Make XP look and feel like Vista II

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Vista allows you to put your hard drive's encryption key on an external USB drive. Kensington's $70 PCKey(http://us.kensington.com/html/6331.html), which protects an entire hard drive, or with the company's $50 PCKey (http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=4446793/search=kensington+pckey/), which safeguards individual files allows you to do something similar with your notebook computer. To access your data with either product, you must insert the hardware key into a USB port and enter a password to unlock its 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard protection. Vista can also lock out unauthorized users before your PC boots. This same ability is available for free in CE Infosys's CompuSec utility. (http://www.ce-infosys.com.sg/CeiNews_FREECompuSec.asp) provides preboot authentication to protect your hard drive's data, even if someone removes the drive and tries to use it on another machine. You can encrypt individual files rather than your entire system if you want. The product can encrypt diskettes, CDs, DVDs, USB thumb drives, and other removable media. (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,62300-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html) prevents access to files, folders, and drives with a simple right-click. The files,however, remain visible in Windows' DOS and Safe modes. For top security, you have to move the files you want to protect into the Locker folder, which secures them. Even simpler is the freeware AxCrypt (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,45938-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html), which lets you right-click any file or folder and apply 128-bit AES encryption.