I always come back to Zone Alarm

I tried Comodo. I tried Online Armor. I tried PC Tools. I tried Outpost. I tried Jetico. I always come back to Zone Alarm. Doesnt bug you. Doesnt slow your browsing down. It remembers rules and only asks you once. It has gamer mode just for me. The program control is so very simple. Just check off allow. I am using ZAAS actually. It can block known spyware sites which I have seen in action.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

I tried even more and at the end i returned to ZA. Actually the ZAF since it's lighter. You are right. Simple interface, you just tick server or client rights, quick overview of rules, clean alerts, no weird pop ups.

I was a bit paranoid about the toolbar, but i unchecked it on installation and all went fine. It is improved over 6.1.744 which was the last version i had.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Free version have gamer mode?

 

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No. But i don't know of what use it would be. I don't play online games, so why care.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

LOL see I am hardcore gamer thats why. The gamer feature is cool. People say Zone Alarm is a resource hog but I dont see that. Yes I know it uses on the average around 30K but my pc never slows down but I also have 2 gigs of RAM. The funny thing is Comodo and OA both only use about 10K but they both slow my pc down. As far as the long welcome screen delay I fixed that by cleaning out my prefetch folder and defragging my boot files. It actually boots up quicker then Comodo and OA. I noticed something, with OA and Comodo you may be at your desktop quicker but you still arent fully booted cause the taskbar icons still arent there. About 10 secs later they appear.So what do you want long welcome screen or wait for your taskbar icons to fill in?

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

I agree. RAM isn't a valid indicator of how heavy an application is.

Cool! I hadn't thought of this before! I will do that too. I have that TuneXP applications somewhere. I will launch it to optimize boot time.

I notice that too. They kinda cheat. My weather widget is blocked long after the icons appear on taskbar, whereas with ZA it updates the weather immediately. Kerio 2 uses the same trick. As soon as you see the desktop you see the Kerio logo and you think "wow, this loaded fast"! But the real firewall takes longer to be functional.

Maybe ZA should look into this, because permits other firewall to make fake claims about quick boot times. I mean, why not use the same trick?

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Maybe Zone Alarm doesnt have HIPS but Matousec rates it very good. Well the Pro version that is and I am using ZAAS which is the same. Comodo and OA are very good but not if your a gamer. If you just install Comodo or OA and never change anything on your pc or dont play games then they are fine. I have about 200 apps on my pc and I takes me days for a firewall to learn them never mind the constant pop ups. Allow,allow,allow,allow. I see it in my sleep. ZAAS asks ONCE and remembers then goes away.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Hey I have TuneXP also and its great.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

One of its security layers called Operating System Firewall is the ZA HIPS,but the freeware version apparently doesnt have it

Agree about ZA,tried them all,but all things considered its the best compromise for me.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Cool..........we should start a ZA blog. LOL. All the hype about Comodo and OA and I don't agree. Comodo 3.0 freaked out when I launched Team Fortress 2 or any Orange Box game cause it uses a program called Gameoverlay. With Comodo or OA you have to more or less wait for the program to lock up then ctrl-alt-del out of it and click allow. ZAAS gives you a pop up before the game launched and it will automatically minimize a game so you can click allow. Even Outpost does what ZA does. If you install Comodo and or OA and do nothing but surf and some photo shop then your fine. If you are constantly launching different apps then beware. I was along time user of Comodo 2.4 but when 3.0 came out I think the went backwards. You cannot resize OA's GUI. Whats that all about.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Indeed, ever since I tried ZoneAlarm ISS it ended up being what I kept going back to.
You should play TF2 with me.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Thanks for mentioning that. I am using OA and at some point I began having about a 10 second delay on boot up waiting for the sys tray icons to appear. The first time it happened I freaked out, waiting for a BSOD or something. There's actually no problem, that's the way it is. I am going to mention it to Mike Nash at the OA forum and see what he says. P.S. I had been using CFP2.4 and never had that happen.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

Comodo 2.4 was and will always be a great firewall. Much better then 3.0 will ever be.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

I've been in all kinds of websites, they tried to permanently terminate ZoneAlarm Pro 2 months ago and they couldn't succeed. My friend Tony has tested ZoneAlarm Pro about 5 months ago, so he asked his friends who are basically hackers and have invented some kind of CD where there are programs which are supposedly to bypass ZoneAlarm's inbound protection via kernel level.
Guess what?
Every attempt they tried, failed. Not only that ZoneAlarm was 100% invisible on the Internet as well.
Also, an poster found (I read on other forums) some strange and large traffic activity which was weird, because he had ZoneAlarm for protection. So how could traffic be so large?
It should have been some malware, and guess what it was-it was some kind of Trojan.
But the main here is that he ZoneAlarm ensured that no more malware installed on this computer besides this Trojan-which means ZA blocked all other attempts for malware installation (because he had ZA installed after he was infected by that Trojan).

