New version of Zone Alarm
Zone Alarm has announced an upgrade of Zone Alarm to version 6.0.
We have done numerous installs of Zone Alarm and have generally been happy with the results. But we do have some beefs with their product. For one, we think their upgrade process is cumbersome, especially for users of the free version. They take every opportunity to try to sell the enhanced versions that aren’t free. In our experience, new users are confused and frustrated by this process, as well as by the frequent pop-ups complaining about this or that program accessing the Internet. “The price of being protected”, we explain. But we know that this should be a lot easier. Several of our customers have quit using it due to it’s complexity, it’s frequent nagging, and the cumbersome update process.
Unfortunately, it can be a very big mistake to quit using a firewall.
We would like to see their update process to be as easy a updating an anti-virus program. It really could be, and it really should be.
Even users of the Pro version cannot just hit an update button. They have to go to ZA’s web site and download the new version and do a full install process. Now maybe we can understand requiring this for major updates like this new version 6.0, but not for the minor maintenance updates.
We hope version 6 makes updating easier. And we hope it further reduces the number of nagging pop-ups. We’ll see.
