Armed with USB storage device, a PDA, a CD or DVD drive, or a FireWire storage device, anyone can steal data. VolumeShield’s AntiCopy Personal Edition 2.5 tries to prevent such hardware from connecting to your PC without authorization. The company hopes you’ll like this free version and will tell the boss to get the Enterprise release. That could be a career-limiting move.

Except for the boot drive, upon installation AntiCopy blocks access to every drive it can control even additional internal ones. Worse, after asking for your Windows log-in credentials to authorize access, it fails to say which drive you’re authorizing. Alarmingly, during testing, the utility also spontaneously disabled my authorized additional drives, refusing to relent. Only a reboot restored access.

Unlike its competitors, AntiCopy fine-tunes device ID by using a drive’s volume label, so changing the label revokes authorization. And although the app can block access to CD and DVD drives, it can’t do the same with floppy disk drives or media cards. Repeatable errors I got during testing and a severe vulnerability. This app costs nothing and provides little more

Those who want serious endpoint security for one computer or a hundred can get it with DeviceLock. This impressive utility lets you control access to USB and removable hard drives, digital media cards, and floppy disks, as well as writable CD and DVD drives. It seals off unused communications ports and even lets you define specific permissions for particular users or time periods. You’ll have to work a little harder to set it up, but the effort pays off.

The Enterprise Manager interface does batch processing of configuration changes, and the Management Console lets you directly administer individual systems. Either will let you lock down serial and parallel ports as well as infrared, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi connections. With USB and FireWire ports, you can block certain device types but allow others, such as keyboards and mice. You can even whitelist particular USB storage devices. Doing so takes more effort than with the other products, but the feature gives you more flexibility.

Installing DeviceLock doesn’t grant you instant control over endpoint security. But once you read over the friendly user manual and master the art of configuring the product, you’ll have some truly solid protection. For endpoint security, I submit DeviceLock as the logical choice.

Trend Micro Internet Security 2007 is a safe, affordable bet for home users looking to protect multiple PCs. It comes with three licenses per $49.95 package, plus free tech support. It’s an able shield for everyday computing.

The software has a friendly interface, and its features are intelligently grouped and organized. The Overview screen gives you a brief rundown of your protection status, including the dates of your most recent scan and software update (plus buttons to perform both immediately). Other groups include Virus & Spyware, Personal Network & Firewall, and Internet and E-mail. The app’s antivirus engine has been certified by both ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs.

One of our favorite tools was the scanner’s ability to detect any necessary Microsoft Windows Updates, something we wish more security suites included. Other helpful additions: a personal wireless-network monitor, the ability to manage the security of other PCs on your network, and even a chat monitor for protecting instant-message conversations.

We didn’t understand why Trend Micro didn’t activate certain critical features by default, especially the data-theft-prevention function (for protecting sensitive information such as your name, address, and credit-card number) and the spam e-mail filter. And while we liked the software’s extensive built-in help, the resources on the company’s Web site were more limited.

If you don’t mind taking a slightly more hands-on approach to your PC’s security, Trend Micro Internet Security 2007 might be right for you. If more-advanced protection is what you’re after, however, we’d recommend a competing app like Norton 360.

Many desktop enchancement programs are complex all-in-one packages that require knowledge of a programming language to completely customize the Windows Desktop. But not Winstep Xtreme.

This $39.90 program brings two new interface elements to Windows: NextStart, which replaces your Start menu with a more-powerful alternative that includes file viewing, disc copying, and more; and WorkShelf, for organizing folders and programs for easy launching. Nexus, a subset of WorkShelf, creates a rotating workshelf (a highly configurable taskbar) at the top of your screen, featuring some important program shortcuts.

Several additional modules let you load, move, and customize some new desktop items, similar to the Widgets and Gadgets in Mac OS X and Windows Vista. These include a clock, a CPU monitor, RAM and Net meters, an e-mail checker, a miniature weather display, and a goldfish that spouts silly or interesting quotes when double-clicked.

Winstep Xtreme can also quickly build menus and tabbed workshelves using a pair of excellent wizards, each of which has its own extensive, searchable help system. We really liked the ease and speed with which the average computer user, with no previous experience, can quickly customize his or her desktop using Winstep Xtreme.

This surprisingly simple app, which supports Windows 95 through Vista, isn’t for everyone. But if you spend a lot of time at the Windows Desktop attempting to make order out of chaos, find yourself frustrated often over the lack of organization among your shortcuts, or maybe want to customize a screensaver backdrop with password accessible hotspots for your kids, Winstep Xtreme handles such tasks with panache.