Also, with ZA you can block kernel-level rootkits (it happened before). However the catch is you have to recognize it when ZA alerts you.
But the main problem here is that rootkits are 100% invisible and you can't remove them unless you reinstall the whole system from scratch.
However, ZA doesn't detect the rootkit itself, it basically detects the strange behavior and strange IP address that rootkit is trying to connect to, ZA alerts you and blocks it.
However the main problem here is that you have to be extremely experienced to know that this is strange/unknown IP address that is basically malware-loading.

This why I like it more than any other firewall. And also personally I'd rather have ThreatFire than Comodo since identifing malicious software by comprehensive analysis of all behaviors is a better solution than just watching for isolated actions.
Here is the entire reviw of ThreatFire 3:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2191333,00.asp

TF3's ActiveDefense technology detects malicious software entirely based on its behavior, so it can block threats that are too new for signature-based scanners to handle.

Also, look at the review of Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2236657,00.asp

Also you'll see that Comodo failed fake mouse clicks attack:
"My wacky attempt to turn off protection using simulated mouse clicks did succeed, but just barely. The little program I wrote can fake a click in any location, but I didn't give it a way to move slider controls. Setting the firewall to Disabled using fake clicks required pixel-perfect accuracy—there's no way a malicious program could automate the process. CFP is fully armor-plated against attacks by the bad guys."

Cheers!

 

There is a new Firewall soon to be available called "ComoZoneArmor". It is reputedly invulnerable to any type of attack making the need of an Antivirus program or a Spyware program completely unnecessary. Purportedly, it can easily defeat the latest malware, such as, the dreaded "Trash" trojan, the nasty "Bash" worm, and the incidious "Techvette" rootkit. The merger of the three top Firewall vendors has been hailed as a tremendous breakthrough in the anti-malware battle. Other Firewall vendors were not asked to participate because it was felt they had absolutely nothing to contribute. Details of its pending release will be made shortly.

 

You need a life if you have so much time to think of ideas and comments like that.

 

Re: ZoneAlarm Free ?

I wish there was a way to hide the traffic monitor. All other firewalls have this option. Kinda distracting to always see blinking green and red bars.

 

Memory is not a measure of heavy or light, unless you don't have enough memory. Large numbers of systems sold in the last year have Vista home premium with 1 Gig. That is tight.

 

While I dispute the earlier assertion that "rootkits are 100% invisible and you can't remove them unless you reinstall the whole system from scratch", I do like ZoneAlarm. I'm running Vista Home Premium, so ZAAV is the best choice for me at this time.

 

Ok well here I go again. I thought I would try Comodo again and I do like it but that whole pending file thing has got to go. Also there is too many sections in the GUI. Then I tried the latest build of OA (60 ) and that was good also. But OA and online gaming is a problem. All pings are higher in any game. I saw a post about this and even asked Mike myself but the problem still inst addressed. With Comodo and OA my web surfing is slower. When I use FF and watch the load page timer I can tell this. I went back to ZAAS and all pings are low. Average of 20. All web pages load 10 times faster. Both OA and Comodo are great products but I don't like programs that slow your pc down. Its like NOD32 over Norton. Most of use NOD32 cause it so much faster then Norton.

 

Norton 2008 is extremely light. Norton 360 v2 seems even lighter then nod32 from user feedback at wilders.

 

Please keep the thread on topic.

This is not an AV comparison thread.

 

Are you saying that ZA has their act together again? A few years ago doing an upgrade to the next version was a crap shoot. Sooner or later you would get a version that played hell with your computer. You say you're using ZAAS. Are all of the components working well? If so that's good to hear. As for OA, I'm using the full vers.2.1.0.31 and my FF is fast. Scuttlebutt is that the new release is coming Monday.

 

Yes everything works great. OA is good but like I said pings are higher. ZA offers a gamer mode also which I like. ZA to me is better polished. More user friendly GUI and the pop ups are very professional and not cartoonists like. The only thing that bugs me about ZA is the traffic monitor always showing. No way to stop it. Comodo and OA are very good firewalls but with draw backs especially if your a gamer. OA doesnt like Punkbusters and Gameroverlay which is a function of Steam.