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Posted by bertieboy on February 24, 2007, 10:10 am
If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options >> Which is the best FREE firewall and why? Is Comondo any good?
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>No, Rusty, same answer in all the other newsgroups to which you
>MULTIposted your same post.
>
>I gave up on it. Firewalls with application rules will flood the user
>when they start using it with prompts to permit an application to make a
>network connection. Some reduce that by providing "smart" lists of
>known apps (usually by matching with a hash signature to ensure the
>program is what it says it is). Okay, that was expected, but Comodo
>eventually forgets that you allowed an app to have network access and
>begins asking you over and over each time you load the app. It isn't
>that an update to the .exe occurred. Comodo just forgets. You may find
>that deleting the app or network rule and then redefining it gets it
>working again.
I'm glad I found this post! I've been trying Comodo and like you, got
pissed off with telling it what to do again and again. I thought it was
my memory playing up but no, it was Comodo. how the heck does a program
forget? I surely can't be deliberate can it?
>
>You may eventually find that your Internet access goes completely belly
>up until you disable their firewall whereupon you can ping, telnet, web
>browse, e-mail, and do everything again. Obviously there is not point
>in wasting resources on a firewall that you always have to disable, so
>you'll end up uninstalling it (and doing remnant file/dir and registry
>cleanup) and then reinstall it which is a nuisance. Having Comodo
>eventually die (after 3 fresh installs on freshly reimaged hosts) after
>about 2 weeks eliminated me bothering with it anymore.
>
Same here again!
>Some users thought their hard drives were dying because of the repeated
>clicking noise from them when the drive should normally be quiescent.
>To some, it was like a heartbeat where every 1.5 seconds they would hear
>their drive spin faster. Turns out their logging is over zealous.
>Users had to change their network rules from Block & Log to just Block
>to eliminate the repetitive wear on their drives, even where there was
>apparently nothing to log for that event.
>
Don't
think I noticed that.
>One is that they really, r-e-a-l-l-y, REALLY want to their users to
>promote their "free" product (i.e., they want unpaid associates to
>advertise for them). Their need to advertise is so strong and pervasive
>that it indicates a product-in-progress where its users are unaware they
>are unpaid alpha testers and then the product goes eventually commercial
>whereupon all those loyal users then have to buy it to continue using
>it. They desparately seek users to "spread the word", but why bother
>for a free product unless their intent is to engender awareness (i.e.,
>free advertising) along with enlarging their prospective customerbase
>and hope some of the suckers, er, prior customers decide to buy it when
>it is no longer free. They are also desparately seeking OEMers to
>bundle their products on pre-built boxes to further penetrate the
>market. The product may turn out to remain free but it smacks too much
>of an alpha product foisted on uninformed users to be used as unpaid
>alpha testers that then get abandoned when the product goes commercial.
>I have to wonder why a "free" product requires activation (i.e., shades
>of functionality incorporated for an eventually commercial product so it
>also gets tested by those unpaid and uninformed alpha testers).
>
That hadn't occured to me as I was wrapped up trying to find a firewall
that myself and my wife could use on our two machines that she would be
able to manage. I see what you're saying though.
>Two, their firewall is the only remaining one of their "free" products
>that doesn't require using their all-in-one loader program which results
>in advertising their commercial products. In other words, it is adware
>(for their own products). You get stuck with their Launchpad bannerware
>for their other products. I was told but haven't bothered to verify
>(since I don't bother with any of their products anymore) that they were
>going to abandon their Launchpad. Hopefully that has become the case.
>If not and it is the other way around, rolling their firewall into their
>Launchpad loader would be an immediate cause for abandoning that
>product.
Not seen Launchpad, won't bother.
>
>Three, they won't let you search their forums until you register. It is
>a nuisance that someone who wants to check out complaints by their users
>has to register before they can search. Also, negative posts have a way
>of disappearing prematurely from their forums. You are required to not
>discuss or compare against other firewalls; else, those posts will
>disappear. They can't take the heat of comparison, even if to request
>enhancements or to contrast against alternatives from other sources.
>Obviously they don't want their own forums to become negative
>advertising of their products but they should be able to take some heat
>and posts that report severe bugs or inappropriate behavior should be
>tolerated. Again, this would only taint their forums for their "free"
>products if there was intent to sell those products, but even other
>already-commercial products tolerate far worse complaints than does
>Comodo. Forget about searching for all posts by a particular author
>since their search function refuses to hunt without something in the
>"Search for" field (i.e., you cannot search alone by the author). It
>won't let you search on "the" or other words it considers insignificant,
>so forget looking for you own old posts. Oh, don't use your real e-mail
>address, or instead use a disposable one or alias to register. Someone
>yanked out the e-mail addresses of their forum users and started sending
>out porn mails.
>
Hardly going to endear them to a prospective user base.
>Four, they only support 32-bit Windows. Version 3 of their firewall for
>Windows 64 Vista was supposedly planned for March or May. I just looked
>at it's not out yet (although maybe there is a beta version somewhere).
>Even if they come out in time, decide if you really want to be using the
>first version of a new code branch of a product (i.e., do YOU want to be
>the one bleeding on the bleeding edge?).
>
>Go read their forum on their firewall. Remember that you will only see
>complaints there. Users don't normally go to forums to extol or laud a
>product but go there to get help on problems with the product. So the
>bias will be slanted against a product if you go by the forum posts
>asking for help, but it will give you an idea of the magnitude of
>problems or the severity of a few problems. It's free and you could
>trial it for awhile to see if YOU like it and if it *continue* working
>for you. If it doesn't work right, uninstall it.
Exactly right! Some folk will think Cor, I like this. OK. fine if they
are happy. Me, I'm going back to Bit Defender Internet Security, we both
like it and are used to it. I wanted to save £40 but It does slow our
systems down when it applies updates.
Thanks for a very succinct analysis, I wish I'd seen this _before_ I
wasted so much time on Commode (might be a better name for it!)
--
bertieboy
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