Though it’s too soon to have an opinion about Online Armor, my first impressions are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem to impact my system performance as badly as CIS or Outpost (*), and on the other hand, it’s the first firewall that behaves like an AV or anti-spyware, meaning that first thing it asks you when you install it is to make the decision of either trust all the applications already installed (!) or let it scan your HDD for several minutes… Not much of a choice in my opinion.

I’ll you let you know if a find a deal breaker…

Bye.

(*) OK, in order to be fair, I must say that I assume that Outpost does won’t behave for everybody like it did for me. There must be something in my PC that led it to freeze like crazy, but I think it’s also fair for me to get rid of it without wasting a whole week investigating he root cause and possibly finding an obscure workaround. I’ve better things to do and other firewalls to test, so…

Wow, I gotta tell ya… CIS was SO good!! Or, how to say it, so less… infernal.

This Outpost thing has reached, and easily surpassed, the annoyance level that for me only Vista’s UAC could provide. Thanks to this firewall, my Windows XP freezes for 5 to 10 seconds every time I perform one the following unusual and dangerous operations: open a program, close it, maximize a window, minimize it, click OK on a dialogue, etc.

So yes, I couldn’t recommend this firewall more, or at all. Next on the http://www.matousec.com list is Online Armor Free. I’ll give it a try even though at this point I’m feeling pretty depressed about firewalls. I’m not even asking for a perfect one, just one that doesn’t make me want to kill myself while it tries to “protect” me…

To be continued, I suppose.

Forget about that firewall. The same thing happened to me and I couldn’t make it work again. Besides, the link provided above by Das Fos shows that Kerio/Sunbelt (as well as ZoneAlarm, BTW) is close to useless.

Now I’m using Comodo Internet Security (CIS), supposedly a very good free option, but I don’t know if it’s a recommendable choice for everyone. It uses too much CPU, requires intensive configuration, pops up too many warnings and questions (not as badly as Vista’s UAC, but close – e.g. every time you install ANY application) and reports way too many false positives (though the CIS support team is quick to correct them if you bother to inform them).

Oh, and one more thing about CIS. By just installing it, my Windows XP registry was changed in a way that I couldn’t upgrade to Service Pack 3! Uninstalling CIS made no difference, so instead of applying tricky workarounds that would have risked the registry itself, I chose to reformat and reinstall XP, which is what I was trying to do anyway. So remember not to install CIS before XP SP3!

In conclusion, the more I use security applications like this, the more I’m convinced about this sad truth: if you want them to really protect you, they’ll be an endless nuisance in terms of resource consumption and time wasted. On the other hand, those applications that seem lightweight, easily configurable and safe are normally useless, some kind of a “placeboware”.

But hey, I’d be happy to be proven wrong! I’ll be waiting for the perfect (and free, if possible) firewall…

But lately, despite it being shown as still being in startup, I periodically discover that it’s simply not running anymore — no error message; no notice that it’s cut out; taskmanager and “what’s running” still list its startup or initiation files, but the icon is gone from the taskbar, AND those programs (or proceswses) which I have never told it to permanently allow (to remember) NO LONGER CAUSE SUNBELT TO ASK MY PERMISSION TO ALLOW THE ONE TO START THE OTHER PROCESS!!!
So I don’t know how long I’ve been surfing the internet with no firewall protection. I noticed, despite it’s being in the startup menu, that it was no longer starting at startup; so I added its initiation line to my autoexec.bat (which was otherwise empty in Win XP), and noticed that it did start up each time. But I suddenly notice, after the computer’s been running for several hours, that Sunbelt Personal firewall once again suddenly ISN’T running any longer!
–Anybody have any advice?