5 comments about Norton Internet Security 2002 Professional Edition.

1. So you go out and spend between 700 and 3,000 bucks on a brand new computer. You load it up, attach your cable modem, and your on the net surfing around. However, there happen to be alot of bored people out there who want to hack into your computer, steal information (such as credit card numbers, your financial info from say Quicken) or just plain want to destroy your investment. You don't buy a new house and leave the doors unlocked all the time with no alarm system do you?? NO!
   That said...

   Don't mess around, plain and simple. Your Computers Security is an important issue. The thing is its EASY to protect yourself. Nortons programs are the best there are, read the reviews in all sorts of PC magazines. They know what theyre doing.

   I HIGHLY recommend the Norton Internet Security PRO Edition. This thing comes with EVERYTHING you can think of in Internet Security. There is no more loaded program. You can FULLY customize it, shutting down features that you see people complaining about on here. Yeah, you have to know SOMETHING about computers, but if you don't its not brain surgery either. There are plenty of help menus that explain each and EVERY function. You get a 2002 Virus Scan, Firewall, and an ADDED firewall in a sense, the threat detection. This is great, because if a computer tries to break into yours, it shuts ANY contact down with that computer for 30 minutes, or it can permanetly shut it down, your in control. It also alerts you when someone is "port searching", where hackers use programs to find vulnerable computers. You also get a year of automatic updates, so its NEVER outdated, and its always able to protect you agaisnt new threats. You can update it every day if you want to (although thats extreme haha!)

   Bottom line is this...I had Nortons 2001 Firewall, and it stopped 3 hackers from attacking me with trojan horse viruses (ones that steal information). I was so pleased with it, I went and ordered the Internet Security PRO, because Norton proved to me they are serious. Prove to yourself and your family that your serious about security, and order the Pro. If you wanna save money, grab the regular edition, its still a great program.

   Good luck and take care.




2. It certainly provides all the details for this interested, it's default settings are what I went with for most things. I feel much more educated and know that my system is better protected w/ this software.



3. I have used the Family edition of Norton Internet Security at home for two years. I have been very happy with the Family edition.

   Symantec misleads end users when they advertise that Norton Internet Security 2002 Professional edition (NIS Pro) provides a "User Access Manager (that) lets you set different Internet access privileges from a single workstation for members of your workgroup also running Norton Internet Security Professional Edition software on their PCs." Reading that, I thought I could set up Internet access privileges for everyone in the office from one workstation. Not so! Instead, the manual tells you to configure one workstation, export the settings to a file and then import the file to the other workstations. After spending a fair amount of time configuring the "Master" machine, NIS Pro would not export the settings and neither their manual nor their website offered anything helpful on the subject. After almost three hours on Symantec's paid telephone support line (no free installation support is available), their experts could not help export the settings to the other workstations. Now I need to configure another workstation manually (and perhaps eight more if the "User Access Manager" fails again). This will take many hours.

   Furthermore, since NT server installation is not supported, my network consultant tells me the installation of NIS Pro's firewall module on the workstations but not the server is seriously flawed. It's like closing the windows but leaving the front door wide open!

   I don't recommend this product for professionals with NT servers. I also don't recommend it to anyone hoping to take advantage of a helpful "User Access Manager".




4. I used NIS2002 for about 4 months as a software firewall for my cable connection until I got a Wireless LAN and had a hardware firewall/router in place.

   For security - it gets good marks. It did its job despite my ISP's inability to stop all sorts of Trojan and DDOS attacks - which is a real problem in a cable network's shared segments. Configuration was pretty easy with their wizards, although the admin runs slow on my P3-700 w/256MB RAM. It often would take 10-12 seconds to load the menu screen.

