Customer Reviews

ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 3 User (PC CD)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been a customer of ZoneLabs for over 5 years now, so I was really pleased when I was offered a more upgraded version of the one I had already.

As usual the installation was stress free and it installed quick and smoothly, after restart it will come up with some options but I can assure you no matter what computer experience you have, it's easy to select as it recommends the best options for you anyway.

I've installed this on both: My computer which has Windows 7, 2GB RAM with a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core Processor 5000+ 2.61GHz, and my sisters 5+ year old PC with Windows XP, on both systems I had no problems at all, the program runs smoothly in the background which is great when you are trying to surf the internet, edit photo's or playing games and you don't have to worry about any lag. (high memory taking games on old systems will lag a bit, but this is understandable).

The layout is simple with a clean look, it's easy to navigate and find what you are looking for and it comes various security level options or you can customise them if you wish.

Yes there are pop-ups that appear sometimes, but this is for your protection and besides if there is a pop up and you recognise the program just click onto "remember me", next time when you open that program you wont have that problem again, this is just to make sure that when you click on something, it's you clicking on it, not some other program trying to open it.

This version also offers a powerful browser protection software called ForceField, which I do recommend using, it's great for that 'extra' protection.

If you are a parent, you will be glad to know there is also a parental control mode, which will stop your children from accidentally accessing certain sites, if you wish to active this.

Overall this is a solid product; for the amount of protection you get from this (Firewall, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Browser Security, PC Tune Up and a free 2GB of online backup), you just cannot go wrong with this software. 5* from me.

If you are looking for a no frills, easy to use PC security suite then Zone Alarm Extreme Security is probably not for you.

I first tried loading it on a fast Vista pc. When you insert the CD-ROM, you are strongly suggested to link to the website rather than load from the disc, "for a more up-to-date product". So I did. After downloading around 120MB, the install process started but after a few seconds froze the Vista PC solid, requiring a reboot. Undaunted, I tried again on an XP machine and that worked perfectly.

Although the PC security aspects of the product appeared to work fine, things started to go downhill with the browser security elements, which lacked any intuitive feel, looked terrible and seemed designed to confuse rather than help.

One of the main bonus selling points of the product seem to be the secure online backup and the PC tune up. I found the backup facility tricky to use and very limited in the amount of off-line storage available. The PC tune up facility was simply not effective and delivered zero benefits to my machine.

In conclusion, although the cost of this product is relatively low, I don't think it represents value for money. It is a package that promises much and simply fails to deliver. Although it is sold as a kind of all-in-one solution to a myriad of problems, almost all users would save themselves a whole lot of trouble by buying a top-rated anti-virus solution, and adding world class backup and tune-up software to suit their needs.

really good security product, easy-to-use, loads of extras which is reassuring and really good value to include tune-up tools and backup aswell

So here we have another 'security suite' which promises to do the lot, a one-stop piece of software for peace of mind. The software loaded with no issues and seems to take up relatively little system processing power, thankfully most AV manufacturers have cottoned-on to the fact that users don't like bloatware which slows their computers down....and of course the sheer speed of modern processors has helped heaps in this respect. This really is a comprehensive suite and includes firewall, antivirus, anti-phishing, anti-spyware and parental browsing controls. Recommended.

I have been using Zone Alarm for many years and has usually been a favourite of mine amongst security products.

From my own experience of the software over the years it's run smoothly and efficient on my PC and Laptop (With a minor slow down on "Shutdown" and "Boot") and a very powerful protection against threats.

However this time the software had completely limited the functionality of my system slowing down all applications to an unusable state.

I even tried to "Clean" uninstall and reinstall the software to no avail. It got to the point, that had me in tears. So in the end I had to give in and choose another security program for my PC and Laptop.

Zone Alarm has been my protection for all these years and just like that the program itself forced me to choose another security product. I may never go back to ZA now because of this.

I was expecting great things of this software having previously been a user of ZoneAlarm Pro for some 10 years. However it was a disappointment because the firewall was totally unusable with my Hitachi Portable 320GB backup drive. When I contacted ZoneAlarm support in the USA, they said that Hitachi portable drives weren't recognised and that there were quite a few portable drives that would also be blocked by the firewall. I was furious that there was no mention of this on their site. It is just as well I bought it from Amazon for £21.87, if I'd had to pay over £40, I might have considered taking legal advice. Also the Identity Protection is only for US customers and is not valid in the UK, something else they couldn't be bothered mentioning on their website.

