Compare ZA with Comodo

Feedback/Comments/Announcements/News
1

Hi

My first post so forgive me if I get it wrong! (:SHY)

When I started with broadband a few years ago I installed Sygate Personal Firewall. I had some problems and migrated to Zone Alarm (Free) as it was (and is) so highly recommended.

As a matter of total curiosity a week ago I disabled Zone Alarm to try COMODO – and rather liked it – I also was touched by the sincerity of: “[i]And this is our CEO’s explanation as to why its free! https://forums.comodo.com/index.php/topic,764.0.html[/i]”

Before I put too much time into configuring the Comodo setup I took a look at other free firewalls for Windows 2000. I googled Kerio, highly recommended somewhere or other for W2K, but was put off from even downloading it from (what I call) “dubious” sites, full of “cracks” and “XXX”s!!!
I would like to know if other members of this forum (I don’t mean you Melih!) would like to comment on my current decision to uninstall ZA and learn to live with c.o.m.o.d.o.

I am an old small home user, run W2K on an old PC, don’t play games, surf a lot with Firefox, exchange less than 10 emails a day using Outlook, use about 6GB of my 20GB H/D. I do get a lot of spam (now defeated with Choice Mail - www.choicemail.com). I have a cable broadband connection on all day, off at night. Use AVG virus protection daily and run AdAware/SpyBot/Defender about once a week.
As I really want to stick with one firewall or another any thoughts/advice from Forum members greatly appreciated. J J
Denis

2

I think that you’re doing the right thing… by trying Comodo’s firewall. I have tried a few others over the years, but this one is the one i like the most. Use it for a while, and you can’t be without it… :wink:
Give it a fair try, and if you run in to some problems, just post in this forum, and you will get help from users/members or Comodo’s staff.
It’s promising that a firewall this young, is already acting like an adult. ;D It’s already among the best in the market, even if you count the paid one’s in. (:CLP)

Don’t forget, if you like it, promote it! (Melih’s word of wisdom…) ;D

Good luck with your testing!

3

Hey Dok,

Firstly, welcome to the Comodo forums. If you have any questions at all, just holler. Likewise, if you feel you can help someone else, jump on in.

Please bear in mind that the following is just my opinion,adn we all know what they say about opinions … LOL

CPF V. ZA?

Where do we start? When the internet was simpler, ZA ruled the roost. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) a bad firewall, but the internet landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years and not necessarily for the better.

With the huge increase in internet availability around the globe, the opportunity for commercial gain, through fair means or foul, has increased accordingly. Firewalls are now an integral part of our online experience (or should be). To my way of thinking, Microsoft tried to do the right thing by building a firewall (of sorts) into Windows XP, as all users need to be protected. Unfortunately they need to be protected at a higher level than that provided by the Windows firewall.

CPF, out of the box, is IMHO the ideal firewall, particularly given your described computing practices. Its default settings are sufficient to track and control inbound and outbound connections (ZA likewise does this), but adds several layers of advanced checking that ZA just doesn’t have.

  1. Application / parent testing
  2. Cryptographic signature analysis
  3. DLL injection
  4. Windows messge monitoring
  5. Inter process memeory modifications
  6. COM/OLE connections
  7. Network / Application / Component rule hierarchy

CPF goes beyond a traditional firewall by not just looking at an attempted connection, but at what triggered the attempted connection. Everyone knows Internet Explorer will attempt to access the internet (duh!) but CPF looks at what caused IE to attempt the connection.

CPF is relatively light on resources (and getting better with each release), causes less system slowdown than any other firewall I’ve tested, has an easy to understand user interface and reports easy to understand messages about attempted connections.

The support, both at support.comodo.com and here on the forums, is some of the best I’ve come across in 20+ years in the industry.

The ethics underpinning Comodo’s free desktop security software initiative are unheard of in this industry.

Ultimately, the choice of personal firewalls is a personal one. No one piece of software suits everyone, and personal preferences will always get in the way of logic. :wink:

The best advice I could offer would be to install CPF in its default configuration and use it for a couple of days. See what you think of its security, its speed, its explanatory pop-up messages. If you feel comfortable in its base configuration. If you’re happy with this, then dive in and customize it to suit your environment.

I realise that I haven’t discussed ZA much, but firewalls are like women - when you find the right one, you stop looking. :wink:

Again, welcome to the forums.

Hope this helps,
Ewen :slight_smile:

4

Greetings,
Not really, “Men” are never satified anyways (:LOV)

Thanks,
rki.

