Popular Email Clients

The era of ultimate digitization is upon us and it redefines our lives. Almost every day there are new inventions and innovations in the fields of IT, computing, and electronics. Technology is advancing in quantum leaps. For instance, it's been a while since we've sent traditional mail. Can you still remember the days when homing pigeons were trained to carry messages long distances? It was back around World War 2.

In this generation, sending mail to our friend located on the other side of the world takes less than a second. As soon as we send it, the destined user can read it. That's what I call innovation. Nowadays of course we call these e-mails, instead of traditional mail. The e stands for electronic.

Throughout this article, we are going to review some of the most popular email clients. First we will cover webmail and its characteristics, and then we can start reviewing. Reading this comprehensive article should inform you of the main features and functions that are possible and required for dedicated email clients. It is completely up to you to decide which one of them you will choose.

Email clients are also called Mail User Agents (MUA). In a nutshell, they connect to the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), which is basically the remote mailbox, and ask to retrieve the stored messages. In our case, these are the email messages. This retrieval is possible in two flavors: POP and IMAP. The main difference between these is that the latter allows flagging of the mails as read, unread, or forwarded, and allows folder categorization such as sent items, drafts, and trash.

Mail is sent via the SMTP protocol and the basic methodology is the same. They arrive at the MTA from where the user is able to retrieve it later on. Basically the MTA is the host where all of the mail is stored for each user on that host. The sign "@" (at) separates the name of the user from the hosting agent. It comes from ARPANET and it was introduced in 1971. We could say that ARPANET is the father of Internet.

This being said, I think you are ready to begin reading our comprehensive review.

Webmail

Web-based email, or simply webmail, refers to an email service that is fully web-based. The user can access it via a web browser, and therefore eliminate the need for a dedicated stand-alone desktop application, such as an email client. Here we are going to analyze the major advantages and drawbacks of webmail.

First of all, the most outstanding benefit of webmail providers is that they allow users to access their email box from anywhere in the world as long as they have access to a computer or mobile terminal with Internet Access. This is especially useful if you are where application-based email wouldn't be possible.

However, this aforementioned advantage also brings a significant drawback: the unavailability of the service without Internet access, meaning that the user cannot compose new mail or read older mail while offline. This is a setback.

Another advantage that we can mention is hassle-free access, because taking care of a desktop email client that requires updates, security patches, and bug fixes isn't appealing at all. Next, we have the security of our messages, because our mail won't get stored locally. We don't have to make backup copies in lieu of losing our precious mail. Some webmail services also offer antivirus and anti-spam functions.

Drawbacks of webmail services include the limited options for formatting email and their all-around security vulnerability. In the latter, we include "phishing" attacks, which are basically spam mail that try to "trick" the user into giving out sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. More often than not they masquerade as common trustworthy services such as eBay or Paypal.

A few years ago the available storage for spam was also an issue, but since the launch of Gmail the traditional email box sizes dramatically increased from 5-50MBs up to 1-5GBs. And some even went further, offering unlimited storage. Anyhow, in my opinion, currently it's rather inconsequential whether the provider offers 5GB+ or simply claims unlimited space. At this time, we could easily say that these are the same thing.

Furthermore, Gmail offers specific features that are really useful. For example, the service groups messages received and/or sent from/to the same people into "conversation blocks." This is only done visually but it does the trick; it's very helpful when following sequential mails. Additionally, the "search within mails" function is great to have.

Last but definitely not the least, thanks to the sudden growth of AJAX-powered techniques and the capabilities of this successful programming language (web development), online services have gradually become redefined by mimicking the look-and-feel of desktop clients. Lately, many of the providers have transitioned to AJAX.

Right now, the following three providers are occupying the top ranks for webmail services: Yahoo!, Hotmail (now called Windows Live Hotmail), and Gmail. The position of Google Mail is uncertain due to the lack of official statistics. But compared to the first two competitors they fall short on the number of user accounts as well. Nonetheless, Gmail was launched just "recently" (2004) compared to Hotmail and Yahoo! (1997).

All in all, webmail services are reaching a stage of maturity where I'd be tempted to claim that they are powerful enough to replace desktop clients, but that's just my opinion. There's a lot of headroom for improvement as well as other functions and fixes that must be incorporated, but we could be impressed. As far as security goes, please, do your best not to be fooled-never give out sensitive data! Be careful.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is the email and news client developed by Mozilla Foundation. It is completely free, open source, and cross-platform. The guidelines under which it was designed are the following: superlative security, refined organization, and sophisticated customization thanks to their ability to enhance the client with extensions.

First let's talk about its security enhancements. We have top-notch SSL/TLS support for connections to IMAP and SMTP servers. Native support for S/MIME secure emails isn't neglected either. Because it renders HTML on a particularly developed system, this boosts its overall security.

This solid security is enhanced by a powerful Bayesian-based anti-spam system. Bayesian is a form of spam-filtering that is very capable of differentiating spam mail from legitimate mail. Therefore, its all-around accuracy increases over time because the user is able to make corrections each time a "misclassification" happens.

Additionally, we have a rather impressive anti-phishing filter. However, a lot of additional fixes and enhancements are required in this system. The reason for that is mostly because, unfortunately, phishing techniques are evolving almost on a day-to-day basis.

Now we are going to cover Thunderbird's supreme organizational functions as well as its customizable look-and-feel, due to its ability to import specific themes. You have search functions, message filtering and grouping, and additional labeling options. Multiple accounts are also supported. Themes are a nice thing to have especially for users that enjoy turning their computer experience into a pleasurable one. You can download these CSS packages with images from Thunderbird's Add-on site.

I'd like to point out a great extension. It's called Enigmail. It adds public key support for Thunderbird. Per-account based encryptions, inline-PGP and PGP/MIME, OpenPGP key management interface, encrypt/sign mail, and decrypt/authenticate mail upon receiving are all natively supported. I am certainly advocating its usage.

All in all, I am handing out a combined 9 out of 10 points for Thunderbird. Overall, I'm satisfied with its performance. However, just as with Firefox, particular extensions are pretty much required in order to turn Thunderbird into a very powerful, efficient, and solid email client. What would I improve? Its LDAP support and anti-phishing system.

Opera Mail (M2)

Opera Mail is incorporated into the freely distributable Opera Internet suite along with the web browser. It is both an email and news client supporting POP3, IMAP, Atom, and RSS feeds. It is a very discrete and lightweight client. Its interface is quite different compared to stand alone clients because it is totally incorporated into and acts as a part of Opera. You manage emails as you would with an internal feed manager.

The most required features aren't forgotten. It has an anti-spam system that works on both algorithms: automated and learnable (Bayesian). Opera Mail automatically sorts the mail into two independent groups: with or without attachments. You have different view options, such as to display only mailing lists, etc. Its search function works fine.