I am now using Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes free and I can always use InPrivate browsing with IE8. Furthermore I will never use ZoneAlarm again because of their attitude.

terrible my computer more or less came to a stand still constantly freezing sent back after couple of days

After installing this, my computer became an absolute dog (not literally) as it crawled at a snail's pace (Apologies for all the animal references - I'll stop now!) It might offer extreme security, but it also offers extreme slowness as well, especially when scanning which it seems to like to do, just as your about it use the computer.

On a brighter note however, it's possible to instantly see the status of the software, as I got huge sections of green with ticks inside them. Although having said that, I also got told I was fully protected before it had even updated for the first time, so I thought that was a bit strange.

Another thing I don't really like is that there is buttons all over the home screen, and once these are clicked upon, there are scores of options within each one. One of the more bizarre options was that it allowed you to stop it from turning on at start up. Why would you buy a piece of antivirus software, and then only turn it on when you felt like it?! It might as well not exist at all!

On top of all this, a third of the home screen is taken up with advertising for additional services for further ZoneAlarm products. When I pay for a product, I don't expect to get advertising as well.

Most of my complaints with this product though are to do with the user interface - however this doesn't necessarily make it a bad product. I do have to admit that nearly every piece of software slows down a computer a bit, so I can't really hold it against it either. Although, having said this, there are many other security suites that don't slow it down to this degree.

This suite does have a comprehensive range of tools built in such as the usual firewall, antivirus, antispyware, but also browser security, e-mail protection and identity protection. Therefore, it's not all bad, but I certainly wouldn't recommend this as the best suite on the market. If you wanted my recommendation, I would suggest Norton Internet Security or ESET Smart Security 4 as these are the best I've tested so far.

By the way, no animals were harmed in the making of this review.

ZoneAlarm Extreme Security is another Firewall and Antivirus program, with all the bells and whistles.

Installation is easy enough, you have to register online, then it gives you the option to install from disk or get the latest version from the internet. Run the downloaded program and you're away. There are plenty of options to set as part of the installation to keep the advanced paranoid happy, but the instructions are nice and clear so as not to overwhelm the novice. This will allow you to decide how paranoid you want to be, how much control you want or if you'd rather the program didn't ask you much of anything and tried to set the security on each program itself. There's also a handy option for it not to use the anti-virus if you already have one installed.

Once you've rebooted the program will ask you a couple of questions about your network and you're all set up. The user interface is nice and clear and gives you plenty of options if you like to manually control the firewall. If you set the options to automatic, all the common programs will be set up by the software, and you will only get the occasional message flash up for more unusual programs, but again, once you've told Zone Alarm what to do it won't need to bother you again.

After installing there was no noticeable slowdown of the computer, the firewall seems very good, but I've used ZoneAlarm off and on for years as I like the high levels of control it offers. I can't say I was bowled over by the anti-virus part of the software, it was quick enough and ran in the background very quietly (although it didn't seem to want to update the anti-virus definitions automatically), but it was actually a bit too quiet for my tastes, I felt the need to keep checking it to be sure it was working.

The package also contains ZoneAlarm Forcefield, to protect your browsing, but as far as I can tell unless you use Internet Explorer, these have no impact (I prefer Opera or Firefox), it also comes with PC Tune-Up tools, which have to be downloaded and installed separately, a tool to encrypt your hard drive and 2Gb of online back-up storage. In this day and age 2Gb is almost nothing, so I'll stick to my current 200Gb online backup system I think!

If you want a high powered easy to use (or highly configurable) firewall, I would recommend ZoneAlarm, this package gives you a few added extras, but personally I'd be inclined to suggest going for the ZoneAlarm Pro and being an independent anti-virus for more flexibility or the ZoneAlarm Anti-Virus and save some cash on the extras you don't really need.

I've used ZoneAlarm software for years now and it just keeps getting better. The install process was easy and straight forward and the user interface is really simple and easy to navigate.

There's plenty of features to keep your PC protected and it's the only security suite to use an operating system firewall.

Very happy with it, it works on my Windows 7 PC and on a Vista PC I have.