ZoneAlarm PRO 2006 review:1 stars (The trouble with Zone Alarm...) - I was given Zone alarm as part of a package with another piece of software that I needed for work. From the minute I installed zone alarm I knew it was a mistake. Zone Alarm has two modes: 1. Mother in law mode- it wants to know what you are doing, what you are looking at, how you are doing it EVERYTHING which makes configuring it a big task. The other mode it has is annoying child mode: in this mode it is attention seeking and will bombard you with questions when all you want to do is use the net.
If this wasn't enough to give you second thoughts then uninstalling zone alarm is an even bigger task. The thing will not go quietly and, even after installation, it was still blocking all of my messenger programs and my ping requests. The internet is full of frustrated pc owners trying to find a way to completely uninstall it and remove all of the little obscure files it litters your computer (which I had to remove manually by searching for each one in turn) I dare you to type 'uninstall zone alarm' in to a search engine and see what you find. Zone alarm is one of those peices of software which has gotten worse in more recent versions (partition magic is another), the earlier ones were great and easy to configure but now zone alarm is the main attraction and heaven forbid you wanted to look at anything on the net without being asked a list of questions first.
Their are better firewalls than zone alarm e.g. Black ice. Just look through the reviews on Amazon5 stars (Zone Alarm is great but...) - Zone Alarm is a good firewall program and anti virus program but it what would make them top notch would be to add an ip proxy option.
Don't get me wrong, Zone Alarm beats Norton any day of the week, but I don't understand how these companies can claim privacy when your data is still transfered through your ip address. I hope someone of significance reads this and works to change this over-sight. |