Moreover, you can label some of your mail (i.e. funny, valuable, important, to do, etc.), so you can find them easier later on. Some of its major drawbacks are that the user cannot format composed mail since only plain text is supported for creating new mail. As far as displaying mail, here HTML is also supported because it uses the Opera browser's engine to render HTML code.

It is a pretty lightweight and solid client that has nothing but the "most-needed" features. It is by no means an outstanding client, but since it's incorporated into and shipped with the browser suite, some people might not even want another client because it could easily satisfy their needs. Another con is the lack of enhanced security functions.

Summing these up, I'm giving it 6 out of 10 points. It does a great job though.

Outlook 2007

Outlook 2007 is known under its full name Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. It is part of the Microsoft Office 2007 suite and is more than an email client. It is a fully functional personal information manager showing off features, such as personal notes, journal, address books, task lists, calendar with significant dates (anniversaries, appointments, birthdays), reminders, email, fax, instant messaging, and news feeds.

Finally, we can say that Outlook 2007 is a classy application that is jam-packed with all of the functions that may or may not be required by users. Obviously, it is licensed under Microsoft's proprietary EULA and it costs a fair price. Compared to its 2003 counterpart, at least now it includes a full-featured RSS and Atom reader.

Office 2007 is by no means perfect software though. For example, the anti-spam and anti-phishing system works only on an automated signature-based basis and isn't able to learn on the Bayesian algorithm. Then there's no NNTP (network news transfer protocol) support. Some people were also disappointed by the fact that Outlook 2007 doesn't integrate fully with the Fluent interface (the name of the new GUI).

You can see its particular light bluish interface; it contains tabs, toolbars, ribbons, buttons, galleries, and other fancy stuff. Microsoft tends to call it an "intuitive user interface." Nevertheless, this kind of UI improves the user-friendliness of the application and it gives a yummy look-and-feel to Office 2007.

All in all, Outlook 2007 redefines Microsoft's approach toward Outlook and fulfills all kinds of user requirements. Personally I would prefer it if there were more attention placed on its security, such as enhanced encryption functions, instead of its intuitive UI that doesn't even integrate well enough. The system also struggles with support for multiple accounts; likewise theme support is almost totally neglected.

Summing these up, it deserves 9 points out of 10, mostly because it is a huge improvement compared to Outlook 2003. Its all-around security is higher (particularly HTML rendering). This time it wasn't quickly released, thus, it outperformed our expectations for a Microsoft email client. Notwithstanding, it comes in at US$109.95.

You've come to the end of this review. By now you should feel prepared to choose one of the clients presented here or maybe another alternative. Either way, I have given you a comprehensive review of a few of the most popular email clients. You can pick any other client, go by the same scheme of reviewing, and see for yourself how they work and what their offerings are.

Before we finish this article I am going to suggest a commercial email client. It is "The Bat!" developed by RITLabs. It is a very sophisticated and feature-laden stand-alone email client that has won numerous awards and prizes (52 to be exact - link).

It is much respected in the world of email clients, occupying a top position mostly thanks to the following characteristics: protection of privacy (support for authentication protocols and encryptions), an HTML rendering and displaying system that defends the user from malicious codes, a smart sorting function that also features auto-responding or confirmation mails, and it is jam-packed with lots of templates, too.

We could also mention the following features: fast address book and the powerful import wizard, multi-language interface, built-in backup systems to prevent accidental data loss, and even accidental deletion (message parking). Combine this with a text-editor that supports highlighting and anti-spam features (Bayesian).

All in all, it is a very solid client that, despite its huge list of features, has very low system requirements. It might be a great deal if you or your business wants an "out of box" product that is simply fantastic. It's free to try it, but acquiring a license costs $25, $35, and $45 for student, home, and pro editions, respectively.

If you prefer a freeware alternative to the ones presented in this review, then I'd advocate checking out the following: Pegasus Mail (unfortunately the project was discontinued in 2007 due to dwindling financial support and apparently it is expected to become a donationware).

Furthermore, we can't forget about Eudora (the light edition of v7 is freeware and starting from v8, the "Pegasus" is completely freeware), Koma-Mail (the approach is minimalist without sacrificing security and it's a client that doesn't require installation, thus, a handy utility for a removable USB stick), and Revolver Mail (the email client that's able to act as a centralized communication system, allowing users to share the same calendar, etc.; it lacks anti-spam functions, but it renders HTML very securely).

Improve Your DSL Connection

Whether I am on chat or with friends, at least some of my friends will ask this question "SREE, Is there any way to Improve my DSL Connection?". As this is one of the common questions I experience, I thought to write an article about it. If you have any doubts please comment it.

As life seems to keep getting faster, we want our technology to keep up. This is especially true of our Internet connections. If you're looking for a way to squeeze more speed out of your web surfing and online research, keep reading. The information in this article won't help everyone, but even if it doesn't help you directly, you might find it useful.

Hardly anyone connects to the Internet using dial-up these days, or so it seems. Broadband connections cost considerably more than dial-up ever did, but many people are willing to pay the price for the extra speed. Are they getting a fair deal? Or, to put it more bluntly if you use a broadband connection: are you getting the throughput for which you're paying?

In this article we'll focus on how we can fix the problem if your answer is "no," and how we can notch up our Internet speed. To start with, we should get a few things straight. First, the main factor that influences your Internet speed is your contract with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). You will never have more bandwidth than you are offered by the company you're using.

The second point to remember is that some connections offer the maximum speed possible already; this is due to the technology used. Therefore, if you have anything other than a DSL connection (does optical fiber ring a bell?), preferably an ADSL connection, then I have bad news for you. This article won't cover/contain anything useful to you; maybe some basic knowledge of DSL at best. Still, being informed is always an advantage.

We'll start with a little basic information about DSL connections so you can easily understand the obstacles that lay between you and the maximum speed that you were told you could achieve when you signed the contract. As soon as we get through the theoretical part we are going to start looking into some real-life situations.

There are dozens of applications that promise major speed improvements. I will explain them to you shortly. Let's see what works and what doesn't! Which ones manage to match expectations and which fail to offer any benefits?

The Theory

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a technology that provides digital data transmission over the wires of the local telephone network most of the time. This is achieved by dividing the transmitted frequencies into two major categories. The low frequencies assure the telephone's data stream while the higher ones are used for the DSL.

In this way DSL can offer a bandwidth in the 512kbit/s to 24,000kbit/s range depending upon the type of technology. That's why DSL can offer some very high speeds, satisfying the ambitions of most users. DSL can be divided into two types. There is ADSL, which stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, and SDSL, where the first S letter indicates, as you may think, Symmetric. With the first type, the upload/download bandwidth ratio is asymmetric (resulting in a higher download speed and a pretty low upload speed), while the second type offers the same speed for both of the data transfer actions.

