Outpost Free Basic Firewall - Reviewed

Let me start by saying I really like Outpost Free Firewall [OFF], but it just didn’t like me. Sadly to say I was forced to uninstall it yesterday after a bout of the ‘I don’t want to connect’ jitters. Had this been the first time that this had happened I would of blown it off. But it was my third time. Enough was enough.

You may recall I began testing OFF on about February 1, 2008 [here] having originally stating I would run a two week test. All was well the first few days. OFF was learning what to stop and what to allow to connect to the Internet, and I was a happy clam. But on or about day 4 OFF stopped my connection to the Internet. What happened? Nothing. It just stopped working. So I uninstalled OFF and reinstalled it for another go. That seemed to do the trick.

But on around day 6, same thing. This time however I was able to get it up and running again. Yesterday it happened again. That was it. Off went OFF.

I don’t know what it is with free firewalls. They seem to work well for a short period of time and than bang! They seem to have trouble focusing on what they are supposed to do. Oh well. The only firewall that hasn’t caused a problem on my system has been the old version of Sygate Personal Firewall. Some here had concerns that SPF was to old of a software to use, since it is no longer being updated. Could be.  But it worked. At least on my system it did.

Bottom line. I liked OFF, when it worked. Your mileage may vary.

Comments welcome.

PS I’m going to try the free Kerio firewall next. Wish me luck.

[tags]outpost, basic, firewall, protection, problem, uninstall, sygate, old, version, [/tags]