Encryption Software Review

A-Lock

The following are features enabled in the paid version, but disabled in the free version:

Password book to store your passwords.
Back-up for your password book.
One-click encryption/decryption. To encrypt, A-Lock uses your default password from the password book. To decrypt, A-Lock tries each of the passwords in the password book.
Key-Exchange creates random passwords and sends them securely to A-Lock or PC-Encrypt users. (PC-Encrypt is a file encryption program from the same company.)
Strong (up to 448-bit) encryption for North American users; weaker (56-bit) encryption for international users.

I found A-Lock fairly easy to use, but that may be because I'm already familiar with PGP, which uses a similar interface to encrypt the text in an email message window.
The documentation does an adequate job of explaining how to use the program, and in distinguishing between features available in the unregistered and registered versions. It also provides advice on how to make good passwords.

A-Lock puts an icon into your system tray. When you need to encrypt or decrypt text, you highlight the text, click the A-Lock tray icon, and select "encrypt/decrypt" from the menu. (If you do not highlight any text or have any text in your clipboard, A-Lock selects all the text in the current window for encryption or decryption.) A-Lock automatically determines whether the text needs to be encrypted or decrypted. If you need to decrypt, it prompts you for a password.
As an alternative to encrypting highlighted text, A-Lock provides a "private window," which you can open from the A-Lock menu. The private window offers basic, Notepad-like text functionality. The "Encryption" menu gives you a choice of Decrypt, Encrypt, and Encrypt with Default Password. You can copy the contents of your private window and paste it into another window. For example, you could write your email message in the private window, encrypt it, copy it, and paste it into the message field in your email software.
Like PGP's text encryption, A-Lock encrypts any ASCII text, including the text in most mail software, Word, and Notepad. The Help documentation says PC-Encrypt doesn't guarantee A-Lock will work with every email program, but they have tested it successfully with Outlook Express, AOL, Eudora, Netscape, Microsoft Outlook, ccMail, Hotmail, and ICQ. In general, "A-Lock should work with any application that supports the edit commands ‘Select All' and ‘Copy' (specifically Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C)."

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