I have had very few problems with Windows 7, which I've run since the RTM was available in August 2009. However, the built-in Windows 7 FTP client has given me nothing but trouble. And after performing some Internet searches, it seems that I'm not the only one experiencing problems. Unfortunately I depend on FTP to deploy updates to this website.

Today I attempted to update the website. The built-in Windows 7 FTP client deployed all the files without incident. But when I attempted a second update, I couldn't even log on to my FTP server. Even rebooting didn't help.

I then tried out FileZilla and was able to complete my website update. FileZilla is open source and multi-platform (like my Vault 3 program). And it "just works", which is the best compliment that I can give software. You can download FileZilla here. I use the client version of FileZilla, although a server version is also available.

Note: I try to avoid using the FTP protocol because it has some serious security vulnerabilities. For instance, the credentials one specifies to log on to an FTP site are not encrypted, and are vulnerable to interception. For this reason I don't recommend using FTP to transfer sensitive files. There are improved versions of the FTP protocol that address this issue. But "vanilla" FTP is very insecure.