OA2 was very memory hungry in early beta stages. I gave up beta testing because nobody seemed to care about a security software eating more than 60MB of RAM. Not speaking about CPU usage. Maybe it is better in the final version... On teh other hand LnS is a very good firewall and very lightweight i memory and CPU usage.
Hi ClWeb, We had some horrid memory leaks in the early betas of OA's firewall, some users reported much higher than 60mb. I think now this is fixed - we identified several useage patterns which caused it and fixed the leaks. Many optimisations have been made in the last 3 months. We definitely cared (and still care) about resource use - but to refine that only recently became a priority once other more severe bugs and incompatibilties were solved. Mike
Hi ankupan I have never tried Lns but only Norton and ZoneAlarm. I use OA version 2 with firewall now on my laptop with Pentium M 1.4 GHz and 512 MB Ram After 1 hour of use and according to Windows task manager OAui.exe mem usage is 8.172 and VM size is 6.320. OAsrv.exe Mem usage is 8.192 and VM size is 28.844. Most important for me is that with OA version 2 my laptop is much faster than previously. I nearly forgot to mentione that I have never before had a security sw so easy to install and uninstall. kvp
well OA FW is more application-based (but u can create advanced application rules) whereas LnS is more rule-based. Also I think OA FW lacks SPI. Both firewalls are light and offer good protection. Overall, Id lean towards OA FW because it is easy to use. Also im waiting on the release for final judgement.
I've never tried OA, but it seems to me that you can learn everything you need to know about it by reading Stem's excellent review (see prior post). I tried LnS 2.05p3, giving it a real good look. As mentioned, it is definitely light on resources, but because it's rule-based I found it required quite a bit of effort to get everything working right (well almost everything - I never could get my wireless network connected using Lns)! So I do not recommend it for non-techies. ankupan, I highly recommend that you include Comodo in your FW evaluation. It's an easy-to-use FW that's truly hard to beat by any measure!
pvsurfer, Your opinion and high regard of Comodo is legendary by now....but this thread asks about OA and LNS. And since I'm interested in OA as well, I'm hoping that this thread doesn't get OT and head off in another direction altogether....
Aw shucks, I didn't realize I was a legend (LOL). Seriously though, I do appologize for my OT remark (although another FW isn't that O/T), but it was with good intentions. However, I did add some personal views of LnS - which was on topic.
Thanks MikeNash. Ok a bit OT but can anybody tel me whether Comodo has SPI or not( pls don,t think I am trying to push comodo in this thread).