I still will forgo. I am 3 days into a trial of ESET Smart Security Premium which incorporates a set and forget firewall. I had to do nothing.
ESET has a pretty good Firewall. You have four modes: Automatic, Interactive, Policy-based and Learning. You could also create your own rules... Surprisingly, it's very light on resources. On Windows 11 Enterprise with Intel i9 and 128 GB of RAM... you wouldn't even know it was there.
Hello, according to https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vistafirewallcontrol/the-latest-betas-releases-t6.html v 9.1.0.97 should be a release, not yet official, but not beta anyway. Certainly a changelog would have helped. To me it seems that the only difference is that in the new version many pre-configured zones are updated as I presume that those listed with (prev) are related to previous version 8 .
That weird I have no (prev) in my zones, I notice a couple of new ones such as "NewsGroupZone". I am testing the Network Cloud Edition.
I though only Plus and Server version 9 were available unless Server edition is the same as Network Cloud, I don't know. Both Tapatalk forum https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vistafirewallcontrol/the-latest-betas-releases-t6.html and official Sphinx Software webpage https://www.sphinx-soft.com/ redirect for download to https://github.com/Windows11FirewallControl/Windows11FirewallControl/tree/main/precompiled. Under English folder I found zip files for Plus and Server editions. I updated Plus edition version 8, for which I purchased a license some years ago to version 9 and on W11FC settings page the version no. is 9.1.0.97 like it should be.
This was what I downloaded. I have a paid for Control Server setup, shown in photo. I have reverted to Eset for now. Sorry it was called Network Cloud Edition with V8. To complicated to see the facts, and not enough info now. I will wait for the new version 9 and will pay, but for now will be using Eset paid for version good till end of year, my as well. I am glad to see progress with Windows 11 Firewall Control!
If you already paid for Windows 10 Firewall Control version 8 - Server Edition you don't need to pay again for Windows 11 Firewall Control version 9 - Server Edition. Just run Windows11FirewallControlServer-Setup.exe: this will uninstall Windows 10 Firewall Control version 8 and it will install Windows 11 Firewall Control version 9 in a new folder by preserving all the settings of previous version. I did this process for the Plus Edition following the instructions provided by developers and the update went smooth without issues. Please see my post with the questions I asked them, here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/whats-happening-with-sphinx-windows10.451558/#post-3232844 Anyway if you prefer to use Eset it's ok, of course. I presume that Sphinx Software official website will be updated with features, changelog, editions compare, screenshot etc. when the developers will be ready for a official release.
Nice, so you already updated to Windows 11 Firewall Control version 9.1.0.97. The developers responded to me that future updates will be available for free up to version 10, at least. I hope they will release a changelog. As I wrote above I noticed they added updated pre-configured zones. It's not the same for Server Edition ?
Here is what the zones look like for me. I wish I could get info if they update, through the program.
Hello, it seems that Windows 11 Firewall Control v9 will be released free of charge, as you wrote and contrary to what I though, judging from the response the developers gave to some questions ("Free model found to be more profitable"). Here is the complete post https://github.com/Windows11FirewallControl/Windows11FirewallControl/issues/3 As you probably know Windows 10 Firewall Control v8 had a free model for the Basic edition only, very limited in features. I presume that for Windows 11 Firewall Control v9 the developers will extend the free model to Plus and Server Edition, not releasing a Basic edition anymore. Anyway the official website https://www.sphinx-soft.com/ isn't updated with this info and all others (Features, editions' comparison, screenshot etc.) yet.
Thanks for the news. I don't understand how "Free model found to be more profitable"? Nothing is free, you know that.
Hello, I know but that's is the reply the developers gave to user docbt on Windows 11 Firewall Control issues' webpage on GitHub. At this point we have to wait when the official website will be updated with more informations to understand what is the situation of this firewall which is, in my opinion, very good. I hope Sphinx Software will continue to update it also in free model, if it were really to be like this. [Edited] I'm not sure of this, of course, but Windows 11 Firewall Control v9 could be released free but ad-supported. If that were the case I hope that the ads won't be shown for customers which, like you and me, paid a license for Windows 10 Firewall Control v8 but the fact that on https://github.com/Windows11FirewallControl/Windows11FirewallControl/issues/3 the developers wrote "All personal data will be completely deleted after all users have updated to version 9." and "No personal data is required to use version 9." seems to prove the opposite. They wrote "all users" but I don't think that all v8 users will update to v9 because it's almost, if not enterely, impossible. Probably that's simply a typing error. We both updated to version 9 so I presume that our personal datas have been completely deleted. Mine is only a assumption, as I wrote above we have to wait until the new version will be officially released. Anyway the "not yet official" version which is currently available for download works fine and doesn't have any ad. From the webpage https://www.techinasia.com/paid-freemium-free-business-model, about the differences between business models (Paid, Freemium and Free) here it is a description of "Free model", which made me think that v9 could be released as ad-supported.
The last paragraph in (Free model, not. ) says it all. Will be happy when they find their direction. Time will tell. Thank you for all your information!
OK, thanks. Still not enough information. Would like to know if there was any changes to Windows 10, also how are they using my data maybe selling to 3rd party?
I agree with you, a detailed changelog would be better but probably those are the only differences between version 8 and version 9. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, personally I haven't had a single issue with the previous version.
They stated that "All personal data will be completely deleted after all users have updated to version 9." and "No personal data is required to use version 9." Of course I don't know if they shared to third parties the personal datas of Windows 10 Firewall Control version 8 users (paid Plus and Server editions only, if I remember correctly for free Basic edition it wasn't necessary to give personal datas) before deleting them but your question could apply to all software companies that are in possession of our datas. Usually they explicitly declare if they will share them to third parties or not. Unfortunately the old Sphinx Software website is no more available so we can't check if the privacy statement for Windows 10 Firewall Control version 8 contained that declaration.
This sounds interesting; The next version will be v9. There is a lot of planned features. The main one is moving more filtering capabilities to kernel driver.
I just found the post you mention at https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vistafirewallcontrol/trial-policy-changed-t667.html The post is dated 11th January 2019 so it took a very long time to develop v9. Maybe they failed to implement all the features that were planned at that time, I don't know. Furthermore "The main one is moving more filtering capabilities to kernel driver" feature isn't mentioned in the current changelog unless it's included in "internal optimization" or "refactoring" that certainly are generic terms.
