KIS, ESS, or other firewall

Well currently I am trialing KIS which will be cheaper for me for an initial license than a renew of NOD32. I like NOD but am tired of playing musical chairs with firewalls (beta and otherwise). The ESET beta firewall is currently way (months,years) behind Kaspersky's current FW offering, which is arguably the best available. Plus the AV of Kaspersky is nothing to sneeze at. I like the NOD32 av better but currently it seems I may go with KIS and check on ESET once the firewall is out of beta. It's just less of a headache this way.

 

KIS or ESS firewall

acr1965, why do you need to play musical chairs with firewalls? Is there some conflict? Just curious--I must have missed hearing of this issue. I've used NOD32 for years now with never a firewall problem--mostly with Kerio 4 and currently (for the last 2 or 3 years) LnS.

 

KIS or ESS firewall

I have not had a FW issue with NOD just that it seems I have tried many firewalls and have not been satisfied with overall protection yet.

 

KIS or ESS firewall

I use Comodo firewall with NOD and they've both been great. Comodo V3 firewall will be out quite soon so there will be vista support too.

 

KIS or ESS firewall

I used Comodo for a while and it seemed to do a fairly nice job except it would forget rules or mis-flag warning messages. But it is nice on leak tests, termination tests plus free. That is hard to complain about. But I have also wanted to use a FW that has more features and I am not happy with Comodo in that regard.

I also tried ZA Pro but was not happy with its non-disclosed, user information gathering policies. And it's anti-spyware feature is not as good as it should be. Plus what really turned me off was that ZA Pro listed PCflank.com as a spyware site and denied access to it. But PCflank is not a spyware site. Oddly enough, when you take that site out of the blacklist and go there you can test ZA Pro against some leak tests and it performs a reasonably well, although not steller.

I also tried Outpost and for some reason got the BSOD. I hesitated in trialing it in the first place because the site uses google analytics. But once I gave the product a shot my computer went down. I am sure that was something with my particular computer as many use Outpost and swear by it.

That left Look-n-Stop which I have not tried and the KIS anti-hacker. Right now I am giving the anti-hacker a try and it performs rather well, is lightweight, stealth and does very well on leak tests. Plus the cost of the entire KIS suite can be found for under $30 at many places and even free after rebate from time to time. I do not like the fact that it KIS will only flag keylogger activity and not be able to quarantine or remove the suspected keylogger. Also, many of the KIS warning flags could use some more detailed info.

I may give LnS a try before making up my mind as to what I want to do next. I currently have Online Armor as well, but disabled as it slows down my internet surfing noticeably. LnS looks intriguing enough. Although I have not had much luck with companies offerring a single payment for a "lifetime license." And the KIS firewall seems to outperform LnS.

I doubt seriously I would pay for an upgrade to ESS when their firewall underperforms free products such as Comodo and Jetico. That leaves the spam protection which may be useful for some but nothing I need. Most likely, if I renewed NOD32 I would end up going back to Comodo and be back in the same spot I find myself in now.

 

Re: KIS or ESS firewall

Acr1965, the firewall in KIS is fine if you're comfortable with the training aspect of it to start with. However, you may wish to test ESS when it's finally out then make your own judgement based on how well each performs on your system.