Well, I give it five stars for its usefulness, but only about 2 for ease of installation.I have Norton Antivirus installed and there is a conflict between this product and the Norton product. (I had tried Norton Antispam before but it didn't work for me.)
I think however, since the first reviewer's attempt at installing it, the manufaturers have taken note, because there is now some online help on their website for users of Norton Antivirus. The help still isn't very clear as it is clearly written by teckno-geeks rather than someone who communicates in English. That said, if you take it slowly, you will probably muddle through getting it set up, and it is worth the trouble.
I'm a 200 spam a day man myself (across four email accounts) and all this spam was starting to drive me mad! As I mentioned above, I tried the Norton product which was fine at first, but after a month or so, it started to play up so badly, that I was spending more and more time restarting Outlook Express because Norton kept making the computer hang.
I've left it a few weeks before I reviewed the Aladdin product to make sure there were no problems yet to manifest themselves, but there haven't been, and I am very pleased with the product and would recommend it.
If spam emails were cigarettes, I would have an awful cough! I am a 130-a-day man! Seeking to stem the flow of offers ranging from bamboo mats to oil tankers that comprise 80% of my daily Inbox messages, I tried out some free solutions before deciding that SpamCatcher was for me. I use Outlook Express and Windows 98, supported by its 'universal' version supplied on the disc.The large box contains the disc and a pamphlet sized manual that takes a few minutes to read and includes general advice on self-protection on the Internet.
Setup started as expected with the usual wizard to navigate and seemed straightforward enough. However, it left an incomplete installation and, only through research of the publisher's help section on the Aladdin web site and some trial and error did I get this product working. What should have taken minutes took closer to an hour.
The main problem areas were my use of Norton Antivirus with which SpamCatcher cannot share port 110 - one has to designate a proxy port instead. The wizard that is supposed to configure Outlook Express 6 (OE6) failed to touch its settings and these had to be entered manually.
Folders required within OE6 for the function of the software had to be created manually and I am doubtful as to whether the 'scan Outlook Express folders' option to teach the program about new messages to be blocked actually works. I can find no way to rank messages by score other than to block them outright and can only assume that this facility is absent from the version I am using.
With the headaches of installation over, my initial impressions of usefulness are positive. SpamCatcher works! Even in these early days, it is identifying spam and removing it from view pending deletion via a mail rule (yes, that had to be entered the long way too).
My verdict, therefore, is that the product does what it says on the box, but I can only recommend it to those users possessing technical ability with both the finer workings of Outlook Express and Windows port configuration. If you are a novice, you may struggle to get this working on your machine due to the lightweight manual and ill-presented online help material.
The program includes 12 months support so it is to be hoped that deficiencies will be rectified in future releases.
