Avast made great strides in its previous update. Version 5 set the stage for the modern, massively popular, and free security suite with a new interface that ditched a quirky, late-'90s jukebox style for a more polished look. Easier to navigate, it also became easier to add new features.
Make no mistake; Avast 6 adds features both big and small. Some that had previously only been available to paid upgrade users are now free for all versions, and newer features have been seamlessly added to the interface experience. If you're familiar with Avast 5, upgrading to Avast 6 won't be that big of a leap.
Sabtu, 30 April 2011
Norton Anti Virus 2011
You get less, for less. Norton AntiVirus 2011 offers the same core high-quality computer and networking protection features as its more full-featured sibling, Norton Internet Security, but it lacks some key Web protection features that users shouldn't really go without
Avira AntiVir Premium
Avira AntiVir Premium not only combats viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, adware, and spyware, but also protects you while surfing and emailing thanks to WebGuard and MailGuard. It not only protects against these types of malware, but offers as well, in case of an infection, the possibility to remove viruses very easily and repair the system automatically.
It features AntiVir stops all kinds of viruses, AntiAd/Spyware protects against adware and spyware, antiPhishing protects your data from phishing attacks, AntiRootkit detects hidden rootkits, AntiDrive-by prevents downloading viruses while surfing the net, emailScanner examines incoming and outgoing emails (POP3/SMTP/IMAP), WebGuard checks downloads and websites for viruses, RescueSystem creates a bootable rescue CD, quick removal removes viruses at the push of a button, NetbookSupport support for computers with low resolution, AHeADTechnology detects even unknown viruses by their profiles, and AntiVirProActiv detects unknown viruses by their behavior patterns.
It features AntiVir stops all kinds of viruses, AntiAd/Spyware protects against adware and spyware, antiPhishing protects your data from phishing attacks, AntiRootkit detects hidden rootkits, AntiDrive-by prevents downloading viruses while surfing the net, emailScanner examines incoming and outgoing emails (POP3/SMTP/IMAP), WebGuard checks downloads and websites for viruses, RescueSystem creates a bootable rescue CD, quick removal removes viruses at the push of a button, NetbookSupport support for computers with low resolution, AHeADTechnology detects even unknown viruses by their profiles, and AntiVirProActiv detects unknown viruses by their behavior patterns.
AVG Internet Security 2011
The never-ending mantra chanted by security suite vendors sounds a lot like "faster scans, easier to use, better performance," and AVG has released a new version that it says accomplishes all three. Certainly, the scans are faster, it does install more quickly, and some tweaks to the interface have made it easier to use. However, changes to the engine that powers the detection and removal of threats has made it hard to come to a conclusion until independent labs return their efficacy results later this year.
Playstation Hacked!
Security researchers say hackers claiming to have credit card information stolen from Sony's PlayStation Network last week are trying to sell that information on underground Internet forums, but the veracity of the claims could not be confirmed.
Sony warned its more than 70 million customers on Tuesday that their personal information--including customer names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdays, network passwords, and user names, as well as online user handles--was obtained illegally by an "unauthorized person." Sony responded to the intrusion, which occurred between April 17 and 19, by temporarily disabling PSN and Qriocity, its subscription music service, and contracting with an outside security firm to investigate the intrusion on its network.
"While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility," a company spokesman wrote Tuesday. Sony said in an FAQ posted today that the credit card data was encrypted and reiterated that it had no evidence the data was stolen.
However, Kevin Stevens, a security expert with Trend Micro, said in a tweet today he had seen discussions on online forums in which the purported hackers were offering to sell a database of 2.2 million Sony customer credit card numbers stolen during the PSN attack.
"Sony was supposedly offered a chance to buy the DB [database] back but didn't," Stevens said, adding that, "No, I have not seen the DB so I can not verify that it is true."
"Supposedly the hackers selling the DB says it has: fname, lnam, address, zip, country, phone, email, password, dob, ccnum, CVV2, exp date," he said, referring. The less obvious acronyms refer to credit card holders' first name, last name, credit card number, and credit card security code.
Internet security blogger Brian Krebs, who noted witnessing similar activity, posted screenshots of the discussion on his Krebs on Security blog.
Neither Stevens nor Krebs said they had seen the actual database, but the information may already be circulating among cybercriminals. Reports began trickling out yesterday from PSN users about recent fraudulent charges on the credit cards they used for the PlayStation service.
An employee of GameFly Media tweeted that a colleague's card was used to buy $1,500 worth of goods at a grocery store in Germany. Meanwhile, a reader of gaming site VGN365 said his bank had informed him of a fraudulent $300 debit card withdrawal this weekend. And another person reported on video game forum site Neogaf.com $600 in fraudulent withdrawals.
