Internet Watcher 2000

Internet Watcher 2000 is a program designed with two purposes in mind: firstly, it acts as an accelerator for your surfing experience; and secondly, it operates as a security device while surfing, ensuring that only appropriate web pages can be viewed.

As a surfing accelerator it works quite well, producing a noticeable speed increase during my use of the program. The way in which it accelerates the loading of web pages is by removing all the unnecessary content (specifically advertisements and pop-up windows), along with data transfer volume reduction.

It claims to operate perfectly well with Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and even Opera. However, during my tests, and despite following the configuration instructions, I was unable to get it to work with anything but Internet Explorer.

Despite this, it does do what it claims, eliminating all adverts that you specify in the preferences - banners, pop-up windows, Java-based ads and so on. The only problem is that it filters by image size, and all sizes are filtered by default. This resulted in the buttons on my webmail page not being displayed. It wasn't until I altered the settings that they appeared.

The security aspect of the program concentrates on access control, making it possible to set various controls to either prevent access to specific websites, or only allow access to a preferred list. Alternatively, websites can be given a password to ensure only those who know the password can gain access. To prevent users accessing the Internet Watcher preference screens, this can also be password protected to ensure any settings you implement remain in place.

This is an easy program to set up and operate, but there are a few niggles that you would not expect to see in such a product.