ADSL is more popular, for both marketing and technical reasons. The technical reason is that the asymmetric arrangement offers more than double the bandwidth of SDSL. The marketing reason is that, with ADSL, higher speeds can be advertised, and also most users download more often than they upload.

ADSL and VDSL (Very high speed DSL) divide the "band" into two sections. The low "band" frequency (between 300 and 3400HZ) carries the voice and is named POTS (Plain Old Telephone Signal). The high "band" portion is reserved for DSL (between 10 and 100 KHz).

On its own, DSL segments its band further into 4312.5 Hz channels. The channel allocation can continue up to 1.1 MHz for ADSL, until the the channels on demand are unusable. The speed of your Internet directly depends on the number of channels. The image below shows how it's divided for ADSL. PSTN stands for public switched telephone network, and is reserved for the use of the telephone.

A filter is applied to the frequencies before they reach the telephone in a home with DSL, eliminating the DSL stream. This filter does not cause any interference or reduction in the quality of the phone signal received. Guided by this the idea you can easily see why you can speak on the phone and browse the Internet at the same time. The two have their own transfer "bands," and before they're used, filters eliminate the unnecessary data, processing only the streams addressed to them. It's filter power all the way.

The upper limit of the stream depends on the length and quality of the loop (the frequencies). Thus, you can see why the distance between where the data is streamed and the modem is so important. The higher frequencies travel a shorter distance. With the distance from the source (usually a DSLAM), some of the signal is wasted, and signal and speed are lost.

DSL uses copper wire for optimal transfer quality. If the wire has faults the frequencies "travel harder" and again, signal will be lost. In an optimal situation, older ADSL provides an 8Mbit/s transfer rate for a 2km (1.25 miles) distance for unshielded twisted pair copper wires. The new ADSL2+ can do, under the same conditions, 24Mbit/s speed. Above this distance, bandwidth drops quickly and dramatically. This problem can be solved by installing ADSL loop extenders.

ADSL supports two methods of data transfer. The first is fast channel, which is best for streaming multimedia, where occasional bit drops can be allowed but lag is forbidden. The other method is the interlaced channel, designed for file transfer. No corrupted bit is allowed, and to prevent corruption the same bits can be resent, even with the cost of higher latencies.

As for the potential hidden in DSL, you should know that in 2007 Dr. John Papandriopoulos (from the University of Melbourne) patented an algorithm that can boost DSL speed up to 205MBit/s. This said, we can conclude that we are talking about one of the most promising services.

In most countries, copper wire connections have already been developed for the wire phone, and even with the cost of the additional equipment, it's still cheaper than creating a new optical fiber network from scratch. In 2004 the US started to see Dry-loop DSL after Qwest started offering it. This is also known as "naked DSL," consisting only of the DSL band; the POTS line is eliminated. This type of service has increased in popularity with the spread of cell phones, since many customers decided that they no longer needed landlines.

More Factors to Consider

The time has come for us to see the factors that influence your bandwidth. You should know the difference between b and B. The first stands for bit and the second for Byte. A bit is equal to one-eighth of a byte; eight bits equals one byte. For some obvious marketing reason the bit is used more; psychologically, the higher the better. However, in the world of computers, the KB is more used.

Therefore, if you sign up for a contract with 1 Mbit/s then you should expect a bandwidth of 128 KB/S. That's the theory at least; in practice, it's more trouble for DSL. Communications equipment vendors use ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), ignoring the content type of the data. ATM is a protocol for transferring data between two points. The Internet uses IP as the protocol for communicating, therefore, and in particular, TCP/IP.

This way the data is going over your DSL line via TCP/IP over ATM. TCP grants you overhead in transmission that can go down to three percent, while ATM overhead is even more, ten percent usually. So you may experience a speed penalty of about 13 percent compared to what you signed up for. Following the previous situation, a 1 Mbit/s connection in practice would result in a 1024/8 - (1024/8) * 13/(100) = 1024/8 * (87/100) = 111.36 KB/S sped limit under ideal conditions. Thus, 87 percent efficiency is the speed you should look for if you are under the 2 km distance from the server. If you are further away, you can expect a considerably higher speed drop.

Now that we've alluded to the speed that's offered by your ISP, we need to look at some further issues that can lead you into errors regarding your download speed. If you don't have a dedicated download manager, the integrated one in most browsers fails to indicate the correct speed upon the start of the download. Look at the start speed above.

This is due to the fact that data can buffer up before the timers are started. This causes exaggerated readings, especially when only the beginning segment of the file has been received. The speed you are really using is obviously the second one.

This problem with your download speed can be caused also by one or more viruses inhabiting your system, so scan your PC if you experience a download speed drop. If you experience some issues that can be caused by a faulty OS configuration, make sure you visit the DSLReports site. It is dedicated to these kinds of problems and you can make a test at the following link: http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks.

After finishing the tests the result will show you both the problem in your connection and how to resolve it by providing a very BIG database with many FAQs explaining the problems along with their solutions. Make sure you don't miss this site.

Solutions

By now we have localized the problem. The question remains: how we are going resolve it? You may observe that the Internet is full of software that is named as if it is a dream come true for our problem: "download accelerators." In most cases the name is only a marketing move. The marketing team pumps up interest around the product. But in essence the only way it could make a difference is by sending multiple requests to the server, which ask for the file you are downloading.

You see, most servers still suffer from the bandwidth problem. To solve this issue they incorporate some sort of bandwidth limit. So one computer has only a specific amount of bandwidth allocated, which the owners think should be enough to use the service (in the case of video streams, like the mms protocols), or a speed that will attract most visitors without scaring them away from the site.

If you found a server like this where your download speed is, let's say 100 KB/S, but you have at your command a much faster speed (like 200KB/S) from you ISP, then you can "cheat" the system by using a "download accelerator" of this type. It connects to the server several times and requests your file. For example, let's look at the FDM (Free Download Manager) and a local television station (namely Antena3.ro).

Should you still want more information about download managers, you can check out the article on this site titled "Popular Download Managers Reviewed " by Barzan 'Tony' Antal. It is a comprehensive review of the most popular download managers.

So back to our problem. The local channel offers a FLV (flash-based video) stream of their past television programs, so you can watch them if you missed the live broadcast. Now most of the time, or rather at peak hours, the download speed of the video if you start it in the browser is barely enough to watch the show; screen hang-ups are part and parcel of the experience.

With a little extra knowledge you can "cheat" the system. Let me show you how. The problem is that even if you set the Adobe Flash Player to download files of unlimited size to your hard drive you are limited by the server.

Start up the site. Find your video and just view the Page Source of the site. For Mozilla Firefox follow the View -> Page Source (or Ctrl+U) path, while for Opera Right Click -> Source (or Ctrl + F3). If you are viewing the source then you just need to get the link to the video. It helps if you know the extension, for example flv, and search for the extension. The link you find should be valid. Double check!

