Comments on: Comodo 3 Revisted Once Again

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:41:28 +0000

cjon,
I don’t know who ranked Commodo as #1, but check out this article from Scott Finnie:

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

By: cjon

cjon — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:43:45 +0000

Just read that Comodo was the #1 pick of firewalls, and Sunbert’s Kerio Personal Firewall, which I paid for and liked was ranked near the bottom in protection. I uninstalled KPF and installed the new free version of Comodo, and was immediately and permanently blocked from the internet. No wonder it is so effective. Unplugging your internet connection is effective as well.

I tried configuring it 30 ways from Sunday, and I was finally able to get IE7 & AIM to connect, but never could get Firefox, Thunderbird or Opera to connect. Neither would my NOD32 connect for definitions updates.

POS software as far as I’m concerned.

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:39:12 +0000

Hello Jon,
Agree about remembering settings. Hopefully version 3.0 will do a better job. I’ll give it a few weeks and see what happens. Thanks for the comments.

By: Jon Chorney

Jon Chorney — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:21:07 +0000

Hello Ron,

I have also been looking at free firewalls for a long time and have had only indifferent success with them.

The Sunbelt firewall was one of my few purchases - a dead loss, as it turns out. I use ShadowSurfer to virtualize my system disk (for safety) and found that the SunBelt updates weren’t being retained. A check showed that the program installation forces an install on the system drive. Checking with Tech Support elicited the response that no choice of installation location was possible. That pretty much ruled it out.(Of course, the fact that it blocks Threatfire with no notice didn’t help.)

Online Armor blocked SahdowSurfer - again with no notice. Off it went.

But this gets to key points with firewalls in general: either they are designed to intrude as little as possible - in which case they may do things that may be problematic (like blocking ThreatFire) silently, leading to confusion. Or, they are exceptionally verbose - causing eventual accession to every popup just to get past them - which defeats their purpose.

Produceers dance as best they can between the two extremes, which causes flames from whichever side feels neglected.

My other main complaint, though, has been the failure of a firewall to “remember” its rules. That was my experience a few times with Comodo 2.x. It would run fine for awahile and then develop amnesia. Complete reinstallation would provide temporary respite, but only temporary….

I’ll look again at Comodo in the next week: but, I have limited expectations.

Cheers,

Jon

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:50:00 +0000

Hi Zenium Tech,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience with us. I thought maybe I was the only one on the planet that had problems with the free firewalls. Currently Comodo 3 is behaving itself. But I have been there, done that before. We will see what happens and I will be reporting back.

Regards, Ron

By: Zenium Tech

Zenium Tech — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:27:11 +0000

Ron:

Good luck with Comodo 3. Have yet to find a decent no cost SW firewall to recommend to friends. Maybe Comodo 3 will be it. (Comodo 1 and 2 did not make my cut.)

Like you I had a favorite free firewall (Tiny Personal Firewall). It just worked. But alas they messed it up by putting a dependency on IE5.5 and IE6. It eventually got transferred to Kerio and then to Sunbelt. I could not get Sunbelt Kerio to work consistently.

Was disappointed that Outpost free version did not work for you. I know the Outpost paid version works well for me. And I have one of the few lifetime license so it was only a 1 time investment (until it is discontinued!).

Keep us informed on the Comodo 3 progress.

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