Firewall download file sizes

Just wondering if anything can be read into the file sizes of the various f/w's around.

Three that seem to purport to do similar things are:-

Private Firewall 2.7 Mb

Outpost 6.3 Mb

Comodo 9.3 Mb

Can you assume economy/verbosity of code or bloat with these or whatever. Any programmers around who can shed some light on this?

 

Hi David,
one explanation for size can be put down to what is included: ie, with outpost there is the inclusion of the anti-spyware database and plugins, there is also, on the filesize you mention for OP an addition of 1mb for the extra 3 language packs (filesize of OP contains 5 languages=6.71mb, for 2 language download=5.65mb (seen here))

For Comodo, maybe the fact this is meant to contain a very large database of "internet allowed" applications? (but not sure, it may also contain many language packs?).

 

You can't really judge how "bloated" a software is from the installer size. It could be the firewall engine used requires more coding. Some of the installers could also have most of the files they are going to install really compressed or packed (thus reducing file size of installer) while others have files compressed (thus having larger space).

 

Thanks for the replies. Obviously trying to read too much into them.

 

Well if you use some crappy compression on installer you can get huge file, but if you for example use custom installer with LZMA compression you might just decrease the size for 2MBs or more. I've tried on Comodo files using Maximal LZMA and got 6,9MB big package instead 9.3MB...