While most people just stick with spam filtering software, there’s been something of a rise in spam filtering hardware as of late. The reason for this is simply that, well, the spam filtering software does tend to take up a bit of your CPU and memory, and that can be a bit of a drain, slowing you down even more than a few spam mails could. By running on dedicated hardware, spam filters that aren’t simply a program you install can more efficiently reduce the amount of spam you’re getting, by simply not eating up any space on your computer’s system.
So the question is, do you need spam filtering hardware? If the question was simply “Do I need spam filtering”, this entire article would’ve just been the word YES in bold, hundred point font, because yes, you do need spam filtering. Whether you use software, hardware, or just relyo n the spam filter built into your email client, you do need to protect yourself from spam. Some spam actually only needs to be opened in order to release a ton of viruses into your system, meaning that a single slip of the finger, a misplaced click, hitting the header when you meant to hit the delete button, can wind you up with a lifetime’s worth of useless and malevolent programs eating up your precious disc space.
But whether or not you need hardware is different for each user. So we’ll simply use a few examples.
The kind of person who needs spam filtering hardware would be someone on a computer that is somewhat limited when it comes to RAM. To be honest, if you have a more up to date system, you’ve probably got anywhere from one to two gigs of RAM, and that is more than enough to run any good antispam program, so the answer is yes, if your computer has seen better days, antispam hardware is a great idea (not as great an idea as getting some more RAM, though).
On the other hand, if your computer is up to date, you probably don’t need the hardware at all.
Our advice is to give some antispam software a try and see if it gets the job done. If it doesn’t, if your computer runs slow or if spam gets through, go ahead and try something like Barracuda AntiSpam hardware.
And of course, whatever you do, don’t just go with nothing for your spam filtering. Keep that junk out of your inbox somehow!
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