I have finally gotten around to trying Online armor. I have the official free 3.0 version.

I think it has some issues and you might need to rethink your recommendation.

First, in a way, it has become a little more than a firewall. It has a program control that controls not only programs that connect to the Internet, but any program that starts up. You can turn it off, but for the average lay user this creates far too many confusing pop ups.

Also, in some instances it doesn’t seem to remember my responses. When I launch a game, which I’m retired from now, it sometimes asks if I want to let the a3d.dll something–I think it’s the game’s hook to Direct X–to run. I told it the first time, but every now and then–not all the time however–it asks me again if I want to allow this. And I’m thinking, “I already told you I wanted you to allow it.”

Today, when I woke up, there was a Java update. And sitting waiting for me was Online Armor asking me if I wanted to let Java connect to the Internet. I leave my computer in standby mode, so it probably wouldn’t have done it anyway, but still, one would think that a firewall would know that Java is a program to be trusted. And then when I installed it I had to go through about four or so confirmation pop ups concerning the new Java build. Winpatrol, a free new program monitor that I use, had only one confirmation.

It also has a filesystem scan. It scans all the files on our computer to look for suspicious files. From what I can surmise, it is a quasi-anti-malware scanner. To me, this is a bit more than a firewall.

Also of note, Comodo has finally come out with a paid suite. I have not tried it, but you might want to check in out. Also, I think you can purchase some separate components. And it seems that Comodo has some other unique tools now. In other words, it has revamped its product line.

Also, I don’t want to go into too much detail right now, but Online Armor feels like it has a few more rough edges.

I would like to recommend you take a look at a free firewall from the PC Tools folks. It scored very good in the Matousec tests and seems fairly well made. I tried an earlier version of it, and liked most of what I saw.

And the second option might be to go with the Norton Suite now. Yes, it is a suite, but all current reviews have commented on how streamlined it is and how few system resources it uses. And its firewall makes decisions automatically. It’s one of a new generation of firewalls that make decisions based on behavior. The firewalls in Kaspersky and Panda apparently work the same way. Furthermore, the firewall in the Norton Suite scored well in the Matousec tests–just a hair below Online Armor, essentially where the PC Tools free firewall scored. In other words, it scored very good.

It might be better to have a firewall that scores very good, but that is also smooth and causes no problems.

Anyway, food for thought.

Sincerely,

Rusk Reeder

After several weeks of mucking around with various security products, you’ll be happy to know that it’s come down to ESET NOD32 Antivirus, Comodo Firewall Pro, and PC Tools ThreatFire. I had PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus because of a computer magazine’s recommendation but I started having blue screen system crashes that pointed to a file associated with that application. I uninstalled it and put NOD32 back on my system (it’s been off for a while) and things are working OK once again. ThreatFire seems to augment my anti-malware protection without conflicts and Comodo is a first-rate firewall. Thanks for your contribution to my decision-making!

I also had problems with my e-mail in Outlook when Mail Shield is active. In one instance, Outlook refused to download a file with a 1.5 MB photo attachment, something it hadn’t done before. On a whim, I turned off the Mail Shield, restarted Outlook and it downloaded the message without a problem. Today I noted that it was downloading mail slowly and hanging on the last message and, after a restart of Outlook, it began downloading all the same messages again. Once again, I disabled the Mail Shield, restarted Outlook and it seemed to correct the problem. It could be that Mail Shield conflicts with the mail scanning feature of my anti-spam software (IHateSpam 5.0) or the e-mail malware scanning feature of my anti-malware software (PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus) but their suggestion to turn those features off wasn’t acceptable to me.

As a result, I switched back to Comodo Pro. Just based on my experiences, Scot’s recommendation of Comodo Pro for Vista users is still golden.