In my case it was: http://***.***.***.***:7575/video_show_10_14210.flv (the asterisks stand for the IP of the server). Now all you need to do is copy and paste the link into your download manager. Enter it at the Add Download (or Add URL) part and enjoy the high-speed download procedure. This way you may finish the download in just a few minutes, and after that you can enjoy every second of the show with a player.

In some happier situations the process described above may be skipped with a little help from your manager, as most of them offer video grab for the major sites (like Youtube, Metacafe, etc.). But with this we can say that the performance increase is caused by your download manager.

cFosSpeed

To investigate more ways we can improve our download speed, we pop over to an interesting product. It's called cFosSpeed. It's already at version 4.2, which suggests that it's more than a marketing gimmick. After you install it, your first impression will confirm this. For openers, you get a nice little user interface, with a jumping icon in the right corner of your skin. It has a pretty straight-to-business attitude. I'll try to display the same attitude in analyzing it, so let's start with the results.

I measured the impact of the application with the ultra-popular site www.speedtest.net. Check out the results; I've taken measurements on two servers to increase the overall accuracy of the results.

1. Before cFosSpeed without file transfer:

2. Before cFosSpeed during the file transfer:

3. AFTER cFosSpeed - Aimed at Bandwidth:

Without file transfer:

During the file transfer:

4. AFTER cFosSpeed - Aimed at Ping Times:

You might have noticed that I left out the "after" results during file transfer. I've done this because the results were almost completely the same as they were beforehand without file transfer, so to save space I decided not to include another screen shot.

Let me explain the results. If you are pursuing higher bandwidth, and here we're talking about raw KB/S, then this program won't solve your problem. It managed to get a few extra bits in but not enough to clearly improve our download speed. This could be mainly because my ISP does quite a good job and I'm close to the 87 percent efficiency of the technology.

I observed that the speed meter built into the program fails to deliver an accurate speed measurement. It shows constantly a speed around 330KB/S-320KB/s, while I had 320-310KB/s, measured with some trustworthy programs like DuMeter. This is the usual method used in some other so-called "download managers;" they show some higher speeds, but the actual speed is lower.

Some good results can be observed when we look at the ping speeds. My ping time instantly improved to around 10ms; during file transfer this could be double the speed without the program. This program is a must-have for any gamer that suffers from low ping times.

As a side note, here are the specifications of the test environment. Of course all unnecessary applications were closed during the tests. For the file transfer period I filled my download bandwidth by downloading AVG Antivirus 7.5 from software-downloads.

• Operating System: Clean Install of Windows XP SP2 Build 2600
• Browser Used: Mozilla Firefox
• Net Type: ADSL 3 Mbit/s net provided by ARtelecom

The speed at which we connect to the Internet is quite fragile. There are so many factors to consider, and so much can go wrong. If you have a DSL connection, even if everything is operating well and according to the plan, you won't enjoy the speed advertised by your ISP. Of course the bandwidth you'll be promised is usually under a policy of delivering the Best Effort. So the company isn't responsible for offering the highest speed. It offers to you what it is able to in the specific situation.

That means you'll see some high ping times and some low speeds for the download and upload section. Furthermore if the network becomes agglomerated, these penalties go even higher due the fact that the DSLAM is overwhelmed.

In this situation the intelligent user searches for a way to improve his/her life and try to use the service for which s/he is paying each month to its full potential. Although the net is quite full of so-called "download accelerators," the reality is that the heyday of the dial-up connection is gone, and with it, the software that actually made a difference.

But all isn't lost. In some unique situations a download manager can make a difference; if you play some games and the lags are making you go crazy, give cFosSpeed a try. It may not improve the speed for a well-configured setup, but it could give you the edge you need for enjoying your in-game experience while you download data from the Internet.

But regardless of any software, the best method you can use for improving your download/upload speed is to contact your ISP and sign a contract for better speeds. The drawback is that you'll have to pay more.

Popular BitTorrent Clients

Who would have guessed that Bram Cohen's peer-to-peer communication protocol could ever achieve this kind of success? Even the man himself probably couldn't have forecast its popularity when he designed the BitTorrent protocol in April 2001. However, the protocol as well as the client applications started to mature from early 2004.

"When I first started working on it, nobody knew whether it was possible to overcome all the logistical problems of handling a flash crowd. It was challenging, but not only did I get it to work at all, but got it to work extremely efficiently. More recently, I'm proud of being part of the team that has worked hard to convince content publishers and enterprise businesses that unlike other p2p architectures, BitTorrent is a legitimate and incredibly powerful tool for content delivery." -Bram Cohen

Simply put, the glory days of the BitTorrent (abbreviated BT) protocol started in 2004 and its veneration is still steadily growing on an exponential level. In terms of importance, the BitTorrent protocol virtually crushed and eliminated all of the other contemporary file-sharing solutions. P2P networks such as Direct Connect (DC++), eDonkey (eMule), FastTrack (Kazaa), and Gnutella are all things of the past.

It's rather impressive that according to some of the most recent statistics done by Evidenzia (an enterprise that specializes in collecting, analyzing, and archiving the traffic of P2P networks), the number of files that are released under the BitTorrent protocol have nearly tripled compared to last year. As a result, in Q3 2007, BitTorrent reached a peak milestone.

This being said, we think that it's a priority to dedicate an article to reviewing two of the most popular BitTorrent clients. At first, we're going to give you a brief overview of BitTorrent networks, how they work, what clients are for, and ultimately explain the most important terminology: seeds, peers, swarm, tracker, leech, etc. Once you're familiar with the tidbits of this P2P protocol, we can move on.

You can already anticipate reading a comprehensive comparison of the following standalone BitTorrent clients: Azureus and μTorrent. As a result, we guarantee that as soon as you finish reading this article you will be hooked up with the necessary knowledge and information to feel at home in the world of BT networks.

Now that you're prepared, let's begin with the brief introduction, general terminology, and then continue with the all-embracing and in-depth review of those aforementioned freeware clients.

BitTorrent by its very nature is a peer-to-peer protocol designed for transferring files. It works on the methodology of multiple users uploading and downloading small segments as parts of a file or files. The client is a software application that enables the user to take advantage of the BitTorrent protocol. It communicates through it.

The central server that manages the connections is called the tracker. Basically, it logs the seeds and peers that are in the swarm. It is really important to point out that the tracker does not have copies of the files; therefore, it cannot be involved directly in the data transfer. The tracker exchanges information with the clients. That is its job.

In BT terminology, a peer stands for an instance of a BitTorrent client that is connected to the Internet and is able to accept connections from other clients. By definition, a peer does not have the complete file yet, just parts of it. Nevertheless, if the client has the complete file and offers to upload it, then we call that a seeder.

