Whenever you get to talking about spam and viruses, you’ll find that a lot of users have their own personal favorite programs, just as a lot of users have a preferred operating system or a preferred laptop manufacturer.
This is all well and good, but it’s important not to get too rigid in the way you think about these sort of things. Me, personally, I’m a big fan of McAfee Security Center, but I try to remain open to the idea of possibly switching to something else sometime down the road.
As for spam, one of my favourites is Spam Filter Express. The only thing I really don’t like about this program is that the header on their website reads “Spam Filter Express is anti spam software and spam blocker to stop spam email”, and that reads like spam, doesn’t it?
But anyways, that aside, it’s a pretty good program. It works for Outlook Express, mainly, and it gets nearly one hundred percent of all spam, for as long as I’ve been using it at least. It also updates automatically with the new database of added, known spam sources, including email addresses and so on. It can also spot spam by all the obvious keywords, like Viagra and Webcam, and it can even block some of the lesser used spam keywords and disguised keywords, such as using Viagr@ in place of Viagra.
Of course, none of that means anything if the program isn’t easy to use, and Express certainly is easy to use. The interface seems to have been finely polished and tested over and over again to ensure a smooth, seamless experience when setting up configurations and other options. It’s simply just so easy to navigate and figure out for yourself, that you’re probably not going to click the “help me” file even once.
Actually, let’s dwell on that for a moment. Why is it that most programs make you choose between effectiveness and ease of use? We won’t name any of them, but we’ve all had trouble trying to figure out a program designed to give us a lot of options, only to come up empty handed. We’ve spent just as much time playing around with programs that are just too simple, and leave us with no options at all.
In other words, most spam filters seem to either want to babysit us, or throw us in the deep end. Express is excellent simply for the interface alone. It’s easy to figure out, but it’s not dumbed down. Why can’t more software designers build around that concept?
