Scot Finney: Online Armor best Firewall Of 2008

[Guest]

[Vettetech]

I saw this article. Take it with a grain of salt. Sorry Melih. I dont believe one word of it. Maybe [ at ]!#$ $#[ at ]% ^%$# him off cause of the Matousec results. I am and always will be a Comodo user. 

http://blog.scotsnewsletter.com/2008/03/24/the-best-firewall-software-of-2008-online-armor/

Mod edit to remove unprovable personal opinion - Panic

[Vettetech]

I might add that this is an opinion. Where are his test results? Where are his facts to back this up. 2008 isn't over yet so how can it be best firewall of 2008?

[Goose18]

I honestly wont even click that link cause i will get rather upset over someone trying to say there are facts that blah blah is better then comodo. When in fact it sounds like he don't have any facts whatsoever. 

[Vettetech]

No whats funny. I just went into Online Armor's forum and made a comment about Scot's artice. About how its an opinion and not facts. It was up for 10 minutes and takin down. Where is freedom of speech. Take down my post. WTF is that all about. Melih doesn't remove negativity is this forum. Hell look at reddogs's post. All we did is make fun of it. Nobody removed it.

[kos2007]

Based on the BSOD test results of Matousec, the major problem of Online Armor Free is that its driver is very unstable, far from an acceptable level.

[Vettetech]

Go into there forums. People are complaining left and right about explorer.exe errors and system lock ups. I for one even suffered this when I tried OA awhile back. Granted Comodo has there share of problems but mainly related to users not being familiar to Comodo. The only thing I agree on is that OA is alitte more user friendly then Comodo. Comodo can be overwhelming at first but with some time and patience you have the most powerful firewall on the market. And its Free. Online Armor free isnt as good as the paid and even Scot says that. So spend $40 or stick with Comodo. Do the math.

[sded]

Actually seems like a reasonable article to me-I was certainly not offended.  Even if it is not the answer we might like.  You can always change the order of finish by changing the importance of various features.  Very complimentary on the security aspects of CFP, less so on the usability.  Also downgrades the free version of OA as much less desirable.  A qualitative assessment, not a technical evaluation-but responsive to what many users seem to care about.  Haven't seen OA beating up Matousec, BTW, where CFP3 finished higher.  And did encourage readers to look at the innovative usability features currently in beta at Comodo.  Real bottom line is that Scot feels lthat a user in his category would be more comfortable with OA than CFP.  At the moment.  Others,  Everyone has an opinion-some have a blog.  

[shin-ganda]

The second place Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0 software from the Comodo Group is also a very good product. The latest version tested for this review was 3.0.020.320. If your overriding concern is security, security, security, and you don’t mind a less-than-ideal user experience, Comodo is worthy of consideration. Its superb security ratings and great configurability make it well suited to more experienced users who prefer a belt-and-suspenders approach. This is not, though, the firewall to install on your mother’s PC. Comodo also comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista versions. Comodo Firewall Pro is free. The Comodo Group is working on several features and functionalities that it believes will markedly improve Comodo usability, so this is also a product to keep an eye on.

Most importantly: In both products, the HIPS module must be enabled.

  make sense. defense+ is a little tricky for inexperienced user. looking forward to "threat cast" 

[Vettetech]

True sded. No where does Scot put down Comodo but then on the other hand no where does he back up his findings.

[Coolio10]

Its a fair review. As soon as this hits wilders its .

There weren't really any cons for OA.

He should of made his review less of a company thing but focusing more on the product.

[sded]

I thought the con for OA free was a bit obtuse, but very definite.  And the company is the product.  Not all users/reviewers agree with the concept that the vision is more important than finishing the current product.

[raynor]

I found the review to be quite fair and balanced.

After (hopefully optionally) integrating CAVS etc., Comodo should have
enough "features" for the moment, and then Comodo should really focus
on improving the usability and removing clutter from the interface.

In other words: Features are fine now, focus on ease-of use for the next few months

[panic]

It's a reasonably balanced review, but you have to wonder how he knows that there will be no better product released in the remaining 9 months of 2008.  Possibly he meant 2007?

As it stands, his criticism of CFP being too hard for Mr. and Mrs. Average is more right than wrong, but the introduction of things like ThreatCast and the "are we there yet?" centralised management console may tips things in favour of CFP.

Only time will tell.

Regardless, they are both bloody good firewalls. Which is best comes down to personal preference and circumstances.

Cheers,
Ewen :-)

[axl]

"Meanwhile, even though Comodo 2.4 was something of a cult favorite, it’s absolutely true that a wide range of people experienced significant trouble with that firewall too. So for a period of time, Comodo users were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Many of them tried version 3 and returned to version 2.4. Others wrote me that they left for other firewalls."

"What that tells me is that Comodo 3 is a good firewall product, potentially a great one, that quite possibly was shipped to end users without adequate QA testing. As is always the case with free, publicly available software, some early adopters were ill-equipped to handle the problems they encountered. Most of those issues appear to have been fixed now. Comodo 3 was also an ambitious release, and bugs happen. But this kind of management of a development process does not inspire confidence — especially when it’s the type of product that can wreak havoc on your computer."

"If the Comodo team can focus on software quality, and if it can add additional functionality that pares back on pop-ups, future updates of Comodo 3 could improve the overall usability of the firewall markedly. Solid protection plus good usability is a winning combination. For now, Comodo 3 misses on the usability front — the main reason it has come in second in this review."

LOL,
For months I have been making posts highlighting the fact that it was a bad business practice for Comodo to completely ignore requests to wrap-up the loose ends in the CFP v2.4 line, and now, here it is, the chickens have come home to roost.

CFP is the better firewall, but Comodo only has itself to blame for this outcome.

Instead of working on usability, Comodo got ahead of itself and started adding "features", such as AV-Smart warranty.
After AV-Smart, one would think that they would go back to usability... but no...
New feature, Threatcast!

Comodo's biggest enemy is, unfortunately, Comodo.
 

[Edit #1 Reason: Added other relevant quotes from review]

[giraffe]

After installing CFP3 then getting locked out of almost everything, I tried OA. It is much easier to use (useability is v. important for any software) and I can see that it would be preferred by Joe Public.

However, OA became unstable - in fact started to do a mini-version of CFP3 - so I went back to CFP2.4.

Just changed to v.320 and it's v. good, but for a neighbour's PC I put ZA on. Nowhere near the protection but it's better to have some defence than total defence that the users will unwittingly bork in a day or so.

CFP doesn't help by having pop-ups covering pop-ups, starting the GUI too small and needing clicks before scrolling (I haven't yet seen if the window scrolled jumps back to the top after a deletion rather than staying in place. This is another source of error due losing the place, at least for novices).

Having tried OA, use CFP2.4, set up ZA on several PCs, I'm now in a corner: CFP3 is the only one that I want to use and I'd like to put it on other machines, so if it ever gets a 'granny' mode (in more than 1 language, Melih) that's the way I'll go.

[Tags:]