ZoneAlarm Extreme Security review

ZAES was rated "Editor's Choice" along side NIS 2009 by Neil Rubenking at PC Mag. Read the review here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341826,00.asp

 

Don't trust there reviews they are questionable

 

How are they questionable?

 

cos they are made by Pcmag

 

The author Neil Rubenking has written some very bad reviews before. In general, they tend to be features v price reviews which are not very applicable to security software.

 

Thanks for the reply. Is that still applicable to the current reviews?

IMHO if you read the review and ignore the rating it does have some use.

 

I think Rubenking does a thorough job of reviewing security software and I disagree with the naysayers who claim PCMag publishes favorable reviews based on who the paid advertisers are. I've read more than a few Rubenking reviews, and my take on him is that he knows what he is writing about and has no agendas, other than unbiased testing and legitimate reviews.

 

Exactly my point of view.........i trust the reviews given by rubenking...and i am using za security suite right now and its working well.....
I don't decide which product to buy on his views,but they are still very good indicators....

 

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I tried the demo on my Vista 64x using the default/recommended settings. The install was on a clean machine that had a one week-old reinstall of Vista and all other programs. Everything was very smooth EXCEPT every 30 minutes my Firefox browser froze and it was not possible to shut it down even with the use of heavy duty application killers. I had to manually shut down with the good ole on/off switch and when I rebooted chk disc had to go to work to repair the errors the crashes caused on my hard drive. I had the same problem with online games. This surprised me because I had also used the second to the last beta version without this problem ever occurring. However that version I uninstalled because it was slowing down my web browsing. With this current released version, when it worked, my web browsing and other activities did not seem to be noticeably slowed down by the program.

Oh. And BTW, FWIW:

From an Infoworld review reprinted in Computer World the title of which is:

"ZoneAlarm ForceField: Compromised in Sixty Seconds"

Full story here:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/217038/zonealarm_forcefield_compromised_sixty_seconds

It is the addition of Force Field to Zone Alarm Internet Security that supposedly makes it "Extreme."

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That's been discussed at Wilders before I think, and many people had doubts over the guy's methology.

 

I have had a number of personal email discussions with him and he is no more biased in my view than the man on the street. He gives objective reviews based on his testing criteria.

 

My problem is I don't know which samples of malware he uses. He always seems to imply that he is using the same samples for every test, and that is not a good thing. Old malware/keyloggers do not prove anything. I want results on the "latest and greatest" malware, the ones that matter now. I've always wondered why Norton comes out on top of nearly every AV/AS/Security Suite "roundup" there also. Though if anything is "funny" with that, it may be his company and not him personally.

I trust PCWorld a little more myself, however, no review is going to be better than coming here (or to any security forum) and asking the users of the product (unless of course it turns into one of Wilders' famous "fanboy flamefest" threads, lol)

 

Yes, already discussed... biased review. See below:
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200822/1083/Review-ZoneAlarm-ForceField

In any case an outdated bashing. Too many versions has been released!

Cheers,
Fax

 

ZA Extreme is quite good, but it still has issues with malware cleanup and its resource usage is also Extreme.
IMO you can build a comparable Xtreme suite with other suites + Sandboxie which provide same (if not better) protection and also don't hit the system so hard.

A good first step, but still not enticing enough for me ...

 

Yes, for the fanatics of "...it should be less than 1MB in Task Manager"... forget about it
But, have to say, in my VISTA system it runs very light... unnoticeable in daily use.

IMO Sanboxie is not as easy to setup as ForceField (no user intervention).
So a common user may not have the same level of protection.

Cheers,
Fax

 

Can you say more about what you mean by "bad reviews" and give examples? I've read many of his reviews and I don't remember him be overly concerned with the cost of products.

 

A comment like this does not serve the conversation at all. If you think there's a problem with the reviews then please explain why.

 

I even think that Neil is a little slanted. Honestly, once the hype dies down in NIS, it is just avg.

 

Aaah, 1 MB would be nice. I am glad it works for you, but as per Niels review and other views (including mine) ZA is a hog.

Yes, I concede. SB is less user-friendly than ZAFF. But you still have other options like DW too. And as far as I know, ZAFF can provide comparable protection only for IE & FF only. While SB/DW can sandbox virtually any app. So comparing the two as equals, would not do justice to efforts put in my Tzur and Ilaya.

Overall in my book, the drop in performance is not offset by the nice GUI. ZAES glitters, but it still has some distance to cover in order to become GOLD.

 

I, too, have had several (not extensive but still detailed) email exchanges with the man and he strikes me as someone who is above the fray, so to speak... the fray being the flaming and drama that so often come attached to a forum thread on a given security app topic.

 

In an email exchange with him about a year and a half ago, in response to some inquiries from me about how he selects samples, NR wrote, "I derive my sample list by asking the *VENDORS*. They all make 5-10 suggestions for real-world threats and I boil them down to a couple dozen. I accept no samples directly from vendors - everything must be found on this-or-that web site."

 

Very true. I'm using Sandboxie with CIS and I feel secure. Both products are light on resources and work well together. I tried forcefield back in Sept. and I thought it was good but a little resource heavy. I'm sure this latest version is better. I have also used ZA firewall for many years and liked it until I started using Comodo's. It seemed to be a fair review.

Ice

 

Yes, of course as well as as many other tools discussed in the anti-malware section.. but thats not the point here...

Fax

 

True, Fax.
Just listing cons I see. So that anyone evaluating ZAES gets a holistic view.

In the end, every man chooses tools he sees fit. And what works for you, is the best

 

Yes, indeed. Just to avoid giving the impression ZAX is a gigant program (like other multi engine suites), this are the RAM usage on my system (VISTA 32bit 4GIGA RAM).

Virtualisation: 20MB
Firewall: 35MB
AV: 1 MB (idle)
Total: around 55MB

On my system this pass basically unnoticed... so sometimes RAM usage does not mean much

Cheers,
Fax