thanatoid said:
I used it for a VERY short while and it drove me crazy, I know
people who have ALL dumped it for the same reason, and 90% of
Usenet posts about it are bitching about how awful it is.
Once you get it to work OK - which CAN be a problem, see below -
it will do the job, but you have to have a LOT of patience with
it and it WILL repeatedly ask stupid questions which can drive
you nuts.
There is also an issue with making it run properly - on some
computers it just will NOT run, or cause some stupid problem,
and it being free, there is little support, and NO useful
support. I've been there.
Most other firewalls are "setup once and forget it" (unless you
make major changes to your system or decide on some new internet
software). ZoneAlarm bothers you with stupid questions ALL the
time. Plus, other firewalls that I've tried were installed and
/worked/ - ZA required a lot of fiddling and it was just pure
frustration.
I've used ZA firewall since shortly after it's inception in 2000 and the
suites since 2001 or 2002, and have not had the problems you mention. There
was one release 2 or 3 years ago that caused XP shutdown problems, but that
was fixed within a week or so and is hardly a reason for condemnation. The
one thing you need to realize about people bitching in newsgroups and forums
is that they are having problems. It's rare that you see a post with the
subject line "I use WinXP and I LOVE it!!" That's just not the way it works
There is support through the forums for the free version, just not from
CheckPoint itself. I've found that same scenario to be true with a lot of
software that offers both free and paid versions. In most cases, forum
support was better and/or quicker than phone/email support with the company.
I've set it up and run it on numerous computers (friends and family, not
just my own) and have never had it "just not run." My guess would be that in
those instances, there was something else that was the root cause of it not
running.
There is a "learning" mode that ZA uses on initial installation/upgrade that
does ask quite a few questions. It's just wanting you to confirm whether or
not a program should have internet access, server privileges, etc. Once that
period is over (2-3 weeks, I think), it only asks for confirmation on new
programs, or on major updates to existing programs. I never really found
that to be a fault. In fact, I like to know what's trying to get through,
either in or out.
Am I 100% satisfied with it? No, but then, I can't think of a single program
that I can say I am.
Would I recommend it to others? Yes. If I didn't, I wouldn't continue to use
it for as long as I have.
Would I say it's the best on the market? No, but it's the best for me and a
lot of other people.
Just like everything else, users need to try different versions of an
application and make that decision themselves. I'm not here to tell someone
NOT to use a particular product, but I am more than happy to share my
personal experiences with it, be it good or bad. I try not to judge
something based on the word of another person without at least trying it
myself, and that has sometimes gotten me into trouble, but at least I
learned from it. I used to think I didn't like grits, but then I tried them
with shrimp gravy
.