   But that just begins the problems with the product: The pop-up alerts for "training" the product do not provide the type of granularity needed for a firewall. While you can configure it manually, the only option you get on the pop-up is either allow this packet, allow this application forever or forever block - and it is per application, not per IP address, unless you run the customization wizard each time, which takes you through about 5 steps to simply "trust" an IP/port. Tiny and ZoneAlarm allow you to do this with just one mouse click. Imagine if you run a local web server of file or printer share at home and want to restrict access to only the internal network or perhaps a few Internet IPs of friends, or your office. It will be a big job with NIS and I suspect that non-technical users would either do it wrong and leave unwanted holes or give up trying because after you get out of the standard wizards that NIS provides, you are pretty much on your own.

   Reporting is also poor and almost impossible to find in the product. It isn't on any menu choices. Again, Tiny and ZoneAlarm are far better. Reporting is important because you often want to see what activity is happening that the firewall is catching for you or, more importantly, what is getting blocked that you want to give access for.

   Most egregious however, is that when I tried to remove NIS after installing my hardware router/firewall, my XP Pro started freezing almost anytime it had to access the internet. There were many registry keys, including low-level driver left behind. MSCONFIG also confirmed this. I had run the special rnis.exe that Symantec provides, but this didn't work either. Because of my experience, I was able, after much difficulty, to stabilize the system, BUT, this is unacceptable in any product, even a firewall and is so huge IMO, that although I would give the overall product a 3, it earns only 1 STAR because of its poor behavior. Understand, that I never had this happen with XP before the uninstall.

   I had used Tiny Software's Personal Firewall until I upgraded to XP and would have had to pay for their upgrade. Since I had Symantec's Norton Utilities, I figured to just buy the whole Norton suite. Tiny's admin was fast and easy to use comparatively and I really wish I had stuck with them. My limited experience with ZoneAlarm, combined with positive reviews from friends and magazines would lead me to recommend it before NIS as well. Overall Norton NIS2002 did the job, but wasn't worth the steep hassle factor.




5. Norton turned out not to be what I expected so I went back to McGaffey.

No comments about Web Page Construction 6.5 Mac.

No comments about QuickStart Personal Firewall XP.

No comments about CUseeMe 5.0 Videoconferencing.

5 comments about Adobe Golive 5.0 Upgrade.

1. If you have been using GoLive version 4 and are upgrading to version 5 because 4 was so unstable, watch out for version 5! You may first want to check the Adobe User to User Forum for GoLive on Adobe's WebSite and look at all of the problems people are having before purchasing this product. This could be a great Web Development tool, however, lack of stability and numerous bugs make this product the equivalent of driving a luxury sports car with no brakes.



2. It's true that this program is somewhat limited by bugs that can limit its usability. Once these are learned, however, they can easily be worked around without adversely affecting productivity and with minimal affect on efficiency. Golive is a super tool, far ahead of comparable programs and should be considered regardless of several minor drawbacks.



3. GoLoive is a great idea, unfortunately this application is not stable enough and has way too many bugs for serious WebDevelopers. Try running it along side Photoshop and you will find your system slowly run out of resources and crash. It completely defeats the purpose of the tight integration between Adobe apps because you can't run more than two at a time with out taking down your system.

   There are so many bugs in this app, it is surprising that it made it to retail. Adobe needs to improve it's software testing. It has also been over 9 months and Adobe has made no effort to release a patch for the numerous bugs, poor use of system resources and severe memory leaks.

   If you are a Web Designer that spends 8-12 hours a day in front of your computer like me, expect to reboot at least 3 or 4 times through out the day. And, if you do purchase GoLive. SAVE WITH EVERY CHANGE YOU MAKE TO A PAGE OR YOU WILL BE SORRY!!!!!

   We have installed this on over 20 graphics workstations, with plenty of RAM and resources, in eight different companies where they do serious Web development work. Not using it for 2 hours every few days on a personal page, serious 10-12 hours of continuos use work and it is a nightmare. We will not make that mistake again. ...