Other terms that you should be familiar with are leech, lurker, share ratio, swarm, and snubbed. The swarm is the combined group of peers and seeders that share a specific file. Therefore, all of the clients that are involved in the data transfer are building up a swarm.

The leech is a person that downloads more than uploads. This is when the share ratio of a leech is called poor or negative (it's below 1). Share ratio is calculated as follows: total uploaded/total downloaded. That's why below one means that the leech downloaded more than uploaded and thereby has a negative effect on the swarm.

A lurker is a seeder that does not add new content. By no means should a lurker be confused with a leech because the lurker seeds all of the already downloaded files. Furthermore, the term snubbed is used to describe a client that does not upload any data for more than 60 seconds, for whatever reason. This is a flag that works based on the feedback given by downloading clients.

Last, but definitely not least, we need to introduce the torrent file. It's a file that contains the metadata (name, size, checksum) of the files that the particular file makes available to download. The metadata also contains the address of the tracker that organizes the connections between peers and seeders. In general, this file sports a .torrent extension.

Now that we've covered all of the required BT terminology, let's talk a bit about how the system works and why it's so effective. Sharing content directly via websites is a very challenging approach, even though umpteen mbps bandwidth services are dominating. Keeping up with the high number of downloads is a headache for network and system administrators. The sharing option is definitely not a cheap one.

The underlying reason that supports the development of the BitTorrent protocol is that it popularizes the technique so that users are both uploaders and downloaders. The file is split into numerous segments and the redistribution approach is usually the "rarest first" or random. The more users are seeding the content, the higher the transfer speed gets and healthier the swarm becomes. The server acts just like a manager (tracker).

It really makes sense that organizing exchanges between users and hosting metadata files, which are very small in size, is very efficient and less resource-dependent than hosting the file as a whole and handling all of the work. As a result, file-sharing gets decentralized and the bandwidth of the central server is freed up.

Moreover, the second outstanding advantage of the BT protocol is that it offers much greater redundancy because it eliminates the not-so-negligible unfortunate possibility that the server will go offline for whatever reason. The transfer speed can also reach extreme peaks because of the dynamic bandwidth allocation on all of the clients.

Recently the BitTorrent protocol was enhanced with DHTs, which are Distributed Hash Tables. Thanks to its distributed systems nature, it allows users to connect and continue transferring data even with the absence of a dedicated tracker. It was a huge step toward decentralization, scalability, and fault tolerance. Lately, DHT has gained prestige.

Companies such as Blizzard (World of Warcraft) and Valve (Steam) adopted this protocol as their main distribution method in order to deliver updates, patches, and so forth. It isn't uncommon at all to find various Linux distributions downloadable via BT protocols.

Azureus

Azureus is a Java-based, cross-platform freeware BitTorrent client licensed under the GNU GPL. It is one of the oldest clients (2003) and according to the SourceForge statistics, also the most popular, having been downloaded 156,825,483 times at the time of writing this article. It's recognized as the most stable and feature-laden client.

The bundled feature list is really impressive. It allows multiple torrent downloads, upload and download speed limitation (globally or per torrent), configuring advanced seeding rules, and adjusting disk cache. It supports fast resume, can use proxies, its interface is highly customizable, and of course, we cannot forget about DHT support. It also uses only one port for all of the torrents, and includes an IRC plug-in to ask for help with ease.

The latest stable release of Azureus at the time of writing is 3.0.3.4. Starting from version 3, Azureus redefined the way they approach P2P file-sharing, launching a new platform called Vuze Platform. Vuze is a media sharing application that acts just like YouTube, but is limited only to high-definition video content. Vuze also sells DRM-protected content.

Moreover, since Azureus 3.0, the user has been required to accept a modified version of the GNU GPL license prior to using the application. That also includes the Vuze-license and prohibitions for people under the age of 18. This is because Vuze sports a graphic browser as a main interface, where mature content may be presented.

All in all, Azureus is a very stable BT client that's jam-packed with dozens of features. It sports unique functions, such as the Vuze platform, and incorporates its very own DHT support, which is incompatible with the original BitTorrent release. Due to its Java nature, it is very resource intensive and some people find that it "eats up" their RAM. You also need a fairly powerful CPU. If your rig is antique, forget about Azureus.

Azureus mostly benefits those avid BitTorrent users that are truly going to use some of its outstanding functions and are willing to spare enough system resources. For the casual user that does not want to be heavily involved in the "inner structures" of the BT protocol, then Azureus may be overkill. Critics say Azureus is trying to reinvent the wheel. Anyway, try it out and see for yourself.

Summing up, we hand Azureus 8 points out of 10. We subtracted one for its performance and resource clogging, but unfortunately that's what developers need to put up with when working with Java in specific cases. Likewise, another point is lost due to its high level of complexity. Its design is by no means intuitive.

uTorrent is a freeware, Windows-only proprietary BitTorrent client. It is also called microTorrent thanks to the Greek μ letter prefix. It is considered the most lightweight, compact, and efficient peer-to-peer BT client. At the time of writing, the latest stable version is 1.7.5, and its size is 214kB. It was totally coded in C++ using custom-coded libraries and then compressed with UPX (.exe packer) to reduce its size.

It was already gaining recognition from the first days of its launch. Some of the most obvious reasons for that are its reduced size and the fact that it doesn't require installation. Because of this, it's extremely portable and resource efficient. Isn't it impressive that the client is able to run on a Win95 system with 486 processor and 14MB RAM?

It was designed to showcase most of the functionalities offered by other standalone clients, such as Azureus and BitComet, while using minimal resources. It's been months since uTorrent received top ratings in all kinds of reviews, considering its performance, stability, built-in set of features, and support for antique hardware.

It sports de facto standard functions, like multiple simultaneous downloads, configurable bandwidth scheduler, speed limiting (global or per-torrent), quick resumes, mainline DHT (compatible with BitTorrent DHT; trackerless support), HTTPS tracker support, customizable GUI (skins, etc.), embedded tracker, supporting proxies, protocol encryption (PE), configurable disk cache, and RSS support.

Summing up, uTorrent satisfies the "feature-rich and graphically empowered" guideline considering its level of performance, stability, effectiveness, and features. It's also impressive that all of the modern and powerful features are presented in a very understandable way so that they don't create confusion for those people that aren't familiar with the BitTorrent protocol systematization.

On December 7, 2006 uTorrent was acquired by BitTorrent, Inc. This means that they have implemented most of uTorrent's code in their own BitTorrent client, which was basically the first client developed by CEO Bram Cohen himself. As a result, the latest version of BitTorrent is in fact a re-branded version of uTorrent.

All in all, uTorrent deserves a 10/10 rating. In short we highly recommend trying out uTorrent as a BitTorrent client for people from all walks of life. It offers satisfying performance and feature-laden-ness for everybody from Joes and Jeffs, up to die hard Torrent fR3aK f4NaT1Ks (over-enthusiasts).

