Firewalls Reviewed

[whitedragon551]

Alot of people use Comodos firewall due to the publicity it has been given. However it didnt do so well in the tests.

Top 3 rated:

Online Armor Personal Firewall 3.0.0.190 93% / 84 10+ Excellent
Comodo Internet Security 3.5.55810.432 FREE 90% / 84 10+ Very good
Online Armor Personal Firewall 2.1.0.131 FREE 89% / 73 10 Very good

Not sure why Online Armor v3.0 FREE wasn't tested (results were updated a week ago), however, it seems to be holding up pretty good. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see that Online armor has scored pretty high in the past, so i don't think it'll do too much worse even though it wasn't tested.

And for those that are interested about Comodo Firewall:

Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4.18.184 FREE 55% / 73 7 Poor

Please, don't start up a debate about which firewall's better then which, because in the end, it all comes down to personal preference. I choose Online Armor FREE based on these reviews (before the test results were updated, online armor free was rated 2nd to comodo), however, for all i know, ZAP or KIS may perform better.

Results and comments - matousec.com

[DeborahJ]

Hey, thanks for that. Had heard only of Comodo, not that I use any.

Say, I dont see Zone Alarm being mentioned !?

[whitedragon551]

Its the 6th down on the list. It reached level 10+ which is the highest you can get.

[HappyAndyK]

Hmm... from this and one or two other reviews, it does looks like the Comodo FREE version of the firewall is lacking... while its Pro version is said to be faring better. Another useful read.

You can test your firewall here:
Firewall Test - Free Internet Security Testing
Firewall Leak Tester

Thanks for the heads up

[leofelix]

Well I use OnLine Armor free 3.0 (in italian) in my toshiba laptop running XP HOME, I saw the masuotec comparison and I wondered as well.
OnLine Armor 3.0 is easy to use, it close every port and is really strong

[roraniel]

FYI.

There is known conflict (BSOD) between Kaspersky and Online Armor until the next version release of Online Armor based on personal experience and feedback from a tech on their support forums.

[whitedragon551]

Thats odd. I havent had a single problem with it. Did it allow you to import you Kaspersky licence key? I cant seem to do that. My computer will freeze each time I try to do that.

[roraniel]

Immediately after installing OA my computer froze at the welcome when re-booting, upon 2nd re-boot it froze immediately after reaching the desktop, upon the third re-boot it froze at the welcome screen and then BSOD.

I booted in safe mode and uninstalled it using revo uninstaller and everything was cool again.

I asked on the OA Support Forum and they said this is a known issue on Vista Systems.

I am using Kaspersky Antivirus 2009 and Vista Ultimate SP1 when I installed it yesterday.

[whitedragon551]

Weird. I have experienced some slower boots after installing KAV and got rid of NOD32.

[Micromachine]

I haven't had the need for a paid version......yet