There are a quite a few security
suites either available or soon to
be released. Two I am familiar with
are AOL's Security Center, available
only to AOL subscribers, and OneCare
from Microsoft, still in beta. AOL's
is based partially on McAfee
software, and it does it all, and
does it very well. I currently use
this on two of my networked compute
OneCare from Microsoft has not yet
been released, and I am currently
beta testing it, and have posted a
review
about it. It is scheduled to be
officially released in June of this
year, but will be available to be
subscribed to in April. When
released it will incorporate all the
necessary protections programs, run
and update them automatically, and
should qualify as a highly rated
security suite.
I
plan to stay with it, but will still
use Ad-Aware and Spybot run
occasionally manually too. Unless
things change, I will be
recommending OneCare when it is
released. from Microsoft.
There are other suites like
BitDefender, sTrust, F-Secure,
Norton's, McAfee, Panda, PC-cillin,
ZoneAlarm, Stop Sign, and probably
more. I do not have any personal
experience with these, but PC
Magazine recently did an article
where many of these were compared.
Click
HERE
to read this article.
One important note:
Most all of the security suites are
primarily designed to be used with
an always on, broadband connection
like T-1, DSL Cable or satellite.
Updating and scanning usually occurs
during the night hours when there is
no computer activity, but the
computer must be on, not in stand-by
or hibernation. Using any of them
with dial-up will still work, but
not as well since any updating can
only occur when the user is signed
on line.
Q. I have heard about a host of
different kinds of bytes and bits.
But what is the difference, and just
how big are they, and how much will
they hold in terms that the average
novice can understand?
A. A bit (short for binary
digit) is the smallest unit of
data in a computer. A bit has a
single binary value, either 0 or 1.
In most computers, it takes eight
(8) bits to make a byte. What byte
actually stands for is a mystery,
but one half of a byte is called a
nibble, so maybe whoever dreamt it
up was a starving programmer. A byte
can be visualized as the amount of
memory required to represent a
single character like an A, B, C or
1, 2, 3.
A
Kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes. The
prefix 'kilo' usually represents
1000, but since computers are
binary, all numbers have to be a
power of two. There is no power of 2
that equals 1000, but 2 to the power
of 10 equals 1024. Now, since 1024
is close to 1000, for ease in use,
the term kilobyte was used. A
kilobyte can hold about 1000
characters. To convert
Kilobytes (KB) to Kilobits (Kb),
multiply by 8. Bytes are represented
by the upper case "B" while bits by
the lower case "b". KBps = kilobytes
per second, and Kbps = kilobits per
second.
Next comes the megabyte, which is
1024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes.
To illustrate just how big this is,
a 500 page novel would take up about
1 megabyte. Most hard drives were
rated in megabytes not too long ago.
Now, they are rated in gigabytes.
A
gigabyte is 1024 megabytes,
1,048,576 kilobytes or
1,073,741,824 bytes. Then comes the
terabyte which is 1024 gigabytes,
1,073,741,824 megabytes,
1,099,511,627,776 kilobytes, or
1,125,899,986,842,624 bytes. The
entire Library of Congress would fit
in about 10 terabytes of memory.
To go on since we have come this
far, 1024 terabytes equals a
petabyte, 1024 petabytes equals one
exabyte, and 1024 exabytes equals
one zetabyte. One zetabyte is about
equivalent to 500 quadrillion pages
of text. (That’s a 5 with 17 zeros)
The largest term that I am aware of,
although there are surely more, is
the yottabyte, and it is equal to
1024 zettabytes. A yottabyte is
roughly equal to a 1 followed by 24
zeros, more digits than my
calculator can handle for sure.