5

Dang Ewen. You don’t leave much for anyone to say. Except Everything he said is true. (:AGL)

I too have tried a lot of firewalls. Both paid and free. CPF is the best on the market. Period. You can’t go wrong when you go with the best. ;D

(B) Lee

6

LOL. Generalisations are the curse of the technically competent, rki. You should be ashamed of yourself. :wink:

7

Excuse me! Excuse me!

Can I say something now please Dok? :-[ (:NRD)

Melih

8

CPF is comparable in features to ZA Pro. However, CPF is free of charge.

9

[size=12pt]:: WARNING! ::
Installing CPF to replace ZA in your PC, will result in a less more time coffe break before your PC’s boot.

10

Not true, after finding the right woman and after 15 years of training in, I wouldn’t want two or another in my life, then I would be twice as wrong about everything! :wink:

As far as Zone Alarm is concerned , I used it for nearly 6 years. Ok, I loved it, really. Then the last few years, it began to bog down a bit. The performance became less than tolerant. During startup, i could throw on coffee , take a shower, and watch the news and then say, wow, there it is! I began having issues with it blocking ports, etc…Any time I emailed tech support, no response or always, go to the help section where I found nothing. Getting to the final year which was this past summer, I could not even connect with my DSL at all. I emailed, tried the forums, was basically ignored so I had it. I had it with ZA blocking my apps, letting garbage in, no true out\in monitoring . So I stumbled upon Comodo. I too asked why, where, how. I was sceptic at first but went ahead. I had found my firewall and was extremely happy with it. But as great as it is, being a full version for free, I also felt the help in these forums, the friendliness, the connection from the administrative gods who descend to acknowledge us ■■■-ons and ask for our ideas, report bugs in the systems, etc…and actually listen. That was back in July and now I am a bonified moderator from being such a pain in the rear on the forums. I fully support CPF and wouldn’t do so if I didn’t trust it. My pc now starts up quickly, I have passed all leak tests, and doing manual checks tells me Comodo Firewall is doing it’s job. I have passed other tests as well as to where ZA failed many. While this is my opinion, I would like to think my opinion is based from facts that I have encountered. I hope you form your opinion as well and give the CPF a try.

Cheers,

Paul

11

‘Men’ are always satisfied. It’s just a question of timing. :smiley:

12

WOW!

I posed a question to the Forum before going to bed last night and woke up to find replies from no less than 9 helpful members (and they are still coming, it seems). I had expected a few ■■■■■■■, like on all other forums I’ve known, but no one seems to have a bad word to say about CPF. (B)

I shall definitely be staying with Comodo. Why? Many reasons (apart from last night’s recommendations):
§ I was getting a bit tired of never being able to get meaningful help with ZA but I see that Comodo has a active, vibrant and helpful forum.
§ The price is right!
§ I just know enough about Maths/IT etc to see CPF makes sense.
§ And finally the Comodo Forum is the only forum of this type that I know where the CEO himself not only looks at the forum but also apparently jumps in. This is remarkable and reassuring!
§ It looks as though I can leave my spell checker on proper English!!

Yes, Melih, you can talk now - I might not have believed you yesterday!!! You may be interested to learn where I found Comodo? I don’t play games and if I want to switch off I click on my Stumble Icon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) and someone sent me to you! But you may be more interested in knowing where I did NOT find out about you. My wife generously gives me a sub to “Computer Active” - a UK publication which recommends ZA about 5 times in each issue as the bee-all-and-end-all of all firewalls. In the last few years I can never remember reading about Comodo. I have just checked Subscription Offers From Just £3 | Computeractive and see they have never reviewed CPF but recently (in an issue I have yet to see) put a download link to CPF on their site. They did run a review on firewalls generally a while back and compared half a dozen and gave best of show to ZA – I can’t find the issue but don’t think you were mentioned. I will point out the error of his ways to Dylan Armbrust but I thought you might have a few chums able to do this better than I. (And WOW again! I have just now discovered Comodo AntiSpam! I have not been unhappy with Choice Mail, but the free edition only protects one account – and I use three. So I think I will take advantage of your generosity yet again).
Denis
(V) (:WAV)

