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IntY's MailDefender manages to squeeze quite a lot of mail filters and controls into an attractive and uncomplicated interface. We might have preferred the default first screen to be the useful quarantine summary (giving customer-wide mail totals), rather than the actual quarantining itself, but this was just a minor quibble.

MailFilter is a service with lots of good ideas, but it needs some final polish to really shine.

USB portable storage devices (or "sticks" as otherwise known) have become very popular as a handy means of carrying around your data, but what happens when you misplace the device? How safe is your data? OK, you could encrypt all the files on the device, but many users will simply not bother.

DigitalPersona Pro (formerly U are U Pro) for Active Directory is now at version 3.0 (the vendor tells us version 3.1 is now available) and is as slick as ever in its presentation, installation and general ease of use.

This might appear to be a slightly unusual product to include in this group test, but it qualifies as a potential biometric due to the use of signature verification, or fingerprints where applicable.

Saflink is a well-known and well-respected company within the biometrics arena, with many successful customized implementations to its credit. It seems like a natural progression, therefore, for it to bring its experience and expertise to the broader commercial product area.

This device is an exquisite little fingerprint reader with immediate visual and tactile appeal. Manufactured in Korea, it has been cleverly designed to offer flexibility of placement.

The SecuGen Mouse takes a different approach to providing fingerprint biometric logon facilities, in that it combines a good-quality optical fingerprint reader with an equally good-quality optical mouse.

LANDesk Asset Manager – actually an add-in to the comprehensive LANDesk Management Suite 8.1 application – provides a host of valuable functionality.

Altiris speaks in terms of "lifecycle management," by which it means managing your IT-related assets throughout their useful term of operation. This is enabled by the provision of a core Notification Server, to which might be added a Server Provisioning Suite, a Client Management Suite , (CMS), and an Asset Management Suite, (AMS). The Altiris brochure also describes a utility named the Wise Package Studio which, as you might expect, provides for software distribution.

Centennial Discovery 4.51 is a comprehensive, but easy to use, auditing tool which might be used with a variety of client operating systems. It requires Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or later, a run-time version of which is supplied on the installation CD.

This product is a straightforward and competent auditing tool whose apparent simplicity and ease of use will appeal to many system administrators.

Intuit Track-It! is a comprehensive suite of integrated modules which provide some interesting and useful functionality. The product is available in three flavours of Single User, Standard (facilitating multiple users) and Enterprise, and is nicely presented throughout with good documentation.

PC-Duo Enterprise is a well presented application that effectively steers users through all major functions via well-considered dialogs. This "learn-as-you-go" approach will suit the busy network administrator with limited previous experience.

This is a very interesting application which enables you to monitor compliance with policies via audits against your IT infrastructure. This alone would represent valuable functionality, but Security Expressions does not stop there.

Praise be! A software vendor that supplies a comprehensive and well-written printed product manual, and a host of other documentation to leave you in no doubt about the product, and how best to use it.

Installing Unicenter takes a little longer than average, but the process is glitch-free and logical, setting the tone for the use of the product.