4. It has been 10 months since GoLive 5 was released with many bugs, oversights and memory/resource problems. Adobe has decided that, unlike Photoshop, Illustrator, LiveMotion and many of the other Adobe applications, GoLive 5, although the most unstable of all of the Adobe product line, does not warrant a dot release. Adobe must view this as a perfect application or they have no real control over the development team at the company that they purchased GoLive from.

   Besides the fact that this application will crash often when run along other Adobe apps in a heavy production environment, there are also many annoying bugs and oversights that, while on they’re own maybe seem minor, together they make GoLive a hair pulling, nail biting, desk pounding nightmare to use in a production environment on a project deadline.

   A few of the things you will have to deal with when using GoLive are:

   Application Problems - Frequent crashes and display problems due to poor memory and resource usage. Be prepared to restart your system many times during the day and cleaning up the many Backup files that GoLive leaves behind when it crashes.

   Color Palette Annoyances – Again, minor until you combine them with the other problems. The RGB palette does not lock into WebSafe colors. (unusual for a Web Development Tool). So, since you can’t rely on the sliders you have to type in the values. When you type in the first value and hit TAB to move onto the next RGB value, the cursor disappears. Where it goes, I have no idea. Hit the tab key again, and it comes back. You have to do this little double tap dance every time you enter color values by hand.

   Template Problems – GoLive has Stationaries in place of templates. The problem is that the stationary files link things differently than the rest of the site, so in many cases the stationary file shows the broken link icon next to the file name in the Site Window. I spent hours trying to figure out what was broken, only to find out it was GoLive. Also if you accidentally open your Stationary File in Preview mode and save, it looses it’s links to everything on the page including images. You have to click over to Layout View, let it break and close it without saving. Then you reopen it again it layout view. Make sure you close it in layout view when your done or you will have the same problem next time.

   Extended Character Problems – This will be the last one in my review because I could go on ALL DAY!!! Add a special character to your page by hitting ALT plus the number of the special character and the character appears. Switch to preview mode and go back to Layout and you will find a blue box with a question mark has replaced your special character. View it in a Browser and you will see something like &149; in your WebPage text. You have to go into source code and fix the character manually. Then GoLive and browsers will preview correctly, but GoLive will show a blank box in layout view. (There is a very long workaround to this problem,… very long!!!)

   GoLive would be a great application if it worked. Unfortunately, it does not.No Thanks!




5. I've been using Adobe Go Live for some time now and I have to say it's the best tool I've ever used for designing web sites. If you've used Adobe products before then you'll be right at home. I've tried Deamweaver but I just don't like it as much as Go Live. If you want your web site to look professional and really stand out then this product is for you. There are various books on the market that you can pick up which will simplify things a bit more then the manual that comes with the program. Read thereview on CNET I think it's really fair. Just read your manual and before you know it everything will fall in place.

No comments about Web Design Studio 4.

4 comments about Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio.

1. ha! another great piece of work from the nationally acclaimed company of macromedia! It rocks! a little bit expensive, but very much worth it! you can do ANYTHING!!!!!



2. I used the previous incarnation of Director when it was still on the Amiga (a very very long time ago) and recently, for a new job, I began to work with it as it has been rebuilt now. I was surprised that it was just as easy to use as before, but it was still deep enough that you could really get into it and get some truly amazing and powerful results from it. I would reccomend it to any developer, despite the high pricetag its much more than worth it for the use you will definately get out of it.



3. This is probably the best software in the world, for one reason only. You can easily create other multimedia software with it. Games for kids, adults, presentations for the boss, greeting cards, web based applications. The user interface is a bit difficult to get used to because it has its own programming language. You can click and drag, AVIs, MPGs, JPGs, GIFs, WAVs or any other file to create whatever you want with it. The big downfall about this software is that Macromedia comes out with a different version of the Shockwave studio once every three months! So you could pay for this, then another will come out!



4. Director is a powerful bit of software but I have a few complaints:
   1. It will make your entire system run slower - even when it isn't open. This ugly bear of a program works at a very low level in your software and can make applications like MS outlook malfunction or run so slowly you'll think they're not working.

