BleepingComputer.com: Sunbelt Kerio Fw Or Comodo Fw?

I cannot believe the recent McAfee PFW 8.0 upgrade requires eight services and ten running files using approx 88MB memory per Task Manager! This is just unacceptable. I uninstalled all things McAfee but the FW ages ago and that is about to get the axe, too, I'm afraid. My subscription is not up until April but I am so disgusted I may just not wait til them to uninstall!

Because I only want to select a FW with continued development (ruling out Sygate), I have narrowed the field to Sunbelt Kerio PFW and Comodo PFW, with a present leaning towards the SKPF. I have been readiing up on them for some time now on several forums & the latest releases of both appear to offer excellent protection & run pretty light on resources. They both appear to have a learning/basic mode with out-of-the-box ease of installation/setup. Comodo is currently free (but must register) and SBKF is currently $19.95/yr with a $10.00 renewal fee each year thereafter.

Given what I have onboard realtime (see my signature), would users of these firewalls please offer their advice,suggestions, warnings as to how the two might perform (or conflict) on my system? Would you anticipate any problems/conflicts with what I have onboard?

I have a similar set up to you and I run Comodo. Your correct in that you have to register comodo but that is only foer the license key - I used a throw away gmail address for this.

System resoourse seem light and do not seem to be interupting day to day running.

Previously I was running Kerio but got fed up with the free version constantly reminding me to upgrade.

As I said Comodo does everything I want it to do and there is an official forum with custom rulesets.

Load it and give it a go.

Even though Sygate will not undergo further development, it was fully-featured and functional before it was purchased; I would not, therefore, eliminate it from consideration for that reason alone.
Regards,
John

After bouncing this question off the folks at BroadbandDSL Reports forum, I've decided to give the Comodo first shot. If not pleased, will then try SKPF & Sygate. John, I actually downloaded a copy of Sygate right after the buy out just in case the download site disappeared! Just didn't have a reason to try it out until the recent McAfee upgrade fiasco. I know many are happy with it. Any of them will probably run lighter than the latest release of McAfeePFW and is bound to have a nicer GUI.

Always open to further member comments though....................

I have a couple of spare copies of Sygate, for the same reason. The nice thing about free firewalls is that you can try each of them out for a week or two.
John

That's exactly what I'm gonna do. Surely one of the three will fit my needs and system configuration. Thanks again.

I decided to try Comodo PF first. Their recently updated installer did a marvelous job! I chose the "automatic" option on the installer. No conflicts with Avast or SpywareDoctor realtime protection. No problem with internet connection once I defined my LAN. The Comodo forum has a nice member created video tutorial on initial install/LAN setup I had read that was very helpful. Pretty good for "right out of the box" ready to go, full-featured firewall that's FREE for a lifetime license when you activate it! Can't beat that! Only has one service, two running executables and uses only 26-30MB RAM on my particular setup. Impressive!

I Comodo so far!

Good news. Report back in a week or two, once you really give it a test drive!
Regards,
John