The breach has already prompted a lawsuit and a letter to Sony from Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal saying he was troubled the company took a week to notify customers of the breach and urging Sony to provide free credit protection services to prevent identity fraud and theft.
Sony warned its more than 70 million customers on Tuesday that their personal information--including customer names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdays, network passwords, and user names, as well as online user handles--was obtained illegally by an "unauthorized person." Sony responded to the intrusion, which occurred between April 17 and 19, by temporarily disabling PSN and Qriocity, its subscription music service, and contracting with an outside security firm to investigate the intrusion on its network.
"While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility," a company spokesman wrote Tuesday. Sony said in an FAQ posted today that the credit card data was encrypted and reiterated that it had no evidence the data was stolen.
However, Kevin Stevens, a security expert with Trend Micro, said in a tweet today he had seen discussions on online forums in which the purported hackers were offering to sell a database of 2.2 million Sony customer credit card numbers stolen during the PSN attack.
"Sony was supposedly offered a chance to buy the DB [database] back but didn't," Stevens said, adding that, "No, I have not seen the DB so I can not verify that it is true."
"Supposedly the hackers selling the DB says it has: fname, lnam, address, zip, country, phone, email, password, dob, ccnum, CVV2, exp date," he said, referring. The less obvious acronyms refer to credit card holders' first name, last name, credit card number, and credit card security code.
Internet security blogger Brian Krebs, who noted witnessing similar activity, posted screenshots of the discussion on his Krebs on Security blog.
Neither Stevens nor Krebs said they had seen the actual database, but the information may already be circulating among cybercriminals. Reports began trickling out yesterday from PSN users about recent fraudulent charges on the credit cards they used for the PlayStation service.
An employee of GameFly Media tweeted that a colleague's card was used to buy $1,500 worth of goods at a grocery store in Germany. Meanwhile, a reader of gaming site VGN365 said his bank had informed him of a fraudulent $300 debit card withdrawal this weekend. And another person reported on video game forum site Neogaf.com $600 in fraudulent withdrawals.
The breach has already prompted a lawsuit and a letter to Sony from Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal saying he was troubled the company took a week to notify customers of the breach and urging Sony to provide free credit protection services to prevent identity fraud and theft.
Corel Draw X5
Long-time CorelDraw users know that it's the software equivalent of the Star Trek movies: if you try out every version you'll often be disappointed. But, if you follow a simple pattern to your upgrades, you'll get all the awesome ones without feeling like you're Corel's unpaid beta tester.
So every third version of CorelDraw – 3, 6, 9 and 12 – was a groundbreaking upgrade, and the other versions… not so much. Does the 15th iteration, CorelDraw X5, match up to our expectations?
Yes – and more. This is a home-run-and-the-crowd-goes-wild release that every CorelDraw user will want.
The headline features
An easy place to start is with the big stuff that Corel is shouting about: out-of-the-box 64-bit Windows 7 support alongside the 32-bit support for Windows 7, Vista and XP; true multicore support to put the latest and greatest CPUs to the best use; an all-new colour management system that matches anything Adobe can bring to the table; plus Corel Connect, which looks and works much like a simplified version of Adobe Bridge and is designed to give you a document-focused workflow.
What Connect lacks in Bridge-like scriptability, it partially makes up for by being available as a standalone app, or as a docker in CorelDraw and Photo-Paint – we ended up ditching Bridge because it took up too much screen space. Corel Connect might just make us think again.
So, those are the triple-A features that you'll find plastered all over Corel.com if you pay it a visit, and indeed the new colour system is a huge improvement: profiles are loaded and saved uniformly, mismatches are clearly flagged, you can soft proof from a docker, and there's no better way to show all that off than by playing around with the freshly added support for Pantone's Goe colours.
But even though these new features are great to have, they just scratch the surface. If you already push the software to its limits, it's the day-to-day changes that will impact you the most. And, boy, is X5 chock to the gills with them.
PNG actually works
Let's repeat that: PNG actually works. It irked us no end that CorelDraw X4 and earlier 'supported' PNG – a decade-old graphic format – but would insist that it couldn't possibly retain alpha transparency when saving, laying waste to our attempts at smooth edges and drop-shadows.
Those problems are gone: Corel seems to have thrown away its PNG and JPEG support and rewritten it from scratch, so you now get a super-sized export window that gives you full control over your files.
This means that even the most complex transparencies get saved perfectly every time. Yes, this functionality was in Fireworks from its first release and so is long overdue, but we're still grateful.
Dozens of other niggles are fixed too. Take rounded corners on boxes, for example – these have always been simple to do, but changing the size of the rectangle later would warp your rounded corners and they would stretch out of shape. In X5, the rounding is preserved and can even scale to auto-match the size of the rectangle you're working with.