NOROMIS PHOTOLAB 2.0 is designed to appeal to those who just want to pull their images off their camera, perhaps make a few adjustments, and then print or e-mail them with minimal fuss. We liked the program and recommend it for the quickest, easiest camera-to-file output we’ve seen to date.

You must register online to receive the program’s keycode by e-mail, a cumbersome process. But installation is otherwise easy, and it loads a helpful camera detector that prompts you to get and fix photos (or just download them) when you plug in your camera. You can rotate your pictures, run them as a slide show, place them in a specific folder, and retain or erase shots from the camera’s memory card. You can’t, however, download individual photos. Once you’ve downloaded your images, PhotoLab automatically applies a variety of adjustments to correct color, lighting, and red eye, though you can also adjust photos manually. We were pleased with the fine-tuning interface, which allows you to preview and compare photos.

By default, PhotoLab’s fixes aren’t applied to the original images; a history list lets you undo changes at any time, with modifications applied permanently when you e-mail the image or save it as a new file. You can’t rename the folder holding a given file without breaking the link between the file and its history, though moving a photo to a different folder retains its history.

Most adjustments allowed us to produce clear, sharp, and noise free photos. The exception was Refine Skin Appearance, which removes wrinkles by blurring. If you’re over 60, you can forget about instant rejuvenation via PhotoLab.

Want to better way to use and share your online findings? Clipmarks 2.0 can take you beyond basic bookmarks by giving you a simple tool for grabbing content from Web sites.

Here’s how it works. Sign up for a free Clipmarks account, and download and install the software, which is also free. (Installation takes less than a minute; the software supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Flock.) Clipmarks appears as a single button in your browser’s toolbar. When you see something you’d like to grab, place your cursor over the content; pictures, text, or video and a box will appear around it. Click your mouse, and the info is clipped. Then choose to save it publicly or privately to your Clipmarks account, post it to your personal blog, e-mail it to up to 100 recipients, or print it out.

We ran into a few problems. Clipmarks has trouble clipping information from Flash-based sites. Also, if you have the toolbar open and want to click a hyperlink, Clipmarks sometimes can’t distinguish between opening the link and clipping information from the page. Moreover, it can be tricky to get the somewhat jumpy clipping boxes positioned exactly on what you want to grab. And when posting text clips publicly, you have to keep the character count below 1,000.

Clipmarks also has a community aspect, which lets you read and see what other people are clipping. Plus, the site has a great search engine for finding information on a particular topic, whether in your clips or in all public ones. For everyday saving, sharing, and sending little snippets of the Web, download Clipmarks 2.0 immediately.

There are several reasons to stick the Windows-centric i-Lighter in your virtual backpack, including that it’s free. Dubbed “the yellow marker for the Web,” i-Lighter is also a great organizer. Say you’re building a rig. You could use Excel charts, bookmarks, Word docs, and email to keep your online research straight, but overlap and confusion often lurks nearby. i-Lighter lets you literally mark up specific areas on Web pages, including prices, specs, and benchmarks, that you can save and access from an Explorer-like local client in folders you can make private or public.

My public searches were hit and miss. i-Lighter is still less than a year out of beta, and most of my search results returned from the same small group of users. Practically speaking, though, i-Lighter is great for tucking away things you’ll know you’ll want, just not now. i-Lighter fans are also praising its benefits in universities, law offices, and research facilities.

Using i-Lighter means giving up an email address to download the installation file. Once installed, you can open i-Lighter from the System Tray or toolbar in IE and Firefox. Click Start Highlighting and the mouse cursor morphs into a highlighter icon. Beyond highlighting, i-Lighter has a great notes tool for inserting comments right on Web pages, excellent for summarizing articles, noting charts, etc. i-Lighter is more one-dimensional than, say, Clipmarks and EverNote, but what it does, it does very well. There is del.icio.us support if needed, plus email, print, and blog tools.

One downside is that your data is stored on the company’s servers. i-Lighter says it inserts a username in the Registry but does not use cookies or install malware. Spy-Bot’s TeaTimer tool picked up my Registry change, but other security apps from Symantec, AVG, Trend Micro, and Zone Labs on my Windows XP Home and Pro notebook and PCs didn’t fuss at i-Lighter’s presence. On one hand the online approach means you can access your data from other Web-linked devices. On the other hand, i-Lighter’s speed at performing even the simplest task in my tests was often frustratingly slow. Still, if your job or hobby is researchintensive, i-Lighter has great upside.