Final Thoughts

In this article we reviewed two of the most popular BitTorrent clients. We started this article with a brief overview of the BitTorrent protocol. By now you should be familiar with the necessary terminology and feel able to join in.

Furthermore, we're sure that you have already decided which of the presented BitTorrent clients you are going to choose. Needless to say, there are dozens of other alternatives. Should you prefer a larger variety of software, then check out BitComet, the original BitTorrent client, Shareaza, and perhaps Rufus. Also, we shouldn't forget about the built-in torrent client for Opera browser. You may want to see how it works.

Now that you're well prepared, you might want to immerse yourself in the BitTorrent community. It's a community built up by more than 150 million users. You are going to be blown away by the amazing speed of transfers, because depending on the situation, you may very easily reach your bandwidth peaks.

Popular Firefox Extensions

Mozilla Firefox is the world’s second-most popular web browser right after Microsoft Internet Explorer. One of the main reasons it has gained such a quick and steady rise in popularity is because it’s very secure, fast, and fully customizable. At the moment there are more than 2,000 extensions that can be used as add-ons. In this article we’re going to review the most popular ones that improve the way we surf the Web.

The purpose of this article is to open up a world of possibilities and expand your horizons, if by any chance you aren't familiar with some of these extensions. Firefox is an amazingly fast, secure, and neat browser, but right out of the box it might look quite plain and simple. That's the beauty of it. However, it has an amazing community that develops thousands of free add-ons as extensions.

Before we begin, I'd like to make one thing clear: as explained previously, there are hundreds of extensions so please understand that I'll do my best to pick extensions from different categories, the ones that I personally like and have found quite effective. You shouldn't limit yourself, however, because there are lots of others that are more obscure, perhaps undeservedly so.

Therefore, extensions from the following categories are going to be reviewed in this article: web development, download management, bookmarks, social & communication, themes & appearance, feeds, news, blogging, photos, music, videos, privacy, security, search tools, language support, and much more.

We're going to rate extensions considering their features, usability, effectiveness, and user interface. Our target is to find the "must-have," most popular extensions without which we shouldn't use our Firefox, because they can improve our overall productivity and help us gain peace of mind throughout our web surfing endeavors.

Tab Mix Plus is one of the most outstanding extensions in the category of themes and appearance. Simply put, it enhances the tab browser capabilities of Firefox big time. Surely, over the years many of its features were already built into the standard Firefox, but this little extensions still does more than we'd expect from it.

Everybody recommends this nifty add-on because of its high-quality session manager. Among others, it also sports productive functions such as duplicating tabs, undo closed tabs/windows, tab clicking options, control tab focus, etc. The bottom line is that every Firefox enthusiast should try out this extension.

Advertisements are one of the main profit sources for many web developers and companies, but under no circumstance should one webmaster ignore common sense and exploit the patience of visitors. However, every now and then we run into websites where there are more ads than content, and these ads take much longer to download than the rest of the entire web page. That's why Adblock Plus was invented.

This extension is really lightweight and truly effective. You can activate the context menu, right-click on the advertisement banner, and then pick "Adblock." With around 282,893 downloads right at the moment, we can consider this a vital part of the lives of many Firefox users. If you want to get rid of ads, Adblock Plus should be your choice. Apparently, it performs better than the older Adblock variation.

In one of my earlier articles I recommended FlashGot. I mention it on the sixth page of my "Popular Download Managers Reviewed" article published at Web Hosters. Be sure to check it out because I won't review it here as well. What it does can be explained in a sentence: it handles the integration of more than 40 download managers so that you can use your favorite application with Firefox too.

If you don't want have any stand-alone and independent download manager that you prefer, you should opt for the DownThemAll! extension. Unlike Flashgot, this does not rely on other applications; it refines the way your standard Firefox download manager works. You can consider it an enhancement. One of its key features allows the user to download all links and/or images from a web page. Moreover, this feature is expanded by the ability to verify MD5 checksum and even rename files.

It is beyond the scope of this article to explain what FTP stands for. However, if FTP makes any sense to you, then chances are you're going to need a cross-platform FTP client quite frequently. If you do, wouldn't it be amazing to have your FTP client right within Firefox? Yes, it is -- and yes, you can. Download and install FireFTP because that's what it's all about.

Other than being fast and efficient, this "extension"-based FTP client is also secure, since it supports SSL encryption. We should also name some of its other features: directory comparison, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop functions, file hashing, and even syncing directories while surfing others sites! It uses the same cache as Firefox so "cache-clearing freaks" should be aware of this.

Almost a decade ago in the late 90s IRC was really widespread; almost everybody was having conversations "via the IRC" thanks to the Internet. Running an independent application such as mIRC isn't an option when you want to chat within your browser, perhaps from your work (which you shouldn't, of course!). ChatZilla has quite a few features and most importantly, a pretty neat, customizable, and intuitive user interface.

This extension provides all of the functions that you would expect from a de facto standard IRC client: support for multiple servers (simultaneously), that stupendously long list of standard networks, logging options, DCC chat, file transferring capabilities, and you can customize the style of the user interface (colors, highlights, fonts, sizes, etc.) with CSS as well as add plug-ins written in JavaScript. Try it out!

Lately, everybody and their dog knows that the storage space of Google Mail is literally huge and still increasing. Even if we have long forgotten the notion of deleting mails from Gmail, I think that most of us are way below 50% of our total storage space. Having this in mind, Gspace is a highly effective and truly ingenious extension. After installation, it acts as an FTP host where your Gmail is the storage.

The interface is intuitive, as you can see from the attached screen shot above. Basically, your Gmail storage space becomes the virtual FTP host which you have the ability to use for file storage. It's advisable to use the tagging features because it dumps all of the files into your In box, and when you have tagged them you can also quickly reach them and do whatever you want (perhaps filter them out and whatnot).

Google Toolbar is also worth mentioning. It is one of the Internet's earlier toolbars and technically supports almost all kinds of web browsers. It is basically a toolbar with lots of features such as enhanced search capabilities, the ability to share web pages with friends, bookmarks, custom buttons, and so forth. Give it a try.

The next extension we're going to talk about here is called IE Tab. It was originally created for web developers because it basically incorporates IE's browsing engine as a built-in feature for which you can opt when you are opening a page in a new tab.

Web developers could find out quickly how their site would look in Microsoft Internet Explorer thanks to this plug-in. But since we can come across sites that are optimized for IE only, this is where all of us can benefit from using this extension. It's such a shame that some webmasters ignore browsers such as Firefox, Opera, and Safari, focusing just on IE - however, that's mostly their loss. We have the solution!

