Is AOL Playing Catchup?
As I have sat here the past few days watching some of the NCAA basketball tournament coverage on CBS, I keep seeing this advertisement for AOL that boast spam and virus protection software, concluding that AOL is an improvement to your basic broadband service.
AOL is not providing customers with anything new- antivirus technology is almost as old as the Internet itself and antispam software has been on store shelves for years. So is there any reason for an individual to pay $10-$20 a month to get these "protection" services for their broadband connection (pricing based on "AOL for Broadband" service which AOL is marketing to customers that have upgraded from dialup)?
If you are using dialup, it may be an incentive to sign up with AOL, because even while AOL should have offered these services years ago, the fact is that most of their competitors still don't. But if you are using a broadband connection, it is much easier (and cheaper) to purchase the software from a vendor like Norton, Zonelabs, McAfee, or Mozilla. While Rokland does not endorse any particular brand, Zonelabs has a free personal firewall called ZoneAlarm that does a great job protecting your PC online. A firewall is not enough though- you also need a strong antivirus program. Norton and McAfee offer good programs but they both charge license fees that are due every quarter or year (depending on the package you get) if you want to continue to get updates.
Another option is the free AntiVir package, which, in our testing, picked up several trojan horses not picked up by Norton Antivirus. This is not to conclude that Norton is inferior- but it would not be desireable to have both programs running at the same time- when we had AntiVir's virus guard running in the background, Norton kept going crazy.
When it comes to antispam technology, Mozilla.org's open source email client called Thunderbird (which has many features of Microsoft Outlook and is, in our opinion, more powerful than Outlook), comes with antispam software built-in. If you are a diehard Outlook user and don't want to change, there is also Norton AntiSpam which does a great job at keeping your inbox spam free.
Obviously you will spend some money to get the programs you need, but depending on how you do it, the cost will probably be much lower than what is offered by AOL.
Shameless plug time: if you want to get antivirus and antispam software on one CD-ROM, you should check out our Rokland Office Suite 2.0 package which is available here on CD-ROM for just $6.99 with free shipping. Get this, then download the free version of Zonelab's Zone Alarm Firewall and you will have everything you need to keep you secure for $6.99, and that, unlike AOL's package, is a onetime fee and not a monthly fee.
posted at: 11:20 | path: | permanent link to this entry