FOR
Provides generic protection for all virus scripts including variants, scanning email for malicious VBscript commands to protect you from viruses that may be subsequently developed.
AGAINST
Nothing.
VERDICT
netMailshar supports any type of Internet connection - dialup, ISDN, ADSL, cable modem or Ethernet connection. Just 266Kb in size, it has all the features to provide the messaging needs of a small business or an enterprise.

If there is anyone out there reading this review who as yet does not have a simple yet effective email system setup for their local area network (a rare breed, I would imagine), then sit up and take some serious notice of netMailshar. If for some strange reason, you only want to exchange email locally, netMailshar will do this for you instantly as an intranet mail server even if you don't have a registered Internet domain name. But, if you fit into the general norm you will want to go further afield than this.

Of course, if you are in the process of setting up your own business, then a copy of netMailshar should not go amiss. The great thing about netMailshar is that any dunderhead with a scintilla of IT savvy could setup email for all employees in a small to medium-sized company in a day. Just setup netMailshar on your own machine and any one of the popular clients (Pegasus, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) on all other machines, follow the amazingly simple instructions, and become the employee with the most favored status.

One should not be expected to be an IT expert when setting up what is now a common or garden tool in the most modest of establishments. While I don't know if the people in PPP Infotech have ever heard of that wise English philosopher, William of Occam, they have certainly adhered to his rule of simplicity. Not only is the system mere child's play to setup, but it also contends with that other bugbear of email systems, the email-borne virus. When you think about it, what is the point of having a system that is a joy to establish and trivial to operate and administer, if you are then obliged to get to grips with the more convoluted aspects of anti-virus protection? Especially if this is not even anywhere near your particular area of expertise? I mean, you have a business to run, don't you?

netMailshar provides centralized protection for your entire LAN from email viruses without the need to download any updates. Providing generic protection for all virus scripts including the variants of a particular virus, it scans your email for malicious VBscript commands, thus protecting you from viruses that may be developed in the future. Options include forwarding emails with viruses into a separate mailbox to scan for any important messages, deleting messages before the email virus gets downloaded into your system, customized and automated mail notification to the sender to inform them that their email contains virus. For non-script based viruses, you just need to maintain one copy of your favorite anti-virus software for centralized scanning.

So, this system will prevent viruses like AnnaKornikova, Love Letter, MTX, Prolin, KAK viruses and all their variants from entering your network, while the content scanning feature can be used to block/delete email viruses including as yet unknown or new viruses - even before your anti-virus scanner is updated. The ability to check the content of all incoming mails allows you to 'quarantine' emails with potential email viruses. netMailshar can block emails with attachments containing VBScript commands, which can be recognized via key words, for example, DeleteFile, WriteFile or Rewrite. In fact, the default rule set, EmailVirus, contains all possible VBScript commands, keywords and strings to identify all forms of email viruses like AnnaKornikova, Love Letter, MTX, Prolin, KAK, nakedwife, Homepage, etc. It is recommended that email virus and spam-blocking rule sets should be applied to the POP3 account that collects mails for a domain so that filtering is done before the mails are distributed to individual user accounts.

New in version 3 is the remote web dialer whereby netMailshar can be dialed from anywhere in the network and from any web browser. You can also remotely connect and disconnect from any web browser, from any machine in the network, as well as monitor the dialup connection status from a web browser. A web interface for administrators enables them to add, modify and delete accounts. Administrators can manage user accounts in netMailshar by simply replacing the remote machine IP address with the IP address of the netMailshar machine. Also, a web interface for users enables them to modify their account information, including password changes.

Email archiving is a sensible security precaution, and netMailshar lets you automatically create a centralized archive of both incoming and outgoing mails of all employees. You can forward all emails received by a given user to another email address (on site or offsite), and thus automatically archive them. The best approach would be perhaps to have a remote archive email address to receive all forwarded email. This product does everything you would want an email product to do: support for multiple mailboxes within your own domain name, multiple POP3 accounts even from different domain names, multiple domain names, and password protected mailboxes for each user.

Administrators will like the Receive Mail Headers option, which retrieves only the email headers so that unwanted mails can be deleted without receiving the entire message, and the Inbox and Outbox viewers, which allow them to view the messages in the inbox and outbox of each netMailshar user. Interestingly, you can also configure netMailshar to communicate with mobile phones, pagers and other hand-held devices, and it contains several embedded engines that can be used to develop more applications for devices.
  

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