Now that we've mentioned web developers, I cannot afford to forget about the extensions called Web Developer. This adds a new menu jam-packed with various useful tools for web developers. Let's enumerate a few: it allows lots of functions to work with CSS, forms, images, cookies, has built-in validation tools and options that can gather dozens of information items from a site, lets you disable and/or specify scripts, edit HTML on-the-go, resize the current web page, display rulers and outline frames, etc.

I truly believe that this utility shouldn't be left out of the toolkit of any Firefox web developer. As a final note to web developers, but also experienced people in the field, I would recommend checking out Greasemonkey. It allows users to customize the way specific websites are displayed and some parts of them are executed. It works based on "user scripts," and hundreds of them can be freely downloaded.

Over the years as Greasemonkey was gaining prevalence, lots of developers were creating all kinds of user scripts. Many of them focused on Gmail-simply trying to add enhancements to the powerful Google Mail. Later on, one of the authors decided to compile a collection of Gmail-related Greasemonkey scripts and release an extension that does everything right out of the box. It's called Better Gmail.

If you are using Gmail's new graphical user interface then you are going to need the new Better Gmail 2. Some of the most outstanding things that turn Gmail into a better place are features such as different skins, attachment icons, and label colors, keyboard macros, saving recently used searches, filter assistant, conversation preview, attachment reminders, and much more. They call it Gmail on Steroids...

And lastly, let's also cover a multimedia extension: FoxyTunes. In short, FoxyTunes is a media player with a myriad of features that gets integrated into Firefox. You have the ability to configure the face of the player, specifying whether you want to have volume control on the toolbar, see the artist and title of the music that's currently playing, and more. It is very lightweight and works effectively.

The main features of FoxyTunes can be summed up as follows: integrate with your favorite player, see what's playing, action controls, volume control, seek, collapse panels, show and hide player, and lots of customizable skins. All in all, this is a cross-platform extension which integrates an effective player into Firefox.

Yes, that's right; you've just arrived to the end of this article. I'm sure that you've found it educational and informative. Surely, as you've already realized, there are literally thousands of Firefox extensions, so picking the most popular ones and reviewing them isn't an easy task; on the top of that, it is highly subjective.

Therefore, the extensions that I have chosen to review independently are just my personal picks for my personal needs. Each one of us has different needs and we do ourselves a favor if we are using extensions that we really need. Believe me, a friend of mine runs almost fifty Firefox extensions out of which he barely uses five, at most. That's not the point of extensions.

It makes sense to try out various extensions, even hundreds of them, but if you have found the ones that you like, you should keep those and get rid of the rest. Unnecessary extensions can cause memory leaks and even affect the overall security of Firefox. Keep in mind, a bad code or a defective user script can also spark lots of error messages, incorrect page renderings, and ultimately lots of headaches.

Fantastico De Luxe

Installing new web applications can become a nightmare, especially if the server isn’t our own, and we can only access it remotely. Today’s hosting providers are almost without exception sporting cPanel as their web-hosting site configuration and administration control panel. Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications, and fully integrates into cPanel. Best of all, due to its recent popularity surge, most providers feature it.

In this article I am going to present the aforementioned Fantastico De Luxe auto-installer for cPanel. This article presumes a general knowledge of cPanel's features, how it works, what it does, how we can access it, why we need cPanel, and similar questions.

Our target objective with this article is to give a brief overview of Fantastico de Luxe, finding out what it does and tackling its list of supported web applications. Ultimately, we will discover whether it's a feasible option and safe enough for us to rely upon. Therefore, you can expect some general opinions regarding its usefulness, efficiency, intuitiveness and security.

It is also worthwhile to point out that, since Fantastico is a commercial script library product, we won't consider the options of purchasing it ourselves. Thankfully, as I mentioned earlier, almost all web hosting providers have bought and included Fantastico in their portfolio because it is a worthwhile investment for them. But for private use, it's quite worthless, and you won't be able to benefit from its advantages.

Summing these up, if you are running your own server, it would be pretty much worthless investing in both cPanel and then Fantastico just to automate the installation processes for yourself. If you own a server, you have more than enough professional experience to read the "read me" guides and figure it out yourself, or if things go wrong, you know enough to ask for help in forums and so forth.

Nevertheless, if you own a web hosting company then you should think it through because, as we will find later on, it can be used quite well as a "client attractor." Moreover, if you are like most people, then chances are you have signed up for a plan at a web hosting company such as HostMonster, HostGator, BurstHost, 3ix, BlueHost, Webhostingpad, InMotion Hosting, and thousands of others. And then you can access your cPanel by logging in, looking inside, and being surprised that Fantastico is supported.

That being said, let's move on and find out together the capabilities of Fantastico.

Brief Overview

First of all, we should know that Fantastico's website claims that, with more than 10,000 installations, they are serving more than one million users all over the world. As you would have guessed, I don't have the necessary resources to verify this claim, let alone find out the exact number of Fantastico users, because this would require extensive research done by a professional organization or statistics firm.

Fantastico is an auto-installer. This means that it handles automatically and "automagically" the installation of numerous popular open source web applications without requiring any interaction on the user end (there are a few exceptions). On a technical level, Fantastico is a script library, meaning that it is a collection of "installation scripts" that manage installation automatically.

No doubt that this "looks good" in the eyes of people without any experience with web servers, such as installing additional applications on them, and so forth. That's why cPanel has gained so much success and become the world's most popular web server site administration control panel. Fantastico was designed based on cPanel's success. That's why full integration is given with cPanel.

As you could see from the above screen shot, Fantastico de Luxe appears just like any other cPanel component in your control panel (cPanel front-end), assuming that both are pre-installed and supported by your NOC [Network Operation Center] or web hosting provider.

Often you can check right before purchasing a plan whether cPanel and Fantastico are supported. They may not explicitly state "Fantastico," but saying something along the lines of "installation scripts" almost always point to the presence of Fantastico. But it's better to know for sure; ask the live support or phone the company.

