One of the most important pieces of software to have on your computer is an anti spyware/malware solution. The growth of spyware and malware has exploded over the past couple of years and it would seem that nobody is safe from it anymore. Every day thousands of computers are infected through various ways, even those who think they are safe can be very vulnerable to a spyware attack.

Luckily there is a solution, and so far it is the most effective one I have ever come across. Even as a veteran computer user I have become victim to malware in the past despite my knowledge. I have used several pieces of software in the past, some were effective at getting rid of it but for the most part I just wanted something that would stop it in the first place!

STOPzilla does exactly that, it offers a real time protection engine against spyware, malware, adware, browser hijack objects (BHO’s), dialers, root kits and many others nasty things that you don’t want to get onto your computer. Let’s take a look at what makes STOPzilla better than any other anti spyware software currently available.

Protection - STOPzilla uses a complex real time protection engine that sits deep down inside the operating system to monitor all activity and detect any spyware heuristics. The real time protection prevents any potentially dangerous file from being executed and causing havoc. STOPzilla is able to detect patterns in file activity that relate to spyware or malware activity and can quickly block them and quarantine them. It has one of the biggest databases of spyware and malware definitions and is able to detect practically every piece of spyware, adware, malware or root kit that can cause major damage to your data.

Not only that but it can also detect heuristics of undiscovered malware and stop them from compromising your system. This is great for what is known as ’0-day’ malware that has just recently been written and is not yet known by any other major anti-spyware companies.

Features - The real time protection engine is able to detect just about every nasty piece of software that is around, we are talking spyware, malware and adware but also things like key loggers, dialers, search redirects, root kits and many others.

There is also a scanning engine that will do a deep scan of your entire system and go through every single file and running process to check for any infections, you can then safely and effectively clean them up, it can even handle files that are in use and other stubborn infections that are normally very tricky to get rid of.

Another great feature is the pop up killer, I tested this out and found that it stopped just about every annoying popup you would get from normal browsing, it is able to detect advertising and spyware popups and block them, whilst at the same time still allow legitimate popups to display. It will also intercept and stop any popups that are generated by spyware or adware.

Support and updates – The support is one of the best features of STOPzilla. Firstly you get regular updates, sometimes twice daily that will update the spyware/malware definitions and keep you up to date with the latest forms of infection. This is probably the most important part of any anti spyware software; being able to stay up to date with new forms of malware that many other software packages would miss.

If you have any problems at all with the software or with any spyware or malware that you can’t get rid of then the STOPzilla team are on hand to help you 24/7. They are available via chat, email, online help and toll free calls. I used their customer service team twice and both times they were fantastic, very quick to respond and extremely helpful.

Usability - One thing you will notice about STOPzilla is how easy it is to use, all of the menus and screen’s are very straight forward and everything is self explanatory so you can’t possible go wrong. If you do get infected and STOPzilla detects it you are presented with a simple dialog to fix the problem. Changing settings are a breeze and all the options are easily accessible. Don’t be fooled by its simple appearance though, it is a very powerful and effective piece of software.

Cost and value for money - Finally we come to the cost; a year’s subscription for STOPzilla is only $9.95. For a whole year this is fantastic value for money especially with the support options you get and the regular updates. If there is only piece of software that you buy it should be an anti-spyware and malware solution. Free versions can be good but they rarely offer the real time protection that prevents spyware, adware and malware in the first place. For peace of mind alone a year’s subscription to STOPzilla is definitely worth it.

With STOPzilla on your computer you will have the best possible protection against all forms of malware and spyware and also brilliant support options should you need them.

You can download a free trial of STOPzilla to see just how effective it is. Click here to go to their download page or click the banner below!

When it comes to buying an office workstation I have always believed that there are only 2 manufacture options – Dell and HP. Both offer a massive range of systems to suit just about any needs that a home or office user has.

Today though I’m going to be reviewing the Dell Optiplex 360, the Optiplex range are very well suited to both personal and office use but their focus is around performance and reliability. Let’s take a look at the in’s and out’s of them and see if there worth the price tag.