   Of course if you have a machine to dedicate to developing your director projects, this is not a problem. This was the solution I came by to use it on projects that required shockwave for work. But if your computer is the one stop workhorse of your business, maybe this isn't the best thing to do to it.
   (I have run Director on Windows XP, 2000 and 98 and found the same performance problems - but least problematic on Win 2000 - the macintosh version may not have the same problem.)

   2. Lingo is a bizarre language to learn. Lingo is the scripting language you must use to unlock the full power of Director. But for anyone familiar with other programming/scripting languages like C++ javascript, or Macromedia's Actionscript for Flash MX will find the mixed syntax confusing and hard to learn.

   If this is the only language you ever plan to learn, then go ahead, do it. But frankly with a similar investment of time and energy ou could teach yourself C++ or Java and create the same sort of projects you could in Director - plus many many more- and you multiuser projects could run on UNIX Servers.

   In short, for most projects that people create in Shockwave, I would recommend doing them in Macromedia's excellent Flash MX. For more elaborate projects, do them in c++ or Java.

   Until Director tosses away the last of it's old stage metaphor lingo and replaces it with true object oriented programming it will remain an aging dinosaur losing ground against newer programs and technologies.

5 comments about Namo WebEditor 5.

1. My Namo Webeditor5 arrived today and I can't believe how simple, how easy, and how perfectly it worked. I read the other reviews here, all of which sounded good except for the last one. I wondered if it would really turn out to be as easy as it was proclaimed to be. Sure enough - it was! I LOVE this software and highly recommend it to anyone. The interface is so simple to use, but also packed with so many fabulous features. I can't wait to spend more time with it!



2. Namo Web Editor is by Jasc Inc. but orginally from South Korea's Namo Interaction, i was using the program for a long time in Korea too and I just LOVE the program. it's kinda expensive but it's worth it! and very simple and easy to use!



3. I'd like to say that this program is really easy to use once you get to know how. It has many features that not many of other programs has. And the other thing i wanted to say is that this program is originally from South Korea. And Jasc Inc. translated it to fit in English computers. I used Namo WebEditor when I was in Korea too. I have the 4.0 version but because I have a Dell computer now it doesn't work.



4. After extensive research, I selected Namo for its features and low price. Reading reviews from download.com, I almost purchased MS frontpage or macromedia's dreamweaver. But, I tried them all first by downloading trial versions and found that Namo is the best value. ...



5. At least for most. This program is so wonderfully discoverable. I would not call it simple for the beginner... but an excellent entry point to serious web building for the beginner. The program is expandable to the know-how of the advanced user, and definitely a scary challenger for the high-end/expensive big boys. I have explored Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive, Bonfire, etc... and my favorite pick is, and will most likely remain, this affordable gem.

No comments about Software, Steelsecurity, Antivirus,.

3 comments about Web Easy.

1. I purchased this hoping it would help me set up an initial front for my business. The packaging indicated that I could download the store front piece and have my web sight up 'easy'. You could not download the software you had to call and order it and when I received my order, it was the same Web Easy software I had already purchased. I was very unhappy and went out and bought MS Publisher which I LOVE!



2. A complete waste of money.

   This program only works as advertised if you agree to store you website on the company's server for a mere [charge] a month. The ability to store your page on for example geocities is possible, but after 2 hours I sure couldn't figure out how to make it work.

   The program itself is sloppy. User interface screens have incomplete text, unaligned buttons.

   When I returned it to the store, they didn't hesitate to give me my money back, because the employee himself had returned his copy as well!

   If I had the option to give this product zero stars I would have.




3. This software was a complete disappointment for me. From the package is look like it had some great tools. One major problem, if you want to edit existing web pages, DON'T buy this software. You can not edit existing pages. They must be made in web easy. This issue proved to be a major issue as I bought this software to to edit existing pages I had already made.