Outpost 7.5 Performance Edition is now available for download [ Release ]

[illumination]

I agree, they should allow for the latest upgrade! To uninstall, you have to go through the add/remove programs to do so, it uninstalls fairly clean, have already tested this..

Uninstalling from Add/Remove could sometimes cause a lot of damage. You've been one of the lucky ones to get it to uninstall this way . It works on some of my PCs and results in BSODs on restart on others [and the only solution is restoring an image ]. After playing with 7.1 / 7.1.1 I actually made a mental note that they've managed to fix this issue, only to get it again 2 days ago, trying to upgrade 7.1.1 FREE to 7.5 PRO.

Agnitum have a KB article where they recommend booting in Safe Mode and running the clean.exe. This has actually always worked really well for me.

Another thing to consider if you have issues with the installation [I had an instance over the weekend with very slow pop-ups and high CPU usage] is to boot in Safe Mode and run the installer again, it really works and will reinstall properly. The only issue is that regardless of what components you select during installation, the whole suite will be installed.They've done a very good job of deactivating their own components to provide better compatibility [hats off for that], so depending on what else is running on your machine you may end up with a few turned off modules, but you'll still be alerted about their status, e.g. definitions are out-of-date, etc.

It runs fast and light. I can not comment on their claims about the improved performance for on-access/on-demand scanning or the web control, because I don't use these [Firewall and Proactive Protection is all I want out of OSS], but it seems faster and more responsive than 7.1.x - maybe it's just my subjective perception.

I like the more informative and detailed pop-ups, the clipboard and screen content protection, and you can finally purge the non-existing entries in Application Rules...

@ NathanF1
I am curious before you tried to uninstall via add/remove programs, did you right click the tray icon for outpost and exit or suspend protection before continuing to uninstall?

 

[illumination]

I have not only tested this on my production machine twice "win 7 64bit", but just installed and uninstalled it 3 times in a row on a Dell optiplex gx260 32 bit system, with no problems what so ever.. To uninstall it, you have to right click the tray icon for outpost, click exit, it will give you two options at this point, chose "exit and shut down services".. Then proceed to add/remove programs and uninstall.. If this was a problem with previous releases, they have fixed it..

 

[NathanF1]

@ NathanF1
I am curious before you tried to uninstall via add/remove programs, did you right click the tray icon for outpost and exit or suspend protection before continuing to uninstall?

I've uninstalled as part of upgrading to 7.5, the installer asks to uninstall the existing version first, no issues on one PC [Win XP], similar actions resulted in BSODs and unbootable laptop [Vista x64]. I must have expected that the existing running instance will be properly closed. Once I started getting the BSOD, I restored an image and uninstalled in Safe Mode to be able to upgrade.

 

[illumination]

@ NathanF1
I am curious before you tried to uninstall via add/remove programs, did you right click the tray icon for outpost and exit or suspend protection before continuing to uninstall?

I've uninstalled as part of upgrading to 7.5, the installer asks to uninstall the existing version first, no issues on one PC [Win XP], similar actions resulted in BSODs and unbootable laptop [Vista x64]. I must have expected that the existing running instance will be properly closed. Once I started getting the BSOD, I restored an image and uninstalled in Safe Mode to be able to upgrade.

Doing clean installs, and uninstalