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Zone Labs ZoneAlarm® PRO 2007 Full Version for PC (637078082210) Review
Overall 3.00 of 5
(by 1 user)
The Software Firewall You'll Love to Hate
tech savvy
| Pros |
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| Cons |
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JAN
22
2008
There's a price to paid for the security ZoneAlarm provides. You absolutely must be aware that this software is turned on and what it's doing to you. I kid you not, it'll drive you nuts! I've gotten so used to it, that when some internet site isn't working the way it should, I automatically turn off ZoneAlarm and try again. Sadly, most of the time that does the trick! Along comes an unsuspecting family member who sits down and can't get an on-line seminar to work. Time is ticking off, the seminar is going on without them, and they want to toss the computer out the window. In desperation, they yell for help. The answer, "Turn off ZoneAlarm." Sure 'nuff, all is well, but now the computer is unprotected until they finish and (hopefully) turn ZoneAlarm back on again.
Fortunately, the above doesn't happen terribly often, but there always seems to be something that eventually pops up that surprises even me. When my email software complains it can't connect to the server, I think, "That's odd, it usually does." So, I assume there's a problem on "the other end" and try it again the next morning. Confronted with the same message, I think, "Hmmm... OK, time to turn off ZoneAlarm and try." The same message at this point would lead the uninitiated to believe good ol' ZA is off the hook. Not me. I totally uninstall ZA and try again. Success! So, even though it appears to be "off" it still has a heartbeat throbbing under the hood.
I have to admit that ZoneAlarm has gotten better with each new version, but it's a painfully slow road. It took, I believe, until version 6 before they figured out how to stop the program from crashing when the log file got too full. Fortunately for the user, the ultimate fix is always simple: one does what's called a "clean uninstall" (it's so common, they allow for that in a command line now). Follow that with a reinstall and you're off and running until...sigh... the next time. Unfortunately, this "fix" requires two reboots, so although it's not difficult, it's also not fast. It helps, too, if you remember to occasionally back up your settings so you can pick up pretty much where you left off. Alas, that has it's own annoyance in that the restore is a minutes-long process.
So, you're probably wondering, from this review, why I still stick with this thing. Quite simply it's because I know of no software that offers the security that it does. The built-in Windows Firewall is not yet a match for ZoneAlarm and, sadly, like an unruly pet, I've become accustomed to its ways and how to deal with them.
ZoneAlarm tries to provide a nice pop-up interface which allows the user to interact with items it's trying to block. It's when it blocks items without the pop-up that it gets into trouble. For the most part there are logs which tell the user that something was blocked (if you know where to look and can understand them), but no straight-forward way is provided to tell ZA to "knock it off!"
There is a helpful on-line forum which one can turn to to resolve problems, but over the years I've found that it's faster to simply do the uninstall/reinstall trick and move on. To be fair, like any third-party software, they have to keep up with the endless patches that Microsoft dishes out, so I can't imagine, because of the nature of this particular beast, that's too pleasant.
Zone Labs ZoneAlarm® PRO 2007 Full Version for PC ... is not recommended by Don
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