Scot Finney: Online Armor best Firewall Of 2008

[Guest]

[JamesFrance]

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!

I must have misunderstood something.

I was under the impression that usability was what these new features are all about.

[Vettetech]

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.

All you have to do is turn off balloon tips.

[panic]

Runner up is still a very honorable result. Comodo has a lot to be proud of, so I hope that spiteful comments don't override the result.

Congratulations Comodo team.

On behalf of the Comodo code monkeys - thanks. Consumers are certainly spoilt for choice when looking for great firewalls. Both CFP (V3 and V2.4) and OA (free and paid) are brilliant firewalls. Each have quirks and foibles, but both are great at their core functions.

If only the rest of the software world had the luxury of multiple best-of-breed samples within each category.

Cheers,
Ewen :-)

[giraffe]

All you have to do is turn off balloon tips.

but but but - I like to see what's going on! All it needs is for one of the boxen to be up a bit. At least the dialogue box, if dragged up a bit, will stay in that position for the session :-)

[Melih]

at the end of the day everyone is entitled to their opionion hence i will not question what Scot chooses, thats his opionion.

However, what I find strange is the very issue Scot raised which was 2.4 like functionality in v3 where you simply dont get any noticable popup (less so than 2.4 even). I didnt see any mention of it and I asked him why also. If you guys remember our heated discussion with Scot was about him and his users requesting this firewall with leak protection capability.. and we did provide it but he doesnt even consider that mode in his review!! That mode is leak proof and almost no popup which is great for his user base and its free.


Melih

[Vettetech]

Scot's blog is an opinion. Not facts. A good article is based on facts and not a users opinions of why A is better then B.

[axl]

Scot's blog is an opinion. Not facts. A good article is based on facts and not a users opinions of why A is better then B.

Well, from the threads I have read on a few security forums, it would appear that he is of the same opinion as most of the forum veterans.

Coincidence?

[axl]

I must have misunderstood something.

I was under the impression that usability was what these new features are all about.

CFP v3 was released with a lot of new functionality that was frequently difficult to access.

Sticking a big "EASY" button on the front does not improve the usability of the product's advanced options.

[Ragwing]

CFP 3 vs. OA is like the same thing as XP vs. Vista. Everything's based on opinions rather than facts. I'd say CFP 3 is Vista, while OA is XP.
Vista is safer than XP, but why people still stick with XP? Because XP've been around for many years, and people are used to it. I guess it was the same thing when XP was released. People thought "what a piece of junk, I'll stick to old trustworthy Windows 98" or something. So if we write "CFP 3 is safer than OA, buy why people still stick with OA?" instead, we'll get a similiar answer. OA is more user-friendly than CFP 3. CFP 3 is more secure than OA. The average computer user want a firewall that's easy to use, not one that's powerful and offers lots of ways to increase the protection.

Cheers,
Ragwing

[pitzelberger]

CFP 3 vs. OA is like the same thing as XP vs. Vista.

Or like Windows vs. MacOSX

[Leolas]

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.

hi vettetech

are you pcgamergod? if yes, there's a reason why they removed your post: on OA's forum admins don't want  A vs. B discussions.
Here there's some people that say bad things about OA, Comodo and other firewalls (like "OA is full of issues, nobody should use it" ecc ecc), there it's forbidden to say, for example "Comodo is full of issues, nobody should use it". And as you can see, nobody says that OA is the best firewall and that the other firewalls suck, there.
It's also written in the forum rules

Anyway, I think that OA and Comodo are both very good firewalls...

ps: and about leak-tests... now OA's product score is 100%

[Rednose]

Scots newsletter is an A vs B discussion ( or opinion ) too 

Last year november, when I came to the conclusion that CFP 3 was not ready for me, I did a test with Online Armor but that was not satisfying either. I recently started to test CFP 3 again and now I am happy with it. But I agree it is a matter of personal opinion

Greetz, Red.

[Vettetech]

No whats odd here. Mike Nash is so quick ti fix his Matousec results but not too qucik to fix real problems like people complaining about explorer.exe issues. That has been a complaint for months now including my buddy. I sent Melih a PM about the huge lag in pings with version 318 and 48 hours later out came version 320. Thats what I call customer service.

[Rednose]

Different tests give different results I wouldn't worry about it if I where you

http://www.testmypcsecurity.com/view_results_xp.html

Greetz, Red.

[Vettetech]

The title of Scot's blog should be "Scot's Opinion Of The Best Firewall OF 2008 So Far". Thats all it is. An opinion. Where are the facts.

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