Exterior and Design - The Optiplex 360′s come in two flavours – the full size desktop version and the smaller form factor version. Both designs are quite basic but at the same time they are nice enough. The front panel houses usb ports and the DVD drive as well as a plastic grill. The big advantage of the Optiplex 360′s design is the easy to remove case which makes any hardware changes very easy to do.

The workstations themselves are quite lightweight weighing in at around 10kg for the desktop version and slightly less for the smaller form factor version. All in all the Optiplex 360′s won’t look out of place on most desk’s and are quite modernised with some practical features thrown in for good measure.

Specification and Performance – As with all Dell Workstations you can customise the specification to suit your needs. As standard you will be equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.93GHZ. This should be plenty of power for most standard applications and multi tasking within an office environment. You won’t have any trouble running office applications, email and web browsing together. The standard spec also includes 2GB of DDR2 memory running at 800 MHz with 4GB being the upper limit. Once again you should find this amount fine unless you are using several memory intensive applications at once (think Visual studio, Photoshop and Dreamweaver together).

As for storage you will get a standard 300GB hard drive (sata running at 7200rpm) which should give you plenty of room for your applications and files. With storage being so cheap nowadays though this shouldn’t be a concern for many.

The standard graphics cards with the 360′s are Intel Media Accelerator 3100′s with the option of Ati Radeon 256mb cards as an optional upgrade. The 3100′s are fine for general media use and will even stretch to playing a few games, but of course if you’re buying a workstation you should be working, right?

The rest of the hardware is as it should be, a 1GB Broadcom network card and onboard sound. Pretty standard stuff really. All in all the Optiplex 360′s are good performers, I ran several tests with many applications and put them under pressure and they coped quite well. If you are planning on doing heavy multi tasking then you might consider the optional memory upgrade, it is the cheapest way to get the best possible performance from these workstations.

Having used several of these I have had no hardware related issues whatsoever, of the hundred or so that I have rolled out I have had no dead units and no hardware failures up until now (fingers crossed!). So these are certainly reliable systems.

Value for money – Buying a single unit of these will cost you somewhere in the region of $590 for the basic system. You can get optional upgrades for just about everything and this can soon start rolling the price up. For most scenarios I would only recommend the memory upgrade if you want to the keep the price down. The price itself is quite competitive and for the performance and spec you get I would say its good value for money.

As with everything it’s always worth shopping around for and you might find some great deals on these, going direct to Dell might also be an option and if you’re looking at ordering a large amount then you should expect a quite healthy discount.

Overall the Dell Optiplex 360′s are nice little workstations, they will suit most home and office users who use their machines for general work usage, word processing, excel, web browsing, email, graphics and so on are all handled well by them. These machines aren’t really recommend for gaming but with that being said they are still capable of playing some of the older games out there. Reliability is a big plus with the 360′s and in my experience with them I have had absolutely no hardware issues at all.

This is one of those questions that I see pop up now and again and every time I do it amazes me. With all the high level programming languages available that can aid you in creating powerful windows applications with the minimum knowledge I always wonder – why on earth would you want to program in binary?

Well the truth is a lot of people are curious as to how it works, it can be very rewarding in making something work with the lowest possible code available, and you can’t get any more basic than binary. But before you even attempt this you need to realize what you’re letting yourself in for:

• Your attention to detail has to be nothing short of amazing. If you get a zero or one the wrong way round your code will not work.
• Carrying on from the above point, if your code doesn’t work how do you plan on bug finding? You are presented with a string of 1′s and 0′s so be prepared for some painstaking work to find and fix bugs.
• Don’t even plan on writing anything of any decent size; it could take you days to code anything that is compilable.
• You won’t be able to segment your code; you will literally just have a big string of 1′s and 0′s, remember that!

If you are crazy enough to go ahead with this then you’re going to need a solid understand of bits, bytes, binary and hex. You can write your code in any text editor of your choice (preferably a basic one that won’t apply any kind of formatting or extras.).

What you will need to do then is write the code to either a file or a disk. How do you do this? Honestly I do not know and couldn’t find an answer either. It may be possible to convert your binary string into hex. You can then use a program called MPLAB that should allow you to view the hex file as x86 assembly, which can then be compiled into an executable.

Obviously it all depends on what your intended purpose is, but either way be prepared for some serious headaches!