Anybody here have direct experience with using this product.
-40hz
I have a lifetime license to the product, so I have some opinions, but I do *not* consider myself an expert by any means.
Anti-malware software is something that I deal with only very reluctantly. And it's not just Agnutum - none that I have ever used has made me happy because I feel like I can never trust it, it often makes my machine unstable, and often asks me questions or tells me things that I don't understand, and don't *want* to understand. I just want my stuff to work and not get "pwned".
Let me reiterate - none of that is specific to Agnitum. For example, I long ago gave up on McAfee and Norton which seemed to cause far more problems than they solved - I will not even try software from those outfits again.
Now, to my specifics with using Agnitum:
I have at least three problems that stick in my head. Some of these probably would apply to other anti-malware suites, but I'm rarely in any mood to test these things out.
- I've had instances where the firewall caused blue screens. It's been probably more than a year since that happened - it was on a 32-bit Vista machine that I don't use anymore. A 64-bit Win7 machine didn't have the bluescreen problems. I suspect that the problem had to do with interaction with network card drivers, but I don't really know (and I hate trying to troubleshoot those things). Since I wasn't particularly interested in the firewall portion of the Suite, I asked Agnitum if there was a way I could use my Suite key to activate the Outpost AV product (which is a subset of the Suite). But there wasn't (once again, I don't think this is an issue that affects only Agnitum - I think that most Suites operate this way). As far as I know there' no way to get the Suite to install only the the AV (or only the Firewall). After install you can disable portions, but I tried doing that to fix the bluescreen - without success.
- I like to open Firefox and leave it open with a whole mess of tabs. For days or even weeks. I hate (hate, hate) having to restart my machine or applications, because then I have to do a bunch of work to make sure I get my 'state' back. After a long period of being open, Firefox becomes very sluggish, and I can see in Task Manager that both Agnitum and Firefox are using a boatload of memory. I think this is more of a Firefox problem (and I think that the most recent version of 3.x seems to help - maybe I need to move to 4 or whatever FF is at), but I mention it here anyway because I think Agnitum probably isn't entirely without blame.
- I recently opened a PDF that contained a trojan and apparently got some sort of infection. To be a little fair to Agnitum, I was stupid to open that file, but it was in an old email that I really wasn't sure if it was legit or not. Anyway, Outpost didn't detect or block the trojan. Subsequent checks with other anti-malware showed that neither SUPERAntiSpyware or Vipre detected it. MS Security Essentials did. This goes to my issues of trust with anti-malware in general - it seems to me that it's a crap shoot whether or not the software you have installed at the moment will actually catch the virus that you're going to come across next. On the plus side, this event did motivate me to finally uninstall Adobe Reader X (which is an unstable POS with a crappy search interface) and install Sumatra and STDUViewer in its place - my understanding is that these PDF viewers (which work very well so far) do not support PDF Javascript (which is how PDF trojans generally work, I think).
Now that I've typed out those issues, I again feel that I'm being unfair to list these as detriments to Agnitum - they seem to be the kind of problems I've run into with whatever AV/Firewall I have installed. It's kind of like elections - you generally don't vote for the 'best'; you vote for the 'least worst'.
Note that I still use Agnitum Outpost Security Suite as my main anti-malware on my main machine since as far as I know it's the least worst, and I have little interest in evaluating a bunch of this kind of software. Oh yeah, and since I have a lifetime license I don't have to pay for annual crappiness like I would for other anti-malware.
How's that for an endorsement?
