At first glance, the Yoggie Pico looks like a larger-than-average USB flash drive. It’s much more than that, though. It’s the most powerful computer ever put on a stick and does a state-of-the-art job as a network security appliance. When plugged into the USB port of a notebook or desktop computer, it presents a formidable barrier against malicious software of all kinds. However, its most remarkable accomplishment is how it performs its task without slowing down or impacting the computer it is protecting in any way.

The Yoggie Pico has 128MB of memory and an onboard 520MHz Intel processor. This makes it comparable in power to a Pentium 3 computer, a platform which is still in use. It uses the Linux 2.6 kernel as its operating system to run and manage a suite of 13 enterprise-class security applications, mostly licensed from leading developers. These include anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-spyware, intrusion detection (IDS), intrusion prevention (IPS), web and mail Proxies, Firewall, web filtering, and parental content control. The only difference between the Pico and the Pico Pro is that the latter adds VPN software.

The first time you connect the Pico to a computer (desktop or notebook, standalone or networked), you also need to install software from the included CD. This is accomplished in a few minutes with no experience required. Once this is completed, the system is protected and little or no configuration remains to be done. The Yoggie icon in the system tray lets you disable protection, if this is necessary, or open the simple Management Console. A password is required to accomplish either of these tasks, so no one can do this but you.

What happens if the device is yanked from the computer, by you or someone else? Does this leave the computer vulnerable to attack via the Internet? Not at all! Yanking the device cuts off network and Internet access entirely until the Pico is returned. This is a very good feature and exactly what most users would want.

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