Productivity tools are software that can help make work and planning easier and more efficient. XMIND is a mind-mapping software that runs on java. And we’ve told you in an earlier issue how mind-mapping software can help increase productivity.

We’re assuming you know a little about such software. Mind mapping software can be tiny bit confusing to start with, and XMIND is no different in this respect.

The interface, to its credit, looks pretty clean and well-laid-out. There are five templates to suit your style and the feel of your work, other the default template.

Elements such as shapes, lines, and boundaries are pretty well-designed, and go well with the templates. You can add external templates to the current list. Using the software is pretty straightforward, and the shortcuts are easy to remember and well-placed. It appears all the shortcuts used in the program can be changed to those of your choice.

When you done with your work, you can export it to PDF, image formats, a power point presentation, or a word file.

The help provided is quite detailed. There are screenshots where you need them. A feature called Dynamic Help provides quick help in a sidebar whenever you click on a particular tool or feature.

Although this software runs on java, it doesn’t feel too heavy, but uses over 120 MB of memory!

There doesn’t seem to be a lot wrong with XMIND other than price. At $ 100 for a single license, it’s quite a bit ask for a software like this. There are alternatives: Free Mind, for example, is a free, open source program that can do more less what XMIND does! The only reason you would want to go buy this software is perhaps for its fairly refined look and feel.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The ZoneAlarm Security Suite is a lot more than just a personal firewall. But at first look, we weren’t too impressed. ZoneAlarm has lost the friendly look most people used to. Instead, a fairly bland color scheme with equally testless icons and indicators make up the interface.The firewall and anti virus form a comparatively smaller portion of the features. There’s a spyware scanner to accompany the anti-virus engine. Other than that, the e-mail scanner can set to scan all incoming and outgoing mails. The junk mail feature is pretty advance, we think: it features a large number of parameters.

Then there’s a parental control feature, parents can now choose from a long list of categories to be blocked. A very useful feature is Game Mode, which ensures you aren’t interrupted in between gaming sessions by alert pop-up. The privacy component takes care of all ads and cookies blocking. IM security is another feature that ensures security isn’t compromised through instant messengers; AOL, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo!. Conversations can be encrypted, but, both the users need to install the suite.

There are slider bar in each of the suite’s components, these help in easily switching strictness between levels. Similarly, most of the features have an advance view, which lets you make precise changes to the rules. In addition, you can use the back-up and restore security settings feature to save and load settings.

The suite ran well in our test, without creating any problems on our Athlon 64 3800+ with 1GB of RAM. Memory consumption was around 45MB most of the time, but the CPU utilization shot all the way up to 90% while scanning for viruses.

Its pretty rare to find a suite such as this with as many features and functionality. At $49.95, ZoneAlarm Security Suite is a wee bit overpriced. Its interesting to note that ZoneAlarm’s image as the friendly, casual-user’s firewall has now been replaced by one of the no-nonsense system protector.

Popularity: 3% [?]