13

I will add that, being a Novice PC user I thought I could not have asked for anything more simple than ZA Free to use on my PC. However, after trying Comodo Firewall, even though it took a version or two before it ran faster on my PC, I have now in fact found both a simple and much more effective Firewall than ZA Free to use. I also have had no problems with it, where with ZA I had to at first use (and was recommended from users in the ZA Labs Forums) an older version. Then upon waiting for some time until a new release came out with fixes, was told once again to wait until yet another new release came out before installing that one because of troubles with it. Finally when the last version came out, I braved it and installed it, and guess what? Immediately after installation I began getting the same program allow/deny alerts on both my user accounts at the same time. It was enough for me to finally give up on it and install Comodo again to see if it improved as far as speed or any delays I had when switching from one account to the other, and it has. Add in Antivir PE for Real Time Virus protection, ( I also liked AVG Free whenI used it) along with Ewido Anti-Spyware free version and Spyware Terminator as on demand scanners and I feel have a very good arsenal. My point on this is that it’s all for free, and I can’t imagine anyone paying for a product that seems to have as many problems with even it’s free version as I have seen posted in the ZA Labs Forum. I realize this may be the nature of the beast, and that there are many satisfied die hard ZA users, but as you have already said just one look in this Forum is enough to put anyones mind at ease about using the Comodo Firewall.

14

Hey Dok, Welcome!!

My experience with ZA free was not a good one. I tried to use ZA THREE different times, but I was always having trouble with it crashing my system, Freezing on shutdown, And Like Paul I could go take a nap while waiting for the computer to boot. This was on Two different computers, the first was an old windows ME system, and then a new xp system so I knew it wasn’t my computers fault. It just seemed to me that every new version of ZA just got more buggy.

I then went to Sygate and loved their firewall, but after the Symantec buyout and knowing that there would be no new updates to SPF I decided that it was to much of a security risk to keep. Like so many on these forums, I then stumbled upon Comodo personal firewall and haven’t looked back. I never thought I would find a firewall that I liked as much as Sygate, but I was wrong. CPF just blows the others away.

(B)

15

ok here it goes :slight_smile:

I will not say anything about Comodo vs ZA.

However, one thing I will say is: Comodo is and will always be there for you!
Of course in return we want you help us spread the word and secure the world of computing! We can’t do it without you!

Thank you for being part of the most friendly and helpful online community… The Comodo Family!

thanks
Melih

16

I gave Comodo a try more out of interest than anything as I like fiddling with such things. I was intrigued after reading about its ability to prevent ‘leaks’. It’s now my permanent firewall despite having over 10 months left on my Zone Alarm Pro subscription, I’m very impressed! & I have emailed my friends and relatives to try it. Thanks! (:HUG) (:WAV) (:WAV)

17

That’s great to hear and welcome! :wink:

Paul

18

Thanks to a wonderful bunch of guys and PDG software I am a very happy bunny!! CPF seems as though it has always been on board and ZA is now uninstalled from my PC. So far as I am concerned the matter of CPF vs ZA is decided! I hope this thread will be seen by many other doubting thomases in the months to come.
Off topic maybe, but Comodo Anti Spam has taken over from Choice Mail on one account and also from Ella which covered all my accounts. I am delighted not to have the daily chore of checking and deleting the contents of a pre-filtered spam box. There was another chore also: trying to keep on top of all the deliberate spelling “mistakes” made by spammers to evade filtering. I think I am booting faster but definitely Comodo Anti Spam gets the thumbs up from me. Thank you Melih.

Denis (V) (M) (:CLP) (:WAV)

19

I also have to add seen this thread is titled “Compare ZA with comodo”. I have noticed COMODO taking flak for “Spamming”, trying to sell other products(Which are free anyway???). This flak is far from true, but i thought everyone would be interested in the experiance i had with ZAP.

When i bought ZAP, we gave them our email address as you do. After that we now receive regular “Promotions” on other ZoneAlarm products. Now remember we have already given them our money, we are a customer WHY ARE THEY ANNOYING ME!!!

I also gave my email address to COMODO to download the firewall on 2 email accounts, (The first email account is a “Spam Magnet” email account which i use for signing up to places that might spam me) but to my surprise i did not get any COMODO spam nor any other spam volume increase. So the second time i gave the address i use all the time. Too my pleasure i did not receive ANY “Spam” or advertising, not even in the necessary emails (Thay give you confirmation and the key).

Guys i am truely impressed, people that go on about this “Bait with free” and “Pay” technique need to look carefully at the “Pay” and “Pay again” technique which is absolutly obsurd.

(You can de-register i think, i have not tried that yet as the emails aren’t THAT regular, it’s easy to press the “delete” key (-: )

cheers, rotty

20

Hi Everybody,

I have recently switched from Zone Alarm Security Suite to Comodo CPF and my experience so far has been very positive. I also tested CAVS as well and mostly liked it but I did run into a bit of a snag. Whenever I brought up Windows Explorer, the system would freeze for several minutes while the hourglass would crank away. Since this is still a beta version, I removed it and replaced it with Avast. I intend to further test CAVS when the new version comes out.

hlb