Recommended Tests

I decided to try Adelphia’s Freedom Internet Security (FIS).  Here are my findings so far.

First, my computer is equipped with two mobile-dock devices that allow me to move hard drives in an out of the top two, external bays of my computer case very easily.  Secondly, I’m currently using Norton’s SystemWorks Premier 2005 on my master hard drive.  Using the Ghost function of that software, I copied the contents of my master hard drive to a slave drive, thereby making a bootable clone.  After shutting down the computer and reconfiguring the slave drive to be a master, I removed my master drive and installed the clone in its place,

After booting, I de-installed Spybot, turned off all the protective functions of SystemWorks, and turned off the pop-up blocker of Internet Explorer.  Then, I began to install Freedom Internet Security.

The first problem I had was when I tried to download FIS from Adelphia’s web site.  I received a message the page wasn’t found.  However, the second time I tried to download, the proper page appeared.  I’ve repeated the process several times, and the first attempt to download each time results in a page-not-found error message.

The next problem I had was the download dialog box wound up underneath the page used to initiate the download.  After discovering and working around that little quirk, I seem to recall there was a second download dialog box that appeared after awhile.  In each case, the user is instructed to click on the “Run” and not the “Save” button.  Downloading and installation went smoothly after that, so far as I can recall.

Once FIS is installed, the user is faced with learning a bit about the software, updating it, configuring it, and scanning for viruses and spyware.  No viruses were found, which apparently means Norton’s AntiVirus has been doing its job.  However, about 64 spy programs were found, of which 63 were destroyed automatically.  I destroyed the remaining one manually.  Consequently, it appears Spybot has not been doing its job.

So far, I’ve had to stop pop-up blocking on two web sites in order to get all their features to work.  In addition, I’ve had to remove a blocked advertisement to allow the satellite pictures to appear on weather.com.  Inasmuch as these pictures don’t appear to be ads, I’m not clear about why they were blocked.

Currently, I use Adelphia’s e-mail service in conjunction with Outlook Express, both of which appear to be working properly.  For my amusement, I also have e-mail accounts with Yahoo and Google.  Yahoo e-mail seems to be working properly, but GMail is not.  The GMail web page appears and is somewhat functional.  Unfortunately, many GMail functions don’t work.  I’ve tried everything I can think of to make GMail fully functional but no dice so far.

Perhaps because I’ve used up all of my allowed installations of SystemWorks, because of copying the software, or whatever, SystemWorks has started complaining it needs to be activated.  Fortunately, it worked long enough to get FIS up and running.  Although SystemWorks is still working on my master drive, its license is due to expire in mid April.  Although, I won’t care about the loss of AntiVirus at that point, I would like to continue to use some of SystemWork’s other functions.  At the very least, I’ll need a backup software to replace Ghost.  So, it looks as though I’ll have to spend some money in spite of FIS.  Any suggestions about how to replace Ghost and other non-security functions of SystemWorks for free or inexpensively would be appreciated.