Final Thoughts

The Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico is an effective security device. It blocks threats from within and out, and is quite configurable.

However, it is not for those who don't know how to set a Windows password or for those who lose things (hint: the password to uninstall is "yoggie"). The startup time for the system is unacceptably long, too. It's available only for 32-bit Windows users, as well.

As an external device, the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico is of value only to those who have older machines that can't handle software blocks. It might also be effective for users who want to eek out every last bit of performance from their Windows installation.

I would like to see Yoggie make an internal version of this-something which users can plug into a spare USB plug on a motherboard and keep it out-of-sight and out-of-mind. In the vein of the GPU (graphics processing unit, e.g. any video card), A/SPU (audio/sound processing unit, e.g. sound card), NPU (network processing unit, e.g. Killer NIC) FPU (floating point unit), and PPU (physics processing unit, e.g. Physx card), I'd call it a TPU; a threat protection unit. I could see it embedded in laptops and available as something suitable for plugging directly into a USB host connector on a desktop motherboard. It'd only be of use to Windows folks, though, or at least for now. Hey, Yoggie, toss me some cash if you take me up on that idea.

Oh, and it's $30/year after the first year to continue to receive updates. I guess that fee is necessary. With that cost, too, I calculate the overall cost to be higher than a regular anti-virus suite, but the advantage of running all of that on a separate processing unit is still there.

Overall, ThinkComputers gives the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico a 7 out of 10 score.

Pros

- Quite effective
- Graphs make people happy
- It's a computer! On a USB stick!
- Alleviates OS's need for security applications

Cons:

- Needless product key
- Network access disabled when removed
- Difficult if not impossible to disable
- Difficult if not impossible to remove software from the system
- Almost occupies two USB ports in terms of space
- $30/year for updates after the first year