Experiences with OA?

Hi everyone. I just heard about the "$8 for OA" deal and I'm considering getting it. I currently use Comodo Free, but I've heard excellent stuff about OA.

Does anyone have any personal testimonies as to the security and stability of OA? I don't know if it would be a step above what I currently have, but it seems to be generally well-regarded so I want to know if I'd be missing out by not buying it on discount.

Thanks!

 

I wonder the same. I used OA in the past: no problem, strong, sure. I'm using CIS, but I believe they are at the same level. OA, it seems, fix the bugs faster.

 

How would you compare the two in terms of resource usage?

 

OA seems to use less memory. OA also catches stuff that CIS misses (Comodo Leak Test for example). I use both on different machines and overall they are both quite good. One drawback I have found with OA is that media players like Winamp will sometimes stutter during playback when other programs are in the foreground. CIS does not do this.

 

I love Online Armor, running smooth and light on my netbook.

 

I'm testing OA free again after ditching it more than year ago cause I found it was too buggy for my taste.

So far, so good. I might go back on using it regularly if it keeps that way although, I still see it's very chatty, a bit more than Comodo with D+ [perhaps because the Comodo people adopted whitelisting].


Thanks.

 

Its quiet as a mouse on my end.I am not installing anything new though and every program on my systen is trusted.

 

Nice to know it's working well for you. I'm hopeful it should wok well for me too.

Off-topic: I see from your sig. you run OA and AppGuard. Don't they overlap or conflict? I mean, they do basically the same: HIPS, right?

What exclusions have you adopted on each in order to avoid conflicts?

Thanks

 

To be honest it's one of a kind program in a dying breed . . . If you look around there's not much "Pure HIPS" programs being developed constantly and OA is one of the programs that is improving a lot.

 

No Appguard is not a Hips, in lockdown mode its more like a AntiExcutable as nothing executes unless I lower its protection level. I have no exclushions and there is no conflics so far.I am using OA more for the firewall and safer browser lower rights,However the Hips is still enabled.

 

Some personal observations fyi, OA has been rock stable for more than over a year, as well on XP (free version so far) as on Vista (paid version), I haven't experienced any bugs at all.
Install is a breeze and I find the program simple to use, even with it's abundance of options.
It allows you to use it as a 'basic user' and then go up the learning curve towards 'experienced user' while still offering the same protection.
You can f.i. make use of the extensive build-in whitelist/allow all files with valid signatures if you're comfortable with that but these options can be disabled at will, it's incredibly granular in it's approach.

When installing a trusted program, the 'Learning mode' will avoid numerous popups, the 'Run safer' option is comparable to 'Drop my rights' and offers to run progs as LUA while running as admin (which I don't use as I normally run as LUA/SUA anyway though). There are plenty of other features but these are all listed at the Emsisoft site of course.
It's one of my favorite security software programs; worth the money and for only €8, it's a no brainer imo.

 

@Baserk.Well Said and I could not agree more.

 

Comodo Firewall seems lighter than OA on my laptop in my testing. Both are very good firewalls IMO.

 

Put your media players like Winamp in OA's exclusions.

 

It seems they have finally got OA sorted out. Working real nice

 

Been a happy user of OA (free as well as premium) over the past few years.

It has many useful features that I have come to depend upon.

 

I tried that with no luck. I just use CIS on the machine that has Winamp and OA on my work machine (because of the superior protection).

 

OA has been my main firewall for sometime, in fact since it was born. I always come back to it after trying others. Only problem is OA++ is not being developed, which is a shame .

 

Every time I use this firewall it brings my internet in a crawl. Pages won't load sometimes. When I uncheck the firewall all is ok and my internet speed returns. I'm sure other people are having the same problems as me. What I'm I doing wrong if anything.

 

You could try deactivating the HIPS features.
That's how I run it... bare bones firewall.
Soon as the web shield, program guard and anti-keylogger components get activated, things get slower.
Probably not what you had in mind, but you asked what could you do.

 

Unfortunately I can no longer use the firewall, OA will not run on my computer after installing it.
After about a week of help from emsisoft support and about 35 emails I was finally offered a refund.
Right now I really have no idea which firewall I plan on using in the future since I've had OA for the longest time.

 

I tried deactivating each part of the program the only help was shutting down the firewall. Using windows firewall now a laptop running Vista premium. This is what I get when running the firewall part of the program...(Firefox can't find the server)That alone is a pain but the slow down makes it much worse.

 

Try privatefirewall,its free,its good and very light.

 

It's indeed one of the best firewalls out there with many useful features included.

There are certain parts I like the most of OA:
1. A strong classic HIPS - zero-day threat killer,
2. An user-friendly firewall, with which users can see which countries their programs are connected to. Also one can control to restrict certain IP or country.

But there are certain parts I don't like:
1. No unicode-support yet, a defect by design, really annoying for East Asian Users.
2. Heavy CPU load of OA's process when downloading with P2P programs.

Anyway nothing is perfect, luckily they are one step closer to that with each update.

 

every time i start google chrome it gives me a pop up about toolbox. Anyone has the same thing. it is annoying to give out the same answer and it really does not remember it