What's Hot: Products From Vamsoft, Special Operations Software, and Alexander LAN

Stop Being Flooded with Spam

Vamsoft's Open Relay Filter (ORF)

Vamsoft's Open Relay Filter (ORF) integrates into incoming SMTP sessions and performs tests on email messages to determine if they are spam. If the incoming email message fails the tests, the message is rejected, tagged, or redirected. Tests include source checks and content checks to determine what is spam. ORF features a dual-filtering model, which filters email messages before arrival and upon arrival. By filtering messages before arrival, you don't have to waste time deleting spam. Filtering messages upon arrival lets you perform a wider range of tests.

John Knapp of Hartford, Connecticut, can't say enough positive things about ORF. He says, "ORF can perform DNS lookups against multiple REALbasic DNS lists; defer incoming email without a corresponding Active Directory account; defer transactions from machines without a sender whitelist/blacklist, a sender IP whitelist/blacklist, or a recipient whitelist/blacklist. The price is right too—talk about a no-brainer purchase. With such a small expenditure, no demo is even required for the bean counters! ORF is the best thing since sliced bread and peanut butter!" Pricing is $198 for as many as four licenses.

Reader John Knapp
Hartford, Connecticut
Product ORF
Company Vamsoft
Contact www.vamsoft.com, [email protected]

Identify and Delete Old User Accounts

Special Operations Software's Active Directory Janitor

Special Operations Software's Active Directory Janitor is software that lets you search the entire network to identify outdated computer accounts that don't correspond to real physical computers anymore. You can then delete or disable the unused accounts. The software features a standard Windows GUI and lets you choose between 15 properties when you're scanning your network environment. You can scan three ways: manually, from Active Directory (AD), or import. You can delete or disable the accounts in seconds. Pricing is $69.95.

Mark Bohlsen of Omaha nominated Active Directory Janitor as a product that helped him do his job better. He says, "I have an AD with about 7000 users. With such growth came old computer accounts. I wanted a utility that allowed me to clean up the old computer accounts. After some research, I found Active Directory Janitor. The utility let me scan the machines in my AD and sort by last logged-in date. After I selected the computers that were no longer in use, I deleted them from the same utility. The entire process took me about 10 minutes, and I deleted more than 800 old computer accounts. This is a great product and did exactly what I wanted it to."

Reader Mark Bohlsen
Omaha, Nebraska
Product Active Directory Janitor
Company Special Operations Software
Contact www.specopssoft.com, 303-524-1010

Resolve System Crashes

Alexander LAN's Alexander SPK for Windows

Alexander System Protection Kit (SPK) for Windows from Alexander LAN is a fully automated crash-management utility for Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems. The solution can resolve the cause of crashes on a Windows system in minutes rather than weeks. The product is available in an enterprise edition and a single PC version. Pricing for the enterprise edition starts at $499, and pricing for the single PC version is $39.

Michael Leeper of Des Moines recommends Alexander SPK for Windows to Windows IT Pro readers. He says, "With the installation of a small benign agent on servers and workstations, the product will detect 'blue screens of death' and act upon them. The agent captures a memory dump and restarts the affected server or workstation. When the server or workstation has rebooted, the agent will send a copy of the memory dump file to the central monitoring console, which will automatically begin debugging the file to determine the fault. Once the dump file has been analyzed, a detailed report, email message, and SNMP trap are automatically produced, which not only aids in the reduction of server and workstation downtime but also saves me time and energy on the analysis process and ultimately problem resolution. What an awesome product!"

Reader Michael Leeper
Des Moines, Iowa
Product Alexander SPK for Windows
Company Alexander LAN
Contact www.alexander.com, 603-880-8800