eTrust EZ Armor Security Suite

Rating:
Summary: 3 stars after more time.
Review: Claims to remove locked index.dat files, but doesn't really get rid of them all of the time. It can even prevent you from getting onto the internet if you don't know what you're doing. Manufacturer gives NO support at all. They even expect customers to BUY phone support claiming it's a deal because its cheaper than paying for personal tech support on your own. Bottom line?...Lots of sales talk and no action on Computer Associates end.

...However, if you don't need support and want a great learning tool to better understand how a firewall works in action, then the firewall aspect of this package is wonderful! The anti-virus program doesn't match up anywhere near the firewall's features.

Rating:
Summary: No such thing as a perfect firewall
Review: Firewalls that are simple to maintain, can be too inflexible to allow things you want to do (like set up a home network). Sophisticated firewalls are very flexible, but can be hard to learn. The nature of security software is to prohibit specified actions, meaning somehow you need to specify which actions to prohibit (or you'll just have to accept the firewall's defaults). Telling a sophisticated package which things to allow/prohibit can be intimidating while telling an unsophisticated firewall can be impossible. And it IS likely that some of the actions a product prohibits straight out of the box will be ones you actually want to perform/be performed.
Adding to the problem are other Internet Security products that take over your computer and that are nearly impossible to completely uninstall (I had such an experience with a Norton product).
Yet the EZarmor product is one I can live with. The anti-virus is unobtrusive and effective. The firewall is flexible and can work with a home network. I have not used the anti-spam feature. I needed to learn how to use it -- it's not a program that is intuitive from the get-go. But it's not totally inpenetrable either.
The firewall is apparently based on the ZoneAlarm core. So if you are familiar with ZoneAlarm, you can probably master EZArmor. And if you find any help documentation on the web for ZoneAlarm, it probably applies to EZArmor as well.
If you are willing to take some time to learn it, it can work well for you.

Rating:
Summary: Many problems, No support, got 7 months not year I paid 4
Review: I bought the EZ Armour Desktop Security Suite because I'm like a librarian - if I get volume one I have to get the rest. But I had a lot of problems with it. The virus scan crashed my computer about 1 out of 4 times I ran it. I could restart my computer and run it again, no problem. The firewall was a nightmare. It basically prevented me from connecting to the internet. I had to keep it turned off. The support was thru email. If you can't connect to the internet try using email support. When I tried the email support several times it seemed like they missed the point of the question. It took a couple days for them to respond, they I have to write back and say "but you didn't answer my question"! After three or four repetitions of that it wasn't worth bothering to get an answer. The other parts of the suite besides anti-virus and firewall had little or no explanation of what they did or why they were there. No documentation. After 7 months I got notices that my 1 year subscription expired. Telephone support to straighten out the problem cost more than the product itself. I went to the Computer Associates web site and on the main page were notices that they were giving away free one year subscriptions to the virus protection and firewall in the spirit of patriotism or national defense or something. So I downloaded one. 26 days later I got a notice that my 30 day trial was expiring and it was time to make a purchase decision. I totally give up and am shopping around for a different product where one year does not mean 7 months.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Be Happier!
Review: I'm using the dowloaded version of EZ Armor. Dell had installed McAfee on my PC; and since the McAfee Security Center was still there, and it continued to do virus scans, I assumed I had a 1-year account with McAfee. I was wrong. It expired like 5 months ago, and all the virus scans since then were apparently worthless. Thus, I uninstalled McAfee, and installed EZ Armor. Installation of EZ Armor on my Dell with XP was simple; it took like 30 minutes. I later did a virus scan of my entire computer, and it discovered 2 infected files and deleted them.

The firewall is adjustable, but I'm just using the setting they chose. I forgot to turn off the firewall when I did a Windows Update, but that caused no problem. When I forgot to turn off my McAfee firewall during an update, it usually crashed my computer. The privacy protector is lots of fun...it seems all web pages have a web bug that they block for you!

The EZ Armor main page is not as easy to understand as McAfee's Security Center page; but they have an "Ask Sammy" click-on...where you type in your question...and then get a quick answer to it, giving you easy to understand directions for doing what you want to do.

As things are going, I couldn't be happier with EZ Armor. And if they keep going as they are, I will certainly continure to use it as my anti-virus software from now on.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Be Happier!
Review: I'm using the downloaded version of EZ Armor. Dell had installed McAfee on my PC; and since the McAfee Security Center was still there, and it continued to do virus scans, I assumed I had a 1-year account with McAfee. I was wrong. It expired like 5 months ago, and all the virus scans since then were apparently worthless. Thus, I uninstalled McAfee, and installed EZ Armor. Installation of EZ Armor on my Dell with XP was simple; it took like 30 minutes. I later did a virus scan of my entire computer, and it discovered 2 infected files and deleted them.

The firewall is adjustable, but I'm just using the setting they chose. I forgot to turn off the firewall when I did a Windows Update, but that caused no problem. When I forgot to turn off my McAfee firewall during an update, it usually crashed my computer. The privacy protector is lots of fun...it seems all web pages have a web bug that they block for you!

The EZ Armor main page is not as easy to understand as McAfee's Security Center page; but they have an "Ask Sammy" click-on...where you type in your question...and then get a quick answer to it, giving you easy to understand directions for doing what you want to do.

As things are going, I couldn't be happier with EZ Armor. And if they keep going as they are, I will certainly continure to use it as my anti-virus software from now on.