recommendations on free firewall?

[sded]

Comodo has established a history of attacks, sneakiness, and questionable business practices that annoys a lot of people.  There is also great difficulty at their website in getting straight answers to questions that might reflect negatively on them, and a lot of apologists to confuse the issues.  But if you just use the firewall/D+ and avoid the Melihgalomania and related fanboys, it is a very good product that has simply not progressed like some of its competitors because of the suite emphasis (and some other strange products that have been developed instead).  A current example of the attempts to cloud men's minds is at http://forums.comodo.com/empty-t46406.0.html;topicseen , although this is really for the antivirus which is generally considered inferior.  If it strikes your fancy, fw/d+ still can protect you well if you apply the effort.  

[YoKenny]

it has to do with some kind of commercial agreement they made with another entity. some people around here think they've sold out and are boycotting them. check some of the links on this thread for more info. and maybe someone out there can verify my assessment of this disdain for comodo.

You are learning fast and check what people use in their signature. 

By the way, you could update your signature by going to PROFILE then Forum Profile Information then update the Signature: information.

[Sesame]

The thread turned out being filled with pretty good advice especially from sded, who is kind of a specialist in this area.  I guess I have nothing to add any more.  After all, it's good to have multi-layered protection from our ISPs, (NAT) routers  and application firewalls to make our security tight while keeping the resource light on our PCs...and yes, especially we have gotten multiple PCs, the investments on ISP and routers are worthwhile.

As for PC Tools firewall, after reading the latest Maousec's report, I gave it a spin.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it has expanded its configurabilities.  I guess Online Armor, Outpost and PC Tools would be favorite application firewalls here.  I have installed Comodo once but, when I visited their forum, I uninstalled it.  I simply couldn't make myself even register to the forum after reading a few threads there.  I asked myself if I could believe their products and noticed the answer was no.  So, the experience was rather short lived.

[bob3160]

As for PC Tools firewall, after reading the latest Maousec's report, I gave it a spin.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it has expanded its configurabilities.

One of the reasons I keep recommending and using it.

[tiresias]

I found this troubling bit of text on Outpost's faq:

Outpost Free was released before Windows XP and has not been updated for it - there is therefore a possibility that it will cause problems (including blue screen crashes) with Windows XP, especially with Service Pack 2 (disabling SP2's Data Execution Protection may help in some cases).

I'm running XP. Should I worry? 

Here's the link containing the text:
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15745

[nmb]

Here's the link containing the text:
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15745

That topic is six years old. agnitum have updated many times after that and it supports xp. nothing to worry.

nmb

[tiresias]

That topic is six years old. agnitum have updated many times after that and it supports xp. nothing to worry.

nmb

is this part outdated too?

It will lose its configuration (including all rules) if it crashes for any reason. Unless you have a backup, the only way to recover from this is to reinstall Outpost Free. Users therefore need to keep regularly updated backups of the configuration .cfg file (using Windows Explorer to make a copy of this file is the simplest method).

[RZPogi]

I have used comodo for 2 years until june after comodo became a resource hog.

I tried online armor, but in my PC i have problems with GUI. It rarely shows up.

I tried PC Tools, but when I use a javascript uploader, limewire, frostwire, and java-based apps, the whole PC is crashing.

I am content with Outpost free and it works perfectly with me.

[DavidR]

That topic is six years old. agnitum have updated many times after that and it supports xp. nothing to worry.

nmb

is this part outdated too?

It will lose its configuration (including all rules) if it crashes for any reason. Unless you have a backup, the only way to recover from this is to reinstall Outpost Free. Users therefore need to keep regularly updated backups of the configuration .cfg file (using Windows Explorer to make a copy of this file is the simplest method).

Totally as it is for a completely different product, outpost firewall 1.0, the latest version was only released recently is version 6.7 or there about.

[Sesame]

I found this troubling bit of text on Outpost's faq:

Outpost Free was released before Windows XP and has not been updated for it - there is therefore a possibility that it will cause problems (including blue screen crashes) with Windows XP, especially with Service Pack 2 (disabling SP2's Data Execution Protection may help in some cases).

I'm running XP. Should I worry? 

Here's the link containing the text:
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15745

Nmb is right in terms of Pro, or, the registered versions of Outpost and DavidR is right in terms of the free versions.  Till they released the latest free version based on the Pro version 6, Agnitum hadn't released any free version since 1.0, although the version 1.0 was quite nice product. This is why some people wanted to stick to the old free version as long as possible during that time but I guess there was a limit according to the thread.  In fact, The post is talking of Outpost Free 1.0.  If you read on the post, Paranoia mentions the Pro version.

The above issues do not apply to Outpost Pro (v2.x onwards) which offers numerous other improvements, both to the firewall engine and the plugins.

   Since we are talking of the latest Outpost Free here, the post has only "historical" importance.

[nmb]

Since we are talking of the latest Outpost Free here, the post has only "historical" importance.

exactly. its just history.

nmb