Go Back is one of the best software programs a new user can have at his or her disposal. Dennis told the group some of the many uses for the program. The most important is a program that will return the computer to a point (as much as a month or more) called a "safe point," which virtually removes anything that has been written to the hard drive from the safe point forward.

One can see the value of returning the machine to a point where the computer was working correctly. Member Mike Evans even used Go Back to save his machine from a virus he was unable to remove. Rather than continue to risk all that the virus might do, he simply went back to a safe point previous to the infection. Problem solved. Other members familiar with Go Back extolled its virtues for saving them from major software conflicts.

Dennis loaded some files to mimic a system crash and demonstrated a recovery from a cold boot. He restored files and showed the versatility of the program. This product seemed to be viewed as a winner by the club. PC World magazine rates Zone Alarm the top firewall for both the free as well as the pay version.

Dennis explained to the members what pinging is and the implications associated with those pings. He pointed out the vulnerability on a machine without a firewall for those on DSL and cable. The group was treated to some of the types of organizations that are in Internet land that are trying to gather data from our machines. Additionally we were shown the various levels of security that Zone Alarm offers. We were shown that Zone Alarm could be set to selectively sort out those programs we wish to access the Internet through a switching technique the program offers.

I think Dennis provoked a lot of thought in the group as to how secure our machines are from probing pings. Congratulations on a couple of winning presentations.