ZyXEL ZyWALL 35
Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Hardware, Networking Product, Review
ZyWALL 35 is a nifty and easy to use firewall in a small, yet rack-mountable form factor. Main feature of ZyWALL product lines includes:
- SPI based firewall
- IPSec VPN connection
- Integrated Anti-Virus, Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Anti-Spam and Content Filtering through third party service
Overall, this product is a great performer while small in dimensions. The front panel hosts 2 WAN ports and 4 LAN/DMZ ports. The LAN/DMZ port can be configured as LAN or DMZ segment from the web interface. At the back, there’s a PC-card slot which can be used with a wireless card or turbo card (UTM), but not both. There’s also a console port and modem port at the back of the unit. The modem port provides additional backup gateway solution through either 56K connection or ISDN.
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Tags: backup, encryption, security, zywall, zyxel
Vista: now, later or never?
Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under IT in General, Microsoft, Operating System, Review
Microsoft has acknowledged that Vista’s biggest competitor is none other than Windows XP. Windows XP is the standard desktop operating system in most residential and business computers. Even after almost half a year, XP still reigns supreme as king of desktop OS. The most common question that comes with Windows Vista is “Do I need to update?”. Vista is “supposedly” more secure than any other desktop oriented Windows OS, but how much secure is it? Even if it’s more secure, do you need the extra security? I believe that if someone can understand some basic internet safety, Windows XP is a good enough platform for desktop computing. There’s also Linux as the alternative solution for the brave souls.
In business environment, where upgrades usually comes in batches, switching to Vista might require a lot of changes. A lot of software may not play nice with Vista (i.e. VPN Client Software, Anti-Virus software, Accounting Software, etc). Vista also might require some hardware upgrades. One should really ask again, what is the ROI by switching to Vista? There are some who take the middle-ground stance and upgrade as necessary. For example, some companies I know of, only get new laptops with Vista, but will not upgrade existing fleet of laptops and desktops to Vista.
My personal recommendation for home user: If you’re upgrading your computer hardware, you might as well get Windows Vista as long as other software that you’re going to use also supports it.
Tags: Linux, Microsoft, windows
Exchange Archive – Mailmeter (I)
Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Microsoft, Review
Mailmeter by Waterford Technologies is a forensic, archival and policy enforcement tool for Microsoft Exchange Server (5.5 – 2007), Lotus Domino (R6, R7 or higher) and IMail (V8, 2006 or higher). For the purpose of this evaluation, I install the Mailmeter software for Microsoft Exchange 2003 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. I think the software does what I expected and more, but installation was not as breeze as I’d like it to be. On the up side, their technical support team is very helpful in answering my questions. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: archive, database, email, exchange, mac, Microsoft, security, windows