Spylo PC Monitor Reviewer's Comments

SpyLo, from Sontrex Software, is a fair product. It works as it is designed. The main issue compared to the other major products is the lack of features. There are a number of major features that were missing with the product such as being able to easily view chat, instant messaging, and emails. The product is easy to install. It is also easy to set up, primarily because there aren't very many features to adjust settings on.

Feature Set:  

One feature of SpyLo that I really liked was the ability to identify in one location all of the passwords that have been used. Your children or spouse may not like this feature. The other feature that really stood out was the ease in identifying any anti-spyware software that is currently running on your computer, then being able to kill the process or service.

Ease of Use:  

SpyLo had a few functions that were a little difficult to understand. Their implementation of assigning a password for controlling access to the SpyLo application was difficult and hard to understand. There was no context sensitive Help available at the point of the problem. After locating the Help from the menu system, the password implementation finally made sense.

The user design for setting timing functions was very different from other applications. For example, to determine the interval between screen captures, the default is 7,000 milliseconds. Is it really necessary to have the flexibility of 1 millisecond? Most non-techies wouldn't even know what a millisecond is.

The application captured keystrokes, but the default implementation to read/view them was a little strange. You had to read each character in a vertical fashion as opposed to grouped together in a word or sentence. The word "apple" would appear as

A

p

p

l

e

instead of apple. You could change to the "continuous view" with a click, but it just seemed strange for the default setting.

Ease of Installation:  

It is easy to setup, primarily because there aren't very many features to adjust settings on.

Monitoring Effectiveness:  

There is also no stealth mode, which means anyone would easily know that they were being monitored, which might be fine in some situations.

Help/Documentation:  

The help is poor, at best. It appears that someone started writing the help text late on a Friday afternoon, but decided to leave early for the weekend.

Summary:  

Overall, SpyLo needs a lot of improvements to be able to adequately compete against some of the other products in the marketplace. The product does work, just not to the extent that others do.