F-Prot v3.16b - REVIEW

In defense of F-prot AV, I have used F-Prot since 1999. A truly high quality product and second to none in my opinion. I have been virus free since the day I started using this product, it's in a class all it's own.

 

But it happens a lot. I feel bad about F-Prot 4. NVIDIA promised to deliver GeForce FX by mid-2002. Fabrication problems made it delay to early 2003. But the flagship model had a fan very hurriedly designed and was VERY noisy that it acquired the name 'Dustbuster' and 'Hair blower'.

Furthermore, it was seen that NVIDIA rushed the architecture, leading to a situation such that the GPU would perform very bad in DirectX 9 unless code was specifically compiled for it.


I hope such things dont happen with F-Prot v4.

Regards,
Firecat

 

I don't think so, they just fully bug-out the 3.16.x serie because they use that technoligy in the 4.x
Frisk always release quality products, they will do that again... And what's the prob 4.x isn't there yet... This version works just fine as well

 

RejZoR, I have live archives of:

Blaster
Happy99
Loveletter
Netsky.Z
Sasser.B

If you want them, PM me

To relate this post to the topic, I find F-Prot to be kind of hard to configure, if you know what I mean.

 

Um... using it on my laptop for nearly a year now. I must admit that it uses too little resource ( WTF?? ) because when i watch its CPU time it doesn't ever seems to move up. ( Unless i really throw a virus at it ). Which in a way is quite scary because i dont know if it is working or not.

Detection rate has gone down a bit on AV - comparative. From Advanced + to advance. Hecurtics is quite bad ( if any )

One questions that pops up. My update monitor never gone down to that memory level. It always stay up at 7 Mb. And why didn't you have scheduler running? I thought updater need scheduler running to work? If not than does updater auto download and install update?

And anyone have change log yet?

P.S Any news on F prot 4?

 

Rejzor-

I have seen too many tests by both professionals and amateures to believe that F-Prot does not work. Some were even done by members of this forum. It outperforms many well known AV's, even on tests that are heavily weighted towards zoo malware.

 

It's a bad planning and management of the company...

A great AV that seems to be in slow death...

 

Well, just did a little research to confirm my findings. The updater does not auto download and install Signatures file without scheduler.

So my current method of updating via Window Task scheduler and switches that will close the updater after update.

 

Yes I know, but I always prefer to update manual, so I can make sure it went properly... Besides of that the update monitor also gives the update reccomend in the F-Prot main window

 

Others may think differently than you do on this matter; but I couldn't agree more. If it is Reasonably obtainable Its wild.

 

If things go wrong as I said earlier, F-Prot 4 might be a huge disappointment, but considering their support, They'll learn from their mistakes and F-Prot 5 will be almost revolutionary in showing the amount of improvement from F-Prot 4.....

Just my two cents.

Regards,
Firecat

 

First of all I don’t see anything wrong with the current version of F-Prot. It misses some features but if you absolutely can’t do without then you simple move on to another product. It provides a great balance of performance and lightness and I am sure there is a market for this too.


It seems to me that people would like to see the new version of any AV just in about every six months. If the product is working and has no issues what’s the point. Obsession? Many people are requesting new features and ask for more but at the same time they are looking for the light and easy to use av product. From the programmer stand point this is hardly possible.

Look at Kaspersky AV product life cycle. Version 3.xx was too simple then KAV lab came out with v4.5. Kaspersky v4.5 was too complicated for people and they came out with version 5. Now people are crying how version 5 is too simple and its missing features. WTH!

This is really funny people.
You are practically announcing the death of F-Prot and talking about some mistakes in non-existing version when NOBODY on this board knows anything about v4. Maybe Nostradmus could answer your question.?

Somebody mention F-Prot heuristics saying its almost non existing. Yeah, but F-Prot heuristics still works very well on win32 VIRUSES (not worms or Trojans). Is it comparable to NOD32 AH? No.NOD32 AH targets different kind of malaware such as Worms and Trojans. But it’s still very competitive and powerful when it comes to Win32 Viruses.

Now, let all enjoy the death of F-Prot.


tECHNODROME

 

If they hadn't said that they would go to launch version 4 in the beginning of 2004 , this problem didn't exist...

 

I don't think this announcement was official at all. Besides they still are refreshing version 3.xx. Plus with each new release they improve the performance and efficiency of F-Prot. Isn’t this the most important thing?


tECHNODROME

 

I would like to tell all of you that just because a product is delayed does not mean its dead. It only means that the more it is delayed, the more we expect of it. And even if it falls slightly below the mark when it does come, it becomes a huge disappointment.

If this does happen with F-Prot, I have full faith to believe they will have a SUPERB F-Prot 5, which should make up by making revolutionary improvements.

I was just afraid that maybe F-Prot 4 might not meet expectations which are rising now that the product is delayed...sorta like GeForce FX.

Regards,
Firecat

 

I thought 3.16 was much more bloated than 3.15? I liked 3.15 except the GUI is awful for XP so I didn't buy it. I have never tried 3.16 but I wouldn't want it either because I gather the GUI is still awful. You cannot exclude correct?

I too was waiting for version 4 the beginning of this year.

 

I agree, I never enable or install a pop scanner or something... A good scanner detects all virri in the memory or getting written to the disk.

 

F-Prot is not dead. Anyone who has done even the smallest amount of computer programming knows how complex it is. I can't even imagine the amount of work involved in creating a fast and reliable virus scanner.

The fact that version 4 has been delayed only tells us that they are focused on a quality product. They could have released it early and had a terrible product (which is what a lot of companies do). Software development always takes longer than you think it will.

I still have faith in FRISK Software. They are the only company that I have ever dealt with that actually wanted to help the customer. Every email has resulted in good customer service. They even downloaded a program that the virus scanner was incompatible with to duplicate my issue. Then, they emailed me when the virus signatures were fixed to resolve the problem. This is quality service.

 

Yeah well,i know how hard is to predict deadline for final release(this applies to any software),but they should at least tell users which are interested on whats the problem and why they haven't released it yet. If they said "We have problems with keeping good performance and low memory usage" everyone would let them to finish their job correctly for sure. But if they don't, you can just think by yourself that they are lazy or something (who knows).
And as far as i know i heard about F-Prot 4 almost 1 year ago...

 

You heard some false speculations, since there is no and never was any official word on F-Prot 4.



tECHNODROME

 

F-PROT is one of the best-written, and best-detecting AV's ever made. Still is.

It has probably--IMO--one of the top 3-4 pieces of scanner code ever written, and any PC tech worth his salt will tell you it's indispensible in his toolbox.

It isn't fancy, but it does it's job, and does it very well.

I only hope Frisk can keep the resource usage reasonable--while trying to please those who complain about how many features it supposedly "lacks".

 

Coming from you, Jim, that is, indeed, a major compliment of FP. I bought a license in Nov. 2004, & would like to believe I wasn't a total do-do (long "o's") at the time.

But the Real-Time Monitor's inability to exclude is rather an awful disadvantage, isn't it?

 

Excluding Directories from Real Time:

I don't know why this would be a huge disadvantage, although I suppose there are some folks that like to set their real time scanners to exclude something or other for performance reasons. Personally, I think that is not worth the risk. The areas where files are accessed the most are exactly where the greatest risk lies.

Perhaps if you keep a collection of viruses around for testing you might want an excluded directory, but that is not a feature that everyone wants.

If you happen to have something on your machine with a false positive, you can put it in a password protected archive.