Comodo 3 Revisted Once Again
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Well I got Scot’s Newsletter Blog on Sunday afternoon, and I noted that Scot once again is visiting the Comodo firewall software. You may recall that last month there was a minor confrontation between Scot and the folks at Comodo in which some lively discussions ensued. But in the end, it may appear that the winners of this ……. eh……… debate, may be us consumers. Not only is Scot once again discussing the merits of the Comodo firewall, along with a new and improved version of Online Amour, but is even using the words “excellent product” when describing Comodo.
That is a huge switch from last month. But it also shows what I have already known. Scot is a fair person and his personal evaluations of products are and have been unbiased. Like myself, he doesn’t take any ‘payola’ like some on the internet to recommend a POS just to make a buck. His concern is how well or not so well a product works. That is the bottom line as it should be.
With this in mine, I’m going to give Comodo 3 another go. I have had to uninstall Sunbelt’s [aka Kerio] Personal Firewall after being unable to play some videos online. After some ponding on the software, I still wasn’t able to even watch weather videos at AccuWeather. Off it went. It is either me, my system or maybe firewall software in general, but I personally have had very bad behavior with just about every firewall I have tried. The exception is the built-in firewall of XP & Vista and also the old version of Sygate Personal Firewall which as of now remains my overall favorite. Yeah I know it’s old and hasn’t been updated. But it doesn’t mess with my system like some others have.
Back to tying Comodo 3 once again. They have a new and improved flavor which corrects the terminology during installation making it more user friendly. We will see what happens. Finger crossed.
Comments welcome.
Scot’s newsletter is here.
Tags: scots, newsletter, comodo, online armour, reviews, testing, procedures, review, software, problems, firewall
6 Comments
Zenium Tech
February 18th, 2008
at 9:27pm
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.
Ron Schenone
February 19th, 2008
at 5:50am
Hi Zenium Tech,
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.
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.
Regards, Ron
Jon Chorney
February 20th, 2008
at 7:21am
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
Ron Schenone
February 20th, 2008
at 9:39am
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.
cjon
April 20th, 2008
at 7:43pm
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.
Ron Schenone
April 21st, 2008
at 4:41am
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/