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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A few minor annoyances, but it does the job., 25 Nov 2008
This review is from: ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2009 - 3 User (PC) (CD-ROM)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I first switched to ZoneAlarm in 2005. Until then I'd been using Norton, but that product had become bloated and started to slow my computer drastically.
So I tried ZoneAlarm, and it was a total delight. Not only was it *much* less of a resource hog, but it was also much more 'up front' about what it was doing. It had (and has) screens where I can tinker with the options, doing a bit of fine-tuning and turning off stuff I don't need.
Other security software too often takes the attitude that you don't need to know what it's doing. It takes control, and expects you to leave it alone. ZoneAlarm leaves you feeling that you're protected, but that YOU'RE still in control of your own computer.
Then, alas, a year or two ago, Zone Labs 'upgraded' the product. The upgrade meant that my computers (and those of many, many disgruntled users) slowed to a crawl, with ZA frequently grabbing 100% of the CPU and not letting it go again.
Since then I've been using McAfee's latest product, and while it's *OK*, it still feels more like Norton than ZoneAlarm -
So I was glad to have the opportunity to test-drive ZoneAlarm 2009.
In my opinion, it's a much more friendly product than Norton or McAfee, but it still has some of the minor annoyances that have been there since its early days.
First, what it does: Protects you against all sorts of bad stuff and secures your PC against crackers. Then there are all the optional extras - parental controls, so Junior doesn't see something s/he shouldn't; Data privacy (you can make sure, for example, that your banking or credit card details NEVER leave your computer unless you explicitly give your permission - a nice feature). It will also make sure that no virus-infected email can *leave* your computer, it will detect spam mail, and do various other cool things for you.
Yes, it's turned into a *bit* more of a resource hog than it used to be, but in that respect it still compares VERY favourably with other products I've tried.
Annoyances? Not many, and not serious. I found that even after registering the software, I still got 'unregistered' messages for a while.
If you click the button to see if your PC is 'FULLY' secured, you'll be directed to a website which will try to sell you another (totally unnecessary) piece of software - there's really no excuse for this.
I've turned off the option for 'automatic updates', but ZA is happily ignoring this, continuing to slow down my PC and search for upgrades at the most inconvenient moments! There's a 'Games mode' which might prevent this from happening, but I haven't yet tried it out.
There are a few other small problems, which I won't mention - they might be just a peculiarity of my machine: for example, 'shutdown' takes considerably longer since I installed ZoneAlarm.
The Bottom Line: ZA 2009 *has* persuaded me to uninstall McAfee and give Zone Labs another chance. It's not perfect - none of these programs are, though they're a necessary evil on any machine that runs Windows. But of the products I've sampled recently (Norton, McAfee, and ZoneAlarm), it's a very definite winner.
PS: I've just come back to edit this review about that 'slow shutdown' issue. It turns out that it's a recognised bug in ZA (I wish I could knock a star off for that!!) The workaround is to *manually* shut down ZA before closing windows. Bit of a hassle, but it beats a ten-minute shutdown. They really should have fixed this by now, but don't seem to regard it as a priority.)
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
All Internet Security Suites Are Not Born Equal, 25 Nov 2008
This review is from: ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2009 - 3 User (PC) (CD-ROM)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Someone once told me that Internet security suites are like directory enquiry services. There's dozens of them around but they all essentially do the same thing. Personally I beg to differ. I've had mix experiences with different Internet security suites in the past, so I decided to give this latest edition from Zone Alarm a chance, unfortunately for the most part I'm disappointed with the results.
When receiving the software, my first impressions were good as the back of the packing lists everything Zone Alarm has to offer and comparing it to the giants Norton and McAfee. Needless to say, that the manufacturer's description is impressive and it became obvious that Zone Alarm would offer everything I could possibly need. That was until I realised that it doesn't list what the software doesn't offer. Zone Alarm lacks Antiphishing protection as well as Safe Surfing tools. As well as providing no function for erasing or shredding files - something which I believe is essential to an Security Suite. So it doesn't offer everything, not the biggest failing, but more disappointments were to come.
I would like to have been able to say that the installation was quick and trouble free. However it was not. It took several attempts including two complete system freeze up's (if that's the technical term) and several restarts. Zone Alarm did finally install - very slowly considering. While the program is running is does considerably slow down my computer, much more than Kaspersky does or McAfee did (which I used before Kaspersky). I have a quad core processor and 4Gb of RAM - surely that should be enough to run Zone Alarm in the back ground without slowing down everything else I'm doing. I've seen reviews in computer magazines and online that claim that this latest version of Zone Alarm is streamlined and has minimum impact on system resources. After using the software I personally can't see how this could be. Maybe Zone Alarm just doesn't like my computer. After the installation and another reboot I updated the database definitions would took two attempts to get all of the available updates. I then ran the first complete scan (which completed itself in around the same time as my current Kaspersky suite).
The virus scanner is not Zone Alarms but actually Kaspersky's engine, so at least we know it will work perfectly well in that respect. And the firewall itself seems excellent. Zone Alarm would be an excellent solution for novice users as it provides a one click fix it interface. After everything had settled down, I set about exploring and familiarizing myself with the software. The interface is impressive, well laid out and easy to understand and customize.
Sadly Zone Alarm isn't for me at all. I uninstalled it (which was easy and quick) and resumed my normal Internet security suite. At the moment Zone Alarm is cheaper than all the other Internet Security Suites I looked at, but I feel you should pay a few pounds more and get software that offer's you complete protection. To be honest the software doesn't seem quite ready, and offers nothing to presume either new users or existing users to pick it over all others. So in conclusion, I would personally recommend that you avoid this one.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Protect Yourself, 25 Nov 2008
This review is from: ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2009 - 3 User (PC) (CD-ROM)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I've been using Zone Alarm since back in 2002, and I was impressed with it. Back then it was just a firewall, and did the job really nicely, but since Checkpoint got involved it's turned into a fully fledged package, with anti-spyware, anti-malware and antivirus. This is great, but when you have AVG already, you cannot just use this on it's own as a firewall, so this is either or, and because I prefer AVG's powerful AV I ditched Zone Alarm.
For the purposes of testing though, my test bay was installed with this, and I have to say Installation was very easy - I only have Windows XP but it was smooth on there. Boot up times did go low though, and the memory used was getting close to 40MB, which is a bit much. AVG uses 22MB. The panel is easy enough to use - and getting it to communicate with another networked PC was simple, actually simpler than Windows Firewall.
I do like the fact that you can stop everything if you get a distributed denial of service attack against you (rare really) but really I have never had to use it in 6 years of use. I don't like the way it wants to have my ebay info either, could be dangerous.
One thing I do like though is the way you can stop a program getting online, so if you don't want something you got which is adware, you can stop the ads coming up by blocking it's internet access. If this is a program that needs the internet, you're up a river without a paddle.
One thing that might interest people is the ID Fraud Protection - but it really doesn't say much about it. Even once installed you don't really notice anything different, the pishing emails keep coming, so I wonder what it's all meant to do?
Not a bad package, but I don't think the AV is as good as AVG.
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