Free AntiVirus from Computer Associate

[rapier57]

The InnoculateIT freebie for home users concept has been around for a while. CA isn't the first, and isn't alone (as mentioned above).

I actually bought InnocuLAN from Cheyenne Software for an enterprise, prior to it being bought up by CA. I have long, painful experience with CA when it comes to enterprise and mid-/main-frame licensing.

Everyone thinks Microsoft is the largest software company in the world. Not so. CA is.

Now -- Free for home, charge the corporations or enterprises for the software?

How commercially viable do you really think that is? CA can afford to do this because they have so little market share to begin with. They can only expect to gain something. In this market, a couple points would be huge.

Who would be paying for the behind-the-scenes research, support and response necessary to maintain a fully functional, responsive and effective AV product? The corporate, government enterprise-level users? So, in essence you are asking the corporations and government institutions to subsidize the AV on your desktop. That probably won't wash, largely because--pound for pound and across the board--individual users pose a much larger support burden to software publishers than enterprise level customers. I doubt very much that enterprise customers would feel compelled to pay the overhead for the benefit of the home user.

Yeah, socialized software.

[Chuck56]

a few days ago and am happy with it. It uses the VET engine and the firewall is ZoneAlarm Pro, although an older version 3.7.179 but not that old. I've heard and read good things about VET and none of the users have many complaints about it.

I posted about the freebie, though, on another forum and one guy downloaded it and promptly went to KAZAA to some files he new were virused. He posted a couple of hours later that EZArmor sucked, that it had let in W32.Sddrop with no warning at all. EZ did advise him AFTER the infected file was on his computer but said it couldn't clean it.

The W32.Sddrop is an over one year old worm. I wonder if the guy just didn't have EZ configured right.

[Zonewalker]

I wonder if the guy just didn't have EZ configured right.

mmm.. I wonder if he had the real time protection on?

Incidentally even if he did have EZ configured correctly, this type of behaviour would not be confined to EZAV - half the network at work became infected with a worm (don't recall which one - travels over network via SMB and only affects Win95/98 machines, not a terribly destructive payload, systems should have been patched ages ago but weren't) about 4 months ago. Again it was only AFTER a machine became infected that McAfee and Norton actually tried to do anything (essentially to say 'hey there's a virus on your system').

Personally I've never had a problem with EZ AV as a standalone product - it's been used on my home system in conjuction with ZAPro, Outpost, Sygate or WinRoute at one time or another.

I've also d/l the freebie - bit disappointed to see the firewall is an older version of ZAPro though (current version is something like 4.5) so probably shan't use EZArmor as a whole but will continue to use the AV portion

Z

[Chuck56]

don't particularly like the GUI, but will stick with it for a while. Even though it's several versions out of date, it passed all the tests at the various sites I tried such as pcflanks, sygate, auditmypc, and three others. I spent a whole morning fooling around with it.

My usual firewall is LooknStop. I haven't looked at the new ZA Pro but have been wondering if it would be possible to download it and somehow work it into this EZ offering since virtually everything in there, including registry, is ZA. I suppose they've got some proprietary something in there to block that.

I like the EZ av and the license is good until Feb 2005, so will probably stick with it. I'm not sure what happens to the av and firewall after that. I know you just won't be able to get more updates for the av, but not sure about the firewall. If it's just a case of not being to upgrade the firewall, I can live with that. Many of the guys over at Wilders.org run this or the next version of ZA and they're perfectly happy.

[SDK]

This deserve a bump.

CA still give it away.

[AngelicKnight]

The offer sounds pretty darn good, but my loyalty definately still remains with Symantec. I use Norton Antivirus at home, while we have Inoculate here at work. As those of you who've read my zillions of recent post recently know, I've had a lot of headaches with Inoculate, but never any issue whatsoever with Norton. Also, you have to dish out additional $$$ for phone support if you go with CA. I dunno though, CA's still some pretty good stuff, especially for free.

On the other hand, I'm a huge ZoneAlarm fan. I have basic ZA running at home and on a network I work on for community service work, and it has performed superbly. Does this ZA Pro package come with any support or the ability to update?

[Chuck56]

AngelicKnight, I tried upgrading to the current ZAP and no luck. I guess it's wait for EZ to upgrade and then try. The EZarmor suite is fully updateable so if EZ ever moves to the latest ZA, it should work. The v3.7.x isn't that old, and it works, so I can live with it.