Fantastico runs only on cPanel-based servers running on Linux or FreeBSD with a working back-end PHP installation. Of course, root access is also required. This is important only if you want to acquire Fantastico for your own web server (if you have lots of clients) for personal use, it's pretty much worthless. At the time of writing this article, Fantastico can be acquired for the following prices:

20 Fantastico De Luxe licenses = 480.00 US$

20 Fantastico De Luxe VPS licenses = 240.00 US$

50 Fantastico De Luxe VPS licenses = 550.00 US$

Now let's check some of the open source web applications that Fantastico supports:

Blogs:

· b2evolution (1.10.2) (website)

· Nucleus (3.32) (website)

· WordPress (2.5) (website)

Content Management:

· Drupal (6.1) (website)

· Geeklog (1.4.1) (website)

· Joomla 1.5 (1.5.2) (website)

· Joomla (1.0.15) (website)

· Mambo Open Source (4.6.3) (website)

· PHP-Nuke (7.9) (website)

· phpWCMS (1.1-RC4 Rev. A) (website)

· phpWebSite (0.10.2) (website)

· Post-Nuke (0.764) (visit site)

· Siteframe (3.2.3) (website)

· Typo3 (4.1.5) (website)

· Xoops (2.0.18.1) (website)

Customer Relationship Management:

· Crafty Syntax Live Help (2.14.6) (website)

· Help Center Live (2.1.4) (website)

· osTicket (1.3.1) (website)

· PerlDesk (4.012.2) (Commercial, needs license) (website)

· PHP Support Tickets (1.9) (website)

· Support Logic Helpdesk (1.2) (website)

· Support Services Manager (1.0b) (· OS Commerce (2.2 Release Candidate 2a + buySAFE) (website)

· Zen Cart (1.3.8a) (website)

F.A.Q.:

· FAQMasterFlex (1.51) (website)

Hosting Billing:

· AccountLab Plus (2.8 r14) (Commercial, needs license) (website)

· phpCOIN (1.4.1) (website)

Image Galleries:

· 4images Gallery (1.7.6) (website)

· Coppermine Photo Gallery (1.4.16) (website)

· Gallery (2.2.4) (website)

Mailing Lists:

· PHPlist (2.10.5) (website)

Polls and Surveys:

· Advanced Poll (2.03) (website)

· phpESP (1.8.2) (website)

· PHPSurveyor (1.0) (website)

Project Management:

· PHProjekt (5.2.2) (website)

· dotProject (2.1.1) (website)

Site Builders:

· Soholaunch Pro Edition (4.9.1 r10) (Commercial, needs license) (website)

· Templates Express (website)

Wiki:

· PhpWiki (1.2.11) (website)

· TikiWiki (1.9.10.1) (website)

Other Scripts:

· Dew-NewPHPLinks (2.0.1.0b SEF w/Thumbshots) (website)

· Moodle (1.9) (website)

· Noah's Classifieds (1.3 [Patched-1]) (website)

· Open-Realty (2.4.4) (website)

· phpAdsNew (2.0.11-pr1) (website)

· PHPauction (3.2) (website)

· phpFormGenerator (2.09c) (website)

· WebCalendar (1.0.5) (website)

The above list is quite extensive, right? Now all of those applications can be auto-installed without requiring user interaction. This means that you don't need to create a new database, set up new tables, configure the necessities, chmod the files to the required permissions, and who knows what else may be needed, depending upon the web application. An automatic installation process usually takes a few seconds.

Last but not the least, Fantastico also offers some of the following features: email notifications regarding installations and removals, display warnings in case of outdated versions or new security patches, and alerts for security issues and tech updates. You can also use the report/fix problem option within the Fantastico panel if one of your installed applications doesn't work properly. The removal process also works quickly and accurately.

General Thoughts

Throughout the earlier section we saw most of Fantastico's characteristics and learned its basics and working methodology. In general, Fantastico looks too good to be true, and in fact, quite "fantastic" as its name subtly suggests. In this section we'll go deeper a bit.

The open source community cannot legally prevent the creation of alternate third party installers such as Fantastico de Luxe. That's why many other "auto-installers" are also on the market, out of which Fantastico seems to be on the leading edge. However, usually the authors of the web applications that are supported by these install-script libraries stress that they do not recommending using them.

The main reason is quite intuitive: they have absolutely no control over the third party installation script and, thus, cannot guarantee that their product will work flawlessly to contribute the most to the end-user/client. I'm sure you have also noticed on the previous page that each supported web application was accompanied by a particular version number - heck, some were only RCs (Release Candidates).

Surely, Fantastico does a great job of keeping up-to-date copies of these applications, but another problem can be derived from this. Web hosting companies often acquire Fantastico licenses at some point and then hook up their servers with it, so every user/client/customer receives it preinstalled. That's great, but over time they neglect to update their currently existing versions.

That's why users need to understand that they are responsible for their own web space or dedicated web server. The provider does it job offering the "virtual space" and guaranteeing high up times, but as far as your web site is concerned, they won't bother to update your web applications, install security patches, and so forth.

As presented earlier, Fantastico has a feature related to notifying the administrator (user) about the latest security fixes, issues, and newer versions. This means that if you are aware of the fixes, you can take proper action, logging into your Fantastico and installing the patches, applying the fixes, or even reinstalling the application (backing up and/or maintaining the DB without deleting the tables with entries).

The situation becomes trickier when a particular provider keeps an outdated Fantastico version, combined with really old web application editions, such as years-old Wordpress, Drupal, 4gallery, and you name it. Then the new user registers and signs up for a new plan, logs into his/her cPanel, finds Fantastico, and installs lots of apps. Later on, if this person is lucky, s/he finds out the apps are outdated (if Fantastico notifies). However, those notifications can go unnoticed, or who knows, fail to arrive.

For example, Drupal-the leading and most popular open-source CMS-has a public disclaimer related to Fantastico de Luxe auto-installation scripts. You can read it here. Yes, that entry dates back to August 1, 2006; but the situation still exists and will always exist as long as network operators and hosting providers don't do their best to maintain their copies in order to satisfy their clients and to provide the best service.

Additionally, other issues can spark from the usage of auto-installation scripts. These install scripts always install the apps in the "default" configurations. This means that often overall security of the website and/or server can be hindered. It isn't uncommon for spammers to exploit these flaws, creating spider-bots that post automated messages on a message board, blog, guest book, CMS, and such, due to these scripts...

Furthermore, even if some users want to take matters into their own hands and configure the web applications themselves, as well as maintain their copies up-to-date by installing security patches, fixes, and version updates, this sometimes turns out to be easier said than done when the application was installed with Fantastico's installer rather than with the original script and doing the installation from scratch.

We've come to the end of this overview article. By now you should have learned what Fantastico is all about. Hopefully you can get the most out of it, knowing where and how you should use it, as well as considering the overall security points that we tackled in the earlier section.

At first, we approached Fantastico de Luxe from the perspective of an overview, laying out the basics of how it works and giving the definition of an auto-installer. After that, we examined the list of supported web applications, and explained some of the most popular ones which I do recommend if they met your requirements.

Next, we analyzed the way Fantastico works with a metaphorical magnifying glass, learning the potential issues that it can cause, such as security flaws or an inability to manage updates for specific web applications. We also presented some snippets from Drupal's disclaimer where they clearly point out the most important consequences when using Fantastico to install a copy of Drupal. As we saw, they cannot recommend it.

All in all, this article has presented a brief overview on Fantastico. Now you won't be surprised the next time when you notice Fantastico's icon in your cPanel. You will also know its advantages and drawbacks. And thankfully, knowing them you will be able to make the correct decisions without risking security, but still maintaining efficiency. Ultimately, it all comes down to what you need and, thus, I can only advise you to act wisely and accordingly.