PC Activity Monitor Pro (PC Acme Pro) 6.5.1 Review
6.5.1 version now supports Windows 2003 Server
Advantages:- Multi-OS support
- Grouping of the intercepted information into categories
- Great stealthiness level
- Great file-activity monitoring
- Mouse-clicks recording
- Multi-language interface
Disadvantages:- Weak URL interception
- One side interception in messengers
- No visual surveillance
PC ACME Pro is the most international product in our testing. Four programs in our testing are translated into more than one language:
KGB Spy ,
Perfect Keylogger, PC ACME Pro and
WinSession Logger, but PC ACME Pro is the only one that has 14(!) languages to choose among. But, let’s get down to the review…
The first thing that appears after launching the installation file of the program is the screen asking you to choose the language of the installation, after choosing it and confirming your choice by clicking ‘OK’ button you are welcome to read EULA, choose among ‘Full’ and ‘Custom’ installation, choose the path where the product should be installed to and, at last, to create the password for accessing the program. It is interesting that the process of installation itself is probably the fastest of all we have ever seen - it looks like the program installs immediately. Anyway we again face the bulk of pre-installation screens that influence negatively the whole impression of a product.
The product consists of three parts – ‘Control Center’, ‘Viewer’ and the SpyAgent itself. The first one is designed for configuring the SpyAgent, the second one – for viewing the intercepted information and the third one is for actually spying. As far as we understand after configuring the SpyAgent the first two components of this trio should be uninstalled to make the product completely invisible. Stealthiness is actually one of the strongest points of PC ACME Pro – the product is totally invisible – no icons, menus, files in Task Manager or on the hard drive can be found after uninstalling all modules, except SpyAgent.
As for the interception we should emphasize the great file-activity monitoring (the product monitors absolutely all file-activities), mouse clicks interception, interception of system log on/off time and even the interception of log on password. But we also cannot but admit very weak URL interception (only IE URLs are intercepted), only one-side chat interception (both sides in ICQ only) and total absence of such functions as parental control and screenshot–making. And if parental control functions are still not very much widespread it is really strange to see a monitoring product that has no ability to make screenshots nowadays…
As for the Log transfer options PC ACME Pro uses two of the four means – log-files can be send via email and LAN by the program. The software also takes the middle place in Filtering capabilities - it is necessary to accentuate such a rare function as ‘Ability to watch certain programs’ – only
KGB Spy,
Elite Keylogger,
Perfect Keylogger and PC ACME Pro have such a function implemented.
Summing up we can say that PC ACME Pro is a good monitoring software with multilanguage support that will come in handy to all people who value stealthiness and user friendliness and pay less attention to visual surveillance and chat interception.
The product and its review can be discussed on our
Forum.
Description from developers
PC Activity Monitor software (PC Activity Monitor, PC Activity
Monitor Net, PC Activity Monitor Pro), PC Acme for short, is
intended for monitoring of PC user activity. PC Acme works under
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server operating systems. All data collected by the monitoring are saved to encrypted log file. Program works in background, transparent for user, and captures the following events:
- Application start
- Switching between applications/windows. In addition program saves
static text elements and windows edit controls:
- Window content of most chat clients (ICQ, AIM, Yahoo etc.)
- Content of Internet browser window (Internet explorer)
- Mail content, viewed by Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook
Express
- etc.
- Keystrokes;
- Pasting text from clipboard
- File operations
- System registry operations
- Application installation/uninstallation
- Putting programs in Startup folder
- Visiting web sites.
Each event has its own timestamp.
Log files are converted to HTML format for more convenient viewing in
browser (Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher is recommended).
Log file can be optionally sent via e-mail to specified address (or
saved to specified shared resource in LAN environment) for further
inspection and analysis (NET and PRO versions only).
The important advantage of PRO version is an ability to save log files
in special database for further analysis and retrieving information by
specifying a search condition.
All program settings are grouped in the Control Center. Changing of
settings does not require system restart.
Program installation and configuring are made easily and quickly.
