Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out The Bleeding Edge Of Software Email This Print This View My Personal Library Loading Zone March 2006 • Vol.6 Issue 3 Page(s) 68-69 in print issue Add To My Personal Library The Bleeding Edge Of Software Inside The World Of Betas AOL Explorer 1.2 Beta Official product name: AOL Explorer Version # previewed: 1.2 Beta Publisher: America Online Developer and URL: America Online; downloads.channel.aol.com/browser ETA: Q1 2006 Why you should care: Perhaps the best Internet Explorer-based browser available. The higher you are on the technology totem pole, the more likely you are to dismiss anything that AOL makes. AOL Explorer may change this; it’s perhaps the best blending of the Internet Explorer rendering engine with a Firefox-like feature set. It also has an interface that even beginners should find easy to use. AOL Explorer uses tabs, but it tries to reduce confusion by providing a Web page thumbnail. Just hover your mouse cursor over a tab to see what that tab’s Web page looks like. Additionally, you can drag and drop tabs. Sidebar functionality is also excellent. RSS feeds appear within one sidebar that you expand or collapse. Unlike Firefox, you can actually see the first paragraph of content for each item. Web searches automatically bring up another sidebar with search results, allowing for easier backtracking when you’re looking for something new. Although IE and security don’t exactly go hand in hand, AOL Explorer makes an effort to keep things clean. There’s a built-in spyware checker (which gets automatic regular updates) that identifies and removes common software problems, a hypertext link displayer (to help avoid phishing schemes), cookie cleaners, Whois domain checkers, and more. The entire package is highly polished and attractive, but this beta version is still rather slow and resource hungry. Opening many tabs increases disk activity and could even cause your paging file to expand. Still, if you must deal with IE-only pages regularly, AOL Explorer is a good way to use them safely and effectively. Now, if only there was a way to hide the “AOL” in the title bar. Seamonkey For Windows 1.0 Beta Official product name: Seamonkey Version # previewed: 1.0 Beta Publisher: The Mozilla Group Developer and URL: The Mozilla Group; www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey ETA: Q2 2006 Why you should care: If you use all the Mozilla apps, why not have them all in one package? Everything old is new again” goes the expression, and this is certainly true with Mozilla’s Seamonkey, a rebirth of the Mozilla Application Suite, which was a rebirth of the original Netscape Internet Suite, which was an outgrowth of the original Netscape Communicator. Seamonkey—based on the Firefox 1.5 browser code, complete with the new API and latest version of the Gecko rendering engine—combines a Web browser, email client, IRC client, and HTML editor into one package. Seamonkey will seem awfully familiar to anyone who has used Netscape since version 4 or so, right down to the browser buttons on top and the module selection buttons below. On the surface, most modules seem to have changed little, but it’s what’s underneath that’s important, and that’s the tight code base that makes Firefox and Thunderbird as fast and solid as they are. You might be wondering why there’s even a need for an all-in-one Internet suite. The original idea of making a standalone browser (Firefox), email client (Thunderbird), HTML editor (Composer), and IRC client (ChatZilla) was so that a user had to install only what she needed, saving memory and hard drive space. Ultimately, many Firefox users were also using Thunderbird, which meant the Gecko rendering engine and other common files were being installed and run twice, which defeated the whole purpose of splitting up the apps in the first place. Additionally, some enterprises still relied on an all-in-one suite. Hence, Seamonkey. The app works well, though due to its icons, it feels old. There’s no meaningful Help file, and Seamonkey-specific themes and extensions are few. Still, if having just one icon to start all your Internet apps appeals to you, you’ll like Seamonkey. Microsoft Windows OneCare Live Beta Official product name: OneCare Live Version # previewed: Beta Build 0.8.0794.44 Publisher: Microsoft Developer and URL: Microsoft; www.windowsonecare.com ETA: Q2 2006 Why you should care: An easy-to-use Windows security suite for those lacking such tools. One can see the humor in Microsoft offering a suite of utilities to help Windows XP users avoid problems relating to viruses, firewalls, downloadable updates, and file backups. Perhaps it’s best not to focus on a guest arriving late to the party, however, but rather that he managed to show up at all. Indeed, Microsoft’s entry into the crowded market of utility suites has a slick interface and some unique features, although the beta falls short in other areas. And of course, OneCare’s still unknown price makes recommending it tricky. OneCare offers you a nice, although not complete, suite of safety-related utilities. The largest component is the antivirus module that is made possible via technologies Microsoft acquired from antivirus firm GeCad. The virus scanner covers all the basics, including scanning incoming email, checking background processes for virus-like behavior, performing scheduled foreground scans, and downloading updates automatically. Unfortunately, it’s somewhat slow and less configurable than most of the competition, including such free virus software as AVG Free. OneCare’s virus encyclopedia provides paltry descriptions of many viruses, and Microsoft doesn’t offer downloadable removal tools. OneCare expands WinXP SP2’s built-in Windows Firewall nicely without adding undue complexity. Unlike SP2’s inbound-only firewall, OneCare monitors inbound and outbound communication, so if spyware or other nasty-ware manages to get inside, it can’t phone home. Using the app’s well-worded pop-ups, you can selectively open or close specific ports, grant access to specific programs, and determine which new programs can get access. You can also set which computer networks can have access to your Windows-shared printers and folders, which is very useful. Personal data is probably the most valuable information on your computer, and OneCare has a mostly painless backup strategy to protect it. Essentially, you tell the app what folders and file types are valuable, and once a week (or however often you configure it to), files are copied to an external hard drive (ideally) or burned to discs (meaning you will need to stick around to swap discs if necessary). Incremental backups can reduce the disc count for each backup, but you’ll need them all to restore files later on. There’s not much backup flexibility; you can only restore data with OneCare (either on your PC or another one running OneCare), and you can’t back up to network drives, Zip drives, USB thumb drives, or secondary internal hard drives. Still, compared to standard backup plans most users have in place (meaning none), OneCare is an improvement. Every week (or as often as you decide), OneCare performs a tune-up by running a virus scan, backing up data, defragmenting the hard drive(s), erasing safe temporary files, and downloading and installing any Windows updates. Many of these tasks are probably already happening if configured properly within Windows or via third-party software. It’s nice to have it all happen at once via one program, however. This seems a lot like Norton SystemWork’s One Button Checkup, but with a different focus. If you’ve spent any time dealing with the average computer user’s problems, you’ll undoubtedly notice a glaring omission to the OneCare suite: There’s no provision for dealing with spyware. For this, you’ll need Microsoft AntiSpyware, which is still in free beta form but will likely have a yearly subscription fee on top of whatever Microsoft charges for OneCare. And for complete protection, you’ll still need a second spyware program. Generally, OneCare has all the polish and shine of a retail Microsoft product. The installation wizards (performed within Internet Explorer as an ActiveX control), the GUI, and Help site all exude “friendly and helpful” via bright colors and well-written text. There’s no noticeable computer lag with all the bells and whistles turned on, and it doesn’t interfere with other similar software, although that’s probably because OneCare checks for competing products during installation and recommends you remove them first. If you lack any sort of firewall, antivirus, or backup software, OneCare may be worth considering, but if you’ve already invested in other software, you may be better off sticking with what you have. by Warren Ernst Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. 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