What's more, it seems that Corel thought it would push the whole thing further while it was at it, so corner rounding has been joined by scalloping and chamfering too.
How about converting images to greyscale? Previously, this was a one-click operation that left you with a flat average of the colours and was pretty much guaranteed to leave things looking washed out. Now, you get to control the colour weighting with a live preview, so you can make your black-and-white work look extra punchy.
There are new image sprayers, new photo effects, smarter tooltips, more brushes, a fresh selection of graphics freebies (Helvetica, Garamond and Futura, anyone?), a redesigned object docker, and a new pixel preview mode in Draw that finally brings it up to speed with Adobe Illustrator 9.
In short, while the new features will hook you in, you'll be discovering and enjoying the hundreds of small improvements for months to come. At the very least, download the free trial – you get to try the full feature set for 30 days, and we think you'll wish, like us, that every CorelDraw release was this good.
So every third version of CorelDraw – 3, 6, 9 and 12 – was a groundbreaking upgrade, and the other versions… not so much. Does the 15th iteration, CorelDraw X5, match up to our expectations?
Yes – and more. This is a home-run-and-the-crowd-goes-wild release that every CorelDraw user will want.
The headline features
An easy place to start is with the big stuff that Corel is shouting about: out-of-the-box 64-bit Windows 7 support alongside the 32-bit support for Windows 7, Vista and XP; true multicore support to put the latest and greatest CPUs to the best use; an all-new colour management system that matches anything Adobe can bring to the table; plus Corel Connect, which looks and works much like a simplified version of Adobe Bridge and is designed to give you a document-focused workflow.
What Connect lacks in Bridge-like scriptability, it partially makes up for by being available as a standalone app, or as a docker in CorelDraw and Photo-Paint – we ended up ditching Bridge because it took up too much screen space. Corel Connect might just make us think again.
So, those are the triple-A features that you'll find plastered all over Corel.com if you pay it a visit, and indeed the new colour system is a huge improvement: profiles are loaded and saved uniformly, mismatches are clearly flagged, you can soft proof from a docker, and there's no better way to show all that off than by playing around with the freshly added support for Pantone's Goe colours.
But even though these new features are great to have, they just scratch the surface. If you already push the software to its limits, it's the day-to-day changes that will impact you the most. And, boy, is X5 chock to the gills with them.
PNG actually works
Let's repeat that: PNG actually works. It irked us no end that CorelDraw X4 and earlier 'supported' PNG – a decade-old graphic format – but would insist that it couldn't possibly retain alpha transparency when saving, laying waste to our attempts at smooth edges and drop-shadows.
Those problems are gone: Corel seems to have thrown away its PNG and JPEG support and rewritten it from scratch, so you now get a super-sized export window that gives you full control over your files.
This means that even the most complex transparencies get saved perfectly every time. Yes, this functionality was in Fireworks from its first release and so is long overdue, but we're still grateful.
Dozens of other niggles are fixed too. Take rounded corners on boxes, for example – these have always been simple to do, but changing the size of the rectangle later would warp your rounded corners and they would stretch out of shape. In X5, the rounding is preserved and can even scale to auto-match the size of the rectangle you're working with.
What's more, it seems that Corel thought it would push the whole thing further while it was at it, so corner rounding has been joined by scalloping and chamfering too.
How about converting images to greyscale? Previously, this was a one-click operation that left you with a flat average of the colours and was pretty much guaranteed to leave things looking washed out. Now, you get to control the colour weighting with a live preview, so you can make your black-and-white work look extra punchy.
There are new image sprayers, new photo effects, smarter tooltips, more brushes, a fresh selection of graphics freebies (Helvetica, Garamond and Futura, anyone?), a redesigned object docker, and a new pixel preview mode in Draw that finally brings it up to speed with Adobe Illustrator 9.
In short, while the new features will hook you in, you'll be discovering and enjoying the hundreds of small improvements for months to come. At the very least, download the free trial – you get to try the full feature set for 30 days, and we think you'll wish, like us, that every CorelDraw release was this good.
Photoshop CS5
Photoshop CS5 greatly expands the toolset that Adobe offers in its flagship product, charting new ways to make image manipulation easier while making older tools work better than before. Don't worry about the lack of a new interface, the new ways to get your project done make this version a must.
Photoshop has been in the English lexicon as a term to edit images for a long time, but the latest version of Adobe's flagship program stretches the canvas of manipulation much farther than ever before. The look of the program has changed so little from Photoshop CS4 that users of that version should be instantly comfortable with this major update, but Photoshop Creative Suite 5 Extended gives photographers, artists, designers, and LOLcats obsessives a stunning array of new tools. Among the new features in Adobe's flagship image-editing software are automatic lens corrections, High Dynamic Range toning, automated editing tools, and significant improvements to creating 3D images.
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