Saw this post over at Wilders offering a free version of Online Armour by the developer.
It's spoken of quite highly over there but I won't be trying it as I prefer my own setup ATM.
Some may be interested.
Mike said the free version still has the activation thingy code in it, but still worth the shot
People should read about it before blindly downloading and installing it
Apparrently the comparison is a bit out of date
I read that on Wilders too. There's nothing like a surprise, it's a free mystery install.
I have been a beta tester of Online Armor for almost a year.
The comparison of free as opposed to paid is outdated. Mike Nash is doing a lot of work at the moment to get the info up dated. The firewall is very good, and most things are designed to just run without much user imput. It had a great result in the last leak test results.
The 2 OA processes running amount to about 8000k each.
I have no problems running it with avira, avg anti spy, and superantispyware.
What is Online Armor
Thanks
What is Online Armor
Thanks
Security software, you can see what it is here:
Ok thank you
How good is it
Thank you, Humpty.
I tried the beta of this a while ago(It was the full version.). It was ok, I remember thinking it was a pretty easy to use firewall.
I'm sure they've fixed it by now but it used to conflict with AVG free and it has some kind of problems if you went into advanced mode(again this was a long time ago so its probably fixed).
If someone tries it, do me a favor and post a picture of its ram usage with process explorer or the task manager.
See post 6 rridgely in this thread.
See post 6 rridgely in this thread.
In my defense it was like 3AM when I posted that.
Thanks hazlenut.
People should read about it before blindly downloading and installing it
Amazing!, there are people who haven't heard of Online Armor?? Talk about the ignorance...
Hello Forum,
I moved from Comodo FW to Online-Armor FW, This is a super FW, very easy to set-up and the support is far superior compared to Comodo. Just try it , You won't be disappointed.
Badcompany.
Amazing!, there are people who haven't heard of Online Armor?? Talk about the ignorance...
I've heard of it, it's just not my kind of thing.
Ok I tried it on my laptop since its the only one I would even consider running a 3rd party firewall on.
The installation process is pretty nice. It installs and then oddly enough scans your start menu for programs that it recognizes as safe and unsafe.(I sorta remember it doing this the first time I tried it, but its been a long time) Then it asks you if you trust all of the ones that it doesn't recognize and I guess will identify bad ones(which I obviously cant test on my own computer. ). This process is cool because you wont be bombarded with pop ups at start up the first time(I've seen a few crappy firewalls actually crash the whole computer because they stop processes like that).
Things I like:
-Very straight forward and easy to use. Because of the way it checks you programs at installation you should never even get a notification from it unless you install something new or if you get a virus trying to connect out.
- Not bad resource wise. Like hazelnut said its only about 13mb. When you first boot up its about 25mb but it goes down after a few minutes.
- Allows me to turn off annoying features like "boot screen", "pop up when autotrusted program runs", and "use annoying blinking task tray icon". Some firewalls still dont do this.
- I went to a wired connection to my modem(bypassing my router firewall) and ran a test a grc. I ran the scans and it passed with true stealth, so at least I know its working.
Things I dont like:
- It doesn't get detected properly in the security center in xp. Instead of saying "Online Armour is on" it just says the general "one or more firewalls is on" message. Also I checked the specific firewall setting and it didn't turn off the windows firewall. Not a massive problem but still something they should fix. Actually as I wrote this I just disabled the windows firewall and now it says "online armor is on" in the security center. But they should still do this by default.
- I cant seem to find anything that would enable/disable network file sharing. I have it turned on because I will every now and then get files from here on my desktops but then I would "disable all exceptions" with the windows firewall. Maybe I'm just over looking it but I don't see anything that would control it.
Whats up with the virus scanner thing it has? I assume its not running all the time but what good is it if it doesn't update?(I dont seen an update button anywhere.) I have antivir installed at the moment and I haven't noticed any conflicts.
So to wrap up my review:
This is a pretty nice program but there are a few things holding it back. I'm not sure if these things are just not in the free version or just not there(or maybe I'm missing the option) but in order to make this the ultimate user friendly program I would have an easy way to toggle file sharing. A simple button would suffice but what is really nice is when they will allow me to set up trusted networks where it will automatically enable/disable it depending on where I connect.
If it does the above this firewall would pretty much be exactly what I would want in a firewall because I could give it to someone with almost no computer experience and trust it not to cause problems. It would basically be the windows firewall with outbound protection and a database of trusted programs so that it doesn't prompt you on every little thing. It does have a couple of more advanced features but its not stuff I or probably most people need to fool with.(I've been using the windows firewall after all. )
- It doesn't get detected properly in the security center in xp. Instead of saying "Online Armour is on" it just says the general "one or more firewalls is on" message. Also I checked the specific firewall setting and it didn't turn off the windows firewall. Not a massive problem but still something they should fix. Actually as I wrote this I just disabled the windows firewall and now it says "online armor is on" in the security center. But they should still do this by default.
services.msc > disable Security Center. it's a waste of resources along with Windows Firewall
services.msc > disable Security Center. it's a waste of resources along with Windows Firewall
No.
The security center has one useful feature and that is the fact that it will notify you if your av or firewall isn't on. For instance antivir didnt start up properly 2 days ago and I wouldn't have known it if it wasn't for that message. I rebooted and it started up right and no big deal. Was this a massive thing to me? Not really because I dont even need to have an av installed anyway but to someone who doesn't reboot their computer(like I do on my desktops) it could have been a real problem if their av wasn't on and they didnt know it. Besides enabling/disabling it makes absolutiely no change in system performance from what I've seen.
i personally don't like it. when i used it, it complained too much about everything. in the end, i disabled both the security center and the windows firewall leaving me with a smile on my face.