How would you rate Comodo Internet Security?

ajf · 2 Jan 2011 at 23:35

Just need a 'freebie' package for the parents PC running Vista.
Not sure whether to use this or the Microsoft Security Essentials?

Comodo seems to be wider ranging in its protection maybe?

ChrisD. · 3 Jan 2011 at 00:11

TheMagic1an · 3 Jan 2011 at 00:19

Both are good, but If your parents don't mind and know how to answer the odd pop up with Defense + (HIPS), then comodo is great and much better than MSE. However, if they know nothing about computers then MSE is probably the best choice.

The main strength of CIS is the firewall with Defense + and the sandbox, you could probably just run that on it's own and still be protected, but you would need to know how to answer the pop ups correctly.

For me personally i think CIS 5 is very good and miles better than MSE, but that's just my opinion.

MikeHunt79 · 3 Jan 2011 at 00:31

TheMagic1an said:
For me personally i think CIS 5 is very good and miles better than MSE, but that's just my opinion.

+1 I prefer Comodo also... MSE makes my netbook slow down to a crawl at times...

EniGmA1981 · 3 Jan 2011 at 07:40

I'm using comodo and MSE... I understood that MSE was more of an AV than a firewall...?

do I not need/should I not be using both?

Fillado · 3 Jan 2011 at 08:54

Comodo Internet Security has both Comodo AntiVirus and Comodo Firewall inside. You can either have both AV and firewall installed (CIS) or just the AV or Firewall.

Unless you need the specific protection given by Comodo Firewall then just install the AV by its own and Windows Firewall is more than good enough.

MSE is just an AV.

My experience is that MSE has horrid resource usage scanning every executable on your system if Windows so much as "looks" at it. Normal AV behaviour is to scan an executable when it runs (in other words when it can actually start to do some damage).

Comodo (the new 5.3 version) - Good but pretty hands-on.
MSE - Aggressive executable scanning (resulting in high CPU usage) but is very "set it and forget it"

Blue160 · 3 Jan 2011 at 11:07

I never see high CPU usage from MSE. I used Comodo for a while but had major issues getting it to work with Steam.

Azuse05 · 3 Jan 2011 at 11:43

Steam was fixed a long time ago, in fact the whole malware components is better than it's ever been but it still seems to need a reboot in training mode for more obscure startup programs installed before it e.g. evemon

Still has a bit to go but it's almost there

Resource scaling has improved though, it's currently sitting idle at 3.5MB (pointless with all this ram but still =D).

Firewall is easily the best free one around, although windows does the same job it lacks certain options and, for me at least, comodos interface is better but that's personal preference.

Av engine is one of the best available however it's mute. Comodo push out updates frequently to, literally, keep themselves at the front of the pack but equally this can, on occasion, cause issues, which I doubt your parents would be able to resolve.

If in doubt (which you are) stick to mse. It's simple, effective and virtually idiot proof i.e. you can break it by blocking say, a boot file >.<.

PapaLazaru · 3 Jan 2011 at 11:50

Blue160 said:
I never see high CPU usage from MSE.

I agree with this. Appears to use the least out of all that I have tried in the past including Commodo.

Fillado · 3 Jan 2011 at 12:19

Blue160 said:
I never see high CPU usage from MSE. I used Comodo for a while but had major issues getting it to work with Steam.

PapaLazaru said:
I agree with this. Appears to use the least out of all that I have tried in the past including Commodo.

Just checking but you are showing all processes from all users in Task Manager? It's a service (msmpeng or something like that) that does all the work. Check my post in the general AV sticky at the top. Its performance hit on the system is real and there. Most evident if you have a folder full of .exe files where upon just opening the folder it'll scan through them all. For the record MSE uses far more RAM than either Comodo or Avast too.

Saying all that Blue160 is on a quad core CPU so the performace hit, while far more than other AVs, won't be felt all that much. Not only is each core fast but you can have one core scanning while the others are nicely free for your system. On a single core it's bad. Very bad.

Macro · 3 Jan 2011 at 12:23

MSE is anti Virus and anti malware, Windows Vista ( & Windows 7) have a perfectly good firewall built in, especially if used in conjunction with a NAT based internet connection.

Unless they are planning on spending a lot of time downloading a lot of very dodgy stuff from some very iffy sites they are more than covered and frankly Comodo is just unnecessary bloatware for the average user.

Blue160 · 3 Jan 2011 at 13:54

Fillado said:
Check my post in the general AV sticky at the top. Its performance hit on the system is real and there. Most evident if you have a folder full of .exe files where upon just opening the folder it'll scan through them all.

Ok, just tried that. CPU usage suddenly jumps to about 15% on one core for a couple of seconds. Not significant for my system, but I can see how it could be for a slower single core.

I stand corrected.

PapaLazaru · 3 Jan 2011 at 15:45

Fillado said:
Just checking but you are showing all processes from all users in Task Manager? It's a service (msmpeng or something like that) that does all the work. Check my post in the general AV sticky at the top. Its performance hit on the system is real and there.

Just checked it. 4% jump from 0%.

Nothing for me to worry about.

bledd · 3 Jan 2011 at 15:51

I install MSE on every pc that I fix now, it's just set & forget

Macro · 3 Jan 2011 at 16:36

Fillado said:
Comodo Internet Security has both Comodo AntiVirus and Comodo Firewall inside. You can either have both AV and firewall installed (CIS) or just the AV or Firewall.

Comodo seems to get mixed results at best..

PCWorld test from 27/12/10

The good news is that Comodo Internet Security Complete 2011 ($70 for one year and three PCs, as of 12/2/2010) blocked a full 25 out of 25 of real-world attacks in our hands-on testing of the product.

The bad news? Just about everything else.

With only a 92.4 percent detection rate of known malware samples, Comodo's security levels are decidedly shaky. This score is well below average for suites we tested

Comodo's rate of false positives was among the highest of the applications we reviewed, and the utility came in last when it came to cleaning infected machines.

Combine that with middling scores for PC speed during scans and while running in the background and the overall picture isn't rosy: Comodo's overall performance rating landed it in last place in our evaluation.

Even more worrying for a security product..

(There's even more fun in store when you uninstall the app, as Comodo leaves behind a utility that has to be removed via a separate uninstall.)