor Nepean, Ontario |
| Product | X1 Search |
| Company | X1 Technologies |
| Contract | http://www.x1.com 626-535-2701 |
Darren McBride of Reno, Nevada, nominated Host Interface's Double Image-O as a top product. Darren says, "Double Image-O has dramatically simplified my life. The product is unique and useful for a variety of reasons. The product eliminates mysterious 'write cache failures' when backing up to USB hard drives, which is a huge deal for my company because we only back up to USB devices and have had problems with conventional backup software. Unlike most backup products, Double Image-O backs up by copying the original file and folder structure to the destination backup media. This makes it so much easier to confirm your backup and to restore data quickly and easily. The product is so easy to use. Double Image-O can back up open files. Instead of reviewing error logs full of skipped files, I get good backups without having to pay for expensive add-on open file modules that most backup products require."
Double Image-O works at the disk/volume block/sector level and isn't disturbed by the OS, regardless of new service packs or OS upgrades. The target data is accurate, giving you an exact copy of your source at an exact instant before the beginning of the backup activity. Double Image-O runs on Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT workstations and servers and starts at $199.
| Reader | Darren McBride Reno, Nevada |
| Product | Double Image-O |
| Company | Host Interface |
| Contract | http://www.hostinterface.com 425-746-4361 |
Alfonso Gomez of El Paso, Texas, works for a company with approximately 800 client computers all over Asia, Mexico, and the United States. His company was hit by the Blaster worm and needed a patch-management solution. Alfonso says, "We're a complete Microsoft shop, so I decided to use Microsoft Systems Management Server as our patch-management solution. After fighting with Systems Management Server, I decided to change my strategy and started using Microsoft Software Update Services. Software Update Services really came to the rescue in our environment, and everybody was happy until my boss came to me and asked for a status report on all the updates that I was approving for our clients. I started to do research and ran into Flarepath.com's Flarepath Windows Update Analyser, which gives me the capability to generate reports for upper management and auditors to review. Flarepath Windows Update Analyser is a very inexpensive and user-friendly application."
Flarepath Windows Update Analyser features email notification about failed downloads or installations, background machine discovery and scanning capability, Active Directory (AD) integration, the ability to see which updates haven't been installed on a machine, imitation of the AD structure for easier grouping of machines, a dashboard that shows machines with a troublesome status, Software Update Services (SUS) server integration to show which updates were approved and when, and the ability to force a single computer or multiple computers to poll for SUS updates. For pricing, contact Flarepath.com.
See associated figure| Reader | Alfonso Gomez El Paso, TX |
| Product | Flarepath Windows Update Analyser |
| Company | Flarepath.com |
| Contract | http://www.flarepath.com |
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