[Alpine]

Let's start with the good:

• Most stability problems appear to be ironed out by now.
• The applications starts very quickly. At least on my test system, a 2.4Ghz P4 with 512MB running WinXP SP2.
• There's a new spyware scanner. Described here.
• Multiple user profiles are back - I remember those from Netscape 4.0 back in 1996. Ten years ago.
• The user is offered to download and auto install a copy of McAfee antivirus. In case you've been living outside this Planet and don't know by now that running Windows without an antivirus is suicidal.

Bundles, bundles... you're offered a handful of optional installs


Now the bad:

• The spyware scanner showed eMule, VNC server and VNC viewer (which I installed myself) among the list of "spyware". Sorry, but those are not. These are legitimate applications that I installed myself.
• Security Centre shows TheInquirer.net rated "not verified". I guess we look suspicious. (bad, bad "Trust Partners"!
• There's a "Desktop Search" feature listed under the Tools menu. The About box says "Desktop Search functionality provided by Copernic Technologies Inc". So maybe they mean this product. However clicking on Desktop Search produced... nothing, as did hitting the feature's hotkey: CTRL-Shift-K.
• All third party "themes" to change the look and appearance of the browser are still for version 8.0, with none for 8.1 at the time of this writing.
• The user is offered to download and auto install McAfee antivirus. Wise people use the Free (as in beer), home edition of AVG Antivirus from Grisoft, or ClamAV, the free (as in freedom), open source virus scanner.

The new "Security Centre" and spyware scanner


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