Hi & welcome.
You have made your point, I also think it's time to get at least the antivirus Vista ready. Here's a list of the free programs and whether they are Vista compatible:
Comodo Firewall Pro - yes
Comodo VerificationEngine - no
Comodo BOClean - yes
Comodo AntiSpam - no
Comodo AntiVirus - no
Comodo Backup - yes
Comodo Memory Firewall - yes
Comodo i-Vault - no
I don't know which products are the most downloaded and used. However, from the forum, I can tell that the most used seem to be CFP, CBOClean and CAVS. Also, I think CMF is becoming popular. Of those four program, only CAVS does not support Vista. It could have been even worse (CFP got Vista ready as late as November last year with the final release of version 3.0), but you do have a point, it's time to make all products Vista ready!
LA
Thank you for your responsive post... and your list of what's Vista-compatible, and what's not. I knew everything on it except backup... not sure how that one got past me. Learn sumthin' new ever' day, I guess. [grin] But it's good news, regardless. Thank you.
I guess, for me, anti-virus and anti-spam, in that order, would/should be the next two that become Vista-compatible... just my opinion, mind you.... my two-cents-worth, for
what it's worth (and my ex-wife will tell you that that ain't much!).
Comodo was smart to make the firewall Vista-compatible as early as possible. As I'm sure everyone around here knows, the firewall built-in to Vista, while better than before, is still pretty much a piece of garbage. Comodo's firewall (version 3.x) not only has more (and more-easily-configured) features than Vista's built-in firewall, but it also blocks outgoing connection attempts. Vista's built-in firewall will do that, too... but it's a nightmare to turn on and configure; and the means of configuration doesn't permit sufficient granularity, in any case. Plus, as I recall, Comodo's free firewall, in independent testing, outpaced every other firewall -- free or otherwise (all except for one) -- in
leak tests. That's terribly important because, if there's one thing that hardware firewall appliances typicallly have over software ones, just by design, if nothing else, is how well they protect against leakage, compared with most
software firewalls. Leaking is the bane of software firewalls... and Comodo, apparently (and, if so, then also wisely, in my opinion), targeted that problem and kicked its butt. Comodo's firewall is terribly impressive...
especially for a free product. From my experience, most people out there have no idea just what a potent little gem is the free Comodo firewall. These days, I'm recommending it to anyone who'll listen, every chance I get... for whatever that's worth.
Of course, no software firewall can compete with a hardware appliance (such as, for example, just to name one maker: SonicWall), but Comodo's firewall, in my personal experience, is so strong that all anyone in a home environment has to do in order to get virtually the same security as is usually only possible in an expensive hardware firewall appliance is to augment Comodo's firewall by putting a cheap, $50 (or less) broadband router with NAT (and, additionally, if possible, but still only optionally, also with SPI) in between the computer running Comodo's firewall and the DSL or cable modem... and, together, those two things ---
especially if the router also has SPI -- is virtually inpenetrable... as inpenetrable, in practice, I kid you not, as any SonicWall hardware appliance... and I believe me when I tell you that I
know my SonicWall appliances. Just such a "cheap" (as in inexpensive, not cheap in terms of overall quality) router would be, for example, a D-Link EBR-2310 four-port router with NAT and SPI (or the wireless version thereof). I think it can be had, online, for around thirty bucks, give or take, when on sale. (There are others, mind you... I just gave the EBR-2310 as an example. Few others, however, are in the D-Link's low price range.)
Comodo's firewall, when coupled with a device like that, from my testing and experience, has no rival... maybe not even from a dedicated hardware appliance like the sort of stuff SonicWall makes. Again, there are others besides SonicWall... I only mention that brand because, in my consulting practice, I've pretty much standardized on it just to make my life simpler... so I happen know those products, and they're spectacular... though not cheap. The combination of the D-Link EBR-2310 and Comodo's firewall, on the other hand,
is cheap... and is a flat-out killer combo.
So impressed am I with the Comodo firewall that I'm now taking all of Comodo's other products far more seriously than I have in the past. I'm, at the moment, almost
aching for a Vista-compatible Comodo anti-virus product to come out that I can start fiddling around with. I do a lot of work with non-profits... some of whom can't even afford an annual anti-virus subscription. So free anti-virus is important in my life. AVG is what I use most often, but some things get past it that shouldn't. Plus, the free version won't auto-scan, auto-detect and auto-repair only certain drives, files or folders. It can only do the entire system, or no auto-stuff at all. AVG can
manually scan only certain drives, but not auto-scan. And, of course, AVG's got a weird interface... ultimately functional, but a little goofy, nevertheless. My biggest concert about AVG, however, is how the new version 8 of its free product is going to compare with past free versions. Version 8 of is fee-based product has changed a lot... and is now missing a few fairlly important (in my opinion) things. There are rumors that a few things will be stripped from the free version 8 AVG product when it comes out... ostensibly, of course, to encourage the user to step-up to the fee-based product. If so, AVG will quickly fall from grace as the preferred free anti-virus product out there. Avast and Avira will still be there (though the interface on one of them is so objectionable that most people are put-off by it). I'm eager to see how Comodo's Vista-compatible anti-virus product fares. If Comodo plays its cards right, it could take over AVG's current position as the preferred free anti-virus product. I can hardly stand the wait.
For anti-spam, I've learned to couple the SpamAssassin mailscanner with, believe it or not, the free, little "PopTray" email-checking/preview utility (which, incidentally, at this writing, only
barely runs on Vista... and not without its problems... but it does run). All one need do to effectively block spam is get the SpamAssassin mailscanner right on the POP3 mailserver mounted and properly trained to accurately insert into the header of each email whether or not it's spam; then set up a filter in PopTray to look for the MailScanner spam-or-no-spam tag and auto-delete off the POP3 server any emails in which MailScanner says are spam. Set PopTray to sit in the system tray and check the POP3 inbox every 5 or 10 minutes, and to auto-delete anything in it that MailScanner says is spam, and next thing you know, you have no need for an anti-spam product such as Comodo's. Some things slip through, but darned little... and, anyway, a few things slip through virtually
any anti-spam product.
But, of course, for those who haven't got a situation like I do where I own my own servers and can control such things as whether or not MailScanner is running, and how it's configured, Comodo's anti-spam tool is very nice... and so needs to be Vista-compatible... right after the anti-virus product, in my opinion.
Other Comodo products, I confess, I'm not as familiar with... though I'm now going to go take another look at the backup product. For Vista users, backup is a considerably more complex problem than for users of earlier versions of Windows. Vista's much nastier and more rigid (than earlier versions of Windows) about not allowing certain system files and folders, or files and folders that are in use, to be copied by backup software... so, therefore, with most backup software on Vista, one ends-up with a whole-hard-drive backup that doesn't really include
everything on the hard drive... most notably, certain OS files/folders. Good luck trying to do a complete system restore from a backup that's missing OS stuff!
Of course there are ways around it using backup products that actually circumvent Vista's reluctance to allow certain OS and in-use files/folders to be copied during a backup process; or drive imaging products like, for example, Acronis True Image 11 Home, just to name one among
several worthy similar products. But they're all costly... and often slow. Backup for Vista, while by no means hopeless, is at least a not-insignificantly more complicated thing than backup on XP or Win2K, etc. It will be interesting to go read, when I finish this post, how (or if) Comodo has licked the manifold peculiarities of backup on Vista (as opposed to other versions of Windows).
I fiddled a bit last fall with Comodo BOClean on Vista... and, frankly, I was disappointed. It's a perfectly fine product, I guess... but behaves kinda' weirdly, in my opinion. Curious interface, too. A little processor intensive; and seemed to want to phone home too much... or at least that's my recollection. I could be wrong... maybe I need to go try it again and verify that I would still dislike it now as much as I recall disliking it then. Of course, back then, my HP desktop replacement notebook running Vista was brand new, and I was finding multiple Vista peculiarities and bugs every single day... and it was hounding me to death with its ridiculous security features... to the point that I was ready to hurl the machine to the concrete floor a time or two (or three... or ten). I might have been in a bad mood when I checked-out BOClean. I should probably give it another chance, now that I'm in a better mood, having finally beaten Vista into submission so that it isn't making my life
a living hell anymore.
So... anyway... those are my observations, opinions and other mind-numbing diatribe. I hope someone from Comodo reads this thread. We're just
beside ourselves waiting for everything Comodo to become Vista compatible!
- HarpGuy
Author