That Stupid Club

It was finally time for my beloved Sygate Per­sonal Fire­wall to go.

As the pipes I have access to got fat­ter, Sygate’s CPU util­i­sa­tion was get­ting unac­cept­able, up to 15% sometimes.

It was also get­ting long in the tooth (Syman­tec stopped devel­op­ment after tak­ing over. Damn you Syman­tec!). Now that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing, but being a closed source appli­ca­tion, the pos­si­bil­ity of unpatched vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties is a concern.

And so, off on my quest. My cri­te­ria were simple.

1. Cheap, free is even better
2. Sim­ple, as in “stop try­ing to do everything”
3. Per­haps most impor­tantly, effective

Unfor­tu­nately effec­tive­ness can only be judged by reviews and tests as I have nei­ther the means nor the desire to see for myself.

The pop­u­lar can­di­date would be Kerio, but I do not like that it does web fil­ter­ing, or that it nags you to reg­is­ter when the full ver­sion trial is over.

Hap­pily, I decided to give Comodo Per­sonal Fire­wall another go.

I have tried it before, maybe a year ago. Back then it had the obnox­ious “Comodo Launch­Pad”, and was bloody “chatty” with the warn­ings. Glad to see the Launch­Pad is gone, and the sen­si­tiv­ity maybe tuned down somewhat.

Very nice, Comodo. Thanks.