using a work laptop

Using the computer on a seperate ISP other than your company's, eg: your Netvigator ISP at home, then you should be fine as it is not connected through your company's ISP.


However, that being said, as it's the company's computer (do they give you permission to take it home?), then, they may have installed some "SpyWare" type of software to keep track of what their employees are doing or typing on their computers.


You might want to run a scan for SpyWare just to be more sure your laptop is more safe to use in the privacy of your own home. A couple of great, and free, utilities for scanning for and removing most known Spywares / Malwares, are:


SpyBot Search & Destroy:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/


And Ad-Aware Se Personal:

http://www.lavasoft.de/support/download/


Also, after using programs such as MSN chat, etc.. it might be a good idea to NOT save any chat sessions on that computer, As well, you might want to set your browser to delete any history of websites visited (usually can be found from the Browsers top-menu, clicking on "Tools" then "Internet Options" then "Clear History" and "Delete temporary files"... stuff like that to insure a bit more privacy.


The following comments are for if the computer does not yet have a Firewall and/or Anti-Virus programs installed:


Also it's a good idea to have a Firewall running. I use Sygate Personal Firewall (free version), which works great for me:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Sygate_Personal_Firewall_Free_d3356.html


And, for a good, and free, Anti-Virus program, I use Anti-Vir, which you can download at:

http://www.free-av.com/antivirus/allinonen.html


Of course, before installing any programs on your company's computer, you might want to check with them first to make sure it's allowed, as after all, it's their computer.


Good luck.

Looks like the PST Backup is an "Add-in" MicroSoft program that allows for the backing-up (making a copy) of your folders in the Outlook mail program.

http://thelazyadmin.com/index.php?/archives/198-Outlook-2003-Automatic-PST-Backup.html


I wouldn't be too concerned about it really. Though, instead of using the Outlook program on that laptop to send and/or recieve emails, maybe it might be better to do any private emailing activities using some web-based email service such as yahoo, gmail, hotmail type of services.


If you're running Windows XP, it does have it's own built in "Firewall" feature for when you set up an ISP connection. However, it's not always enabled by default (depending on the version of XP service packs and/or various updates and the options the users selected upon setting up a new ISP connection). Plus, I find XP's built-in firewall to be a bit weak in many ways, so you still may want to consider a different firewall program, such as the "Sygate Personal Firewall" program I mentioned previously.


Best regards.


*Edit*


As I'm not so familiar with McAfee as I don't use it (well, I did a few years back, as well as trying Norton's for a while, but I was not happy with the performance of those programs and they seemed to be major "memory hogs" that would tend to make a computer slower and slower the longer it was left on and running, plus I found they didn't always do such a great job of protecting a computer), so anyways I didn't know what the "Access Protection" feature was, but looking up information on it apperantly it acts like a FireWall, so I think you should be fine to go ahead and use your laptop safely for home use as it is. Following is some information about the about the McAfee Access Protection feature:


"Access Protection

The Access Protection feature is new from McAfee version 7.1 to version 8.0i.


The access protection feature is similar to a firewall; it blocks ports commonly associated with viruses, trojans and worms.

On a desktop computer, the ports blocked should not affect regular business computer use.

If installed on a computer to be used as a server (not supported by ITS). For example, if a computer is acting as an FTP server, those ports would need to be unblocked in McAfee in addition to any other firewalls installed on the server.

To stop port blocking, uncheck the port/protocol to be opened. "