F-Secure AntiVirus 2007 Gripes

F-Secure makes an Internet Security 2007 suite that like comparable suites from Symantec, McAfee, ZoneAlarm and others protects against a whole range of online nasties. These gripes however, refer to their separately marketed Anti-Virus 2007 product.

Open Office Is Not A Baddie

January 2, 2007. I installed a new copy of F-Secure antivirus 2007 today on a Windows XP Professional machine. It updated the virus definitions and Spyware definitions so they were up to date. Then I shut it down and installed Open Office. Then I started F-Secure antivirus and - it prevented the Open Office programs from running. It felt that Writer, Calc and Impress were bad applications. Give me a break. 

When the mouse is hovered over the F-Secure icon in the system tray, the yellow popup balloon simply has the product name. Other anti-virus programs tell you much more useful information.

When something is being downloaded, the product always says "downloading update". Update of what, it doesn't say. The same message is displayed for updates of virus definitions and bug fixes.

 

Incompatible With ZoneAlarm And More

December 30, 2006. F-Secure anti-virus is not compatible with the free ZoneAlarm firewall. 

It is to be expected that any anti-virus program not be compatible with another anti-virus product. Likewise, any Internet protection suite should balk at install time if another such suite is present. But in this case, there is an incompatibility between an anti-virus program and a firewall. ZoneAlarm sells many versions of their "suite", but this gripe has to do just with their free firewall. 

To be clear, the gripe is against F-Secure, not against ZoneAlarm. 

Even worse than this seemingly useless incompatibility is that you are not told this until it's too late to do anything about it. Many people use the free ZoneAlarm firewall. You'd think that somewhere along the line F-Secure would note that their anti-virus is incompatible, especially because this is not to be expected. But they don't. 

And this was not true of the 2006 version of F-Secure anti-virus. 

I contacted tech support at F-Secure twice and they replied:

With regards to your enquiry, we would like to inform you F-Secure is not compatible with Zone Alarm. We would suggest you to use the Windows Firewall as the firewall protection.
TK

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With regards to your enquiry, you cannot install Zone Alarm because if you do it will conflict with FSecure and might crash your system. However you can activate the Windows firewall, its most compatible with FSecure.
Adrian

I also had a surprise with the 2006 edition of their anti-virus program: it did not play well in the sandbox next to Spy Sweeper from Webroot. Again, there was no up-front warning about any of this. 

When you first install F-Secure antivirus 2007, it has to check for the latest virus definitions. Fine. All anti-virus programs do this. However, the product does not tell you this is happening. Even if you try to manually run an Update, it is not smart enough to say that an update is already underway.

All told, the out-of-box experience for F-Secure 2007 could not be more confusing. And this with someone (me) who has used many AV programs and from a mature product. 

F-Secure seems to treat the anti-virus programs as a minor sideline. There is online documentation for the suite, but not for the anti-virus program. 

Since F-Secure has shown themselves to be incapable of documenting their product requirements, I will never use their software. Fool me twice . . . 

FYI

You can't buy a single copy of F-Secure anti-virus. The minimum configuration is a three pack for $66. Relatively speaking, it is very cheap if you need three copies, and about an average price if you need two copies. But if you need only one copy it's not for you.  

The DOS version of F-Secure is free. You can run it from the Ultimate Boot CD For Windows