Cool Tech Reviews

From the Sophos Web site:

Removing rootkits without compromising system integrity is particularly challenging and needs to be done with care. Our free software, Sophos Anti-Rootkit, finds and removes any rootkit that is hidden on your computer.
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Using Sophos Anti-Rootkit is straightforward. Whether you use its simple graphical user interface or run it from the command line you can easily detect and eliminate any rootkits on your computer.

Get more information and download it by following the link.

Ed Bott has been doing some testing of the phishing filter in the betas of Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 and has some bad news for Firefox fans. While the IE7 filter seems to work very well, the Firefox filter needs a lot of work. And that’s a problem for today’s users of the phishing filter on the Google toolbar:

Frankly, this is baffling to me. Both Microsoft and Mozilla have been testing this feature for a year. In Mozilla’s case, the testing has been done by Google, which developed the technology as part of its Google Toolbar for Firefox. As a control, I installed Google’s Firefox toolbar on the latest official release of Firefox, 1.5.0.6. It failed to detect two obvious phishing sites as well.

He also has a detailed review of the security features of IE7 and Firefox 2 over at ZDNet.

Update: Ed Bott has more here.

I know, Microsoft and free don’t usually go together, but from time to time you’ve probably seen some Microsoft freebies and wondered if there might be more. Not to worry, Blake Handler tracked them down and made a list:

Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft
Microsoft has over 150 FREE Windows Programs available for download — but finding them all is extremely difficult. Until now, thanks to the Road to Know Where!

They are mostly utilities, some of which only a true geek would love, but there’s a little bit of everything including browser enhancers, screen savers, games, eBook readers, and a surprising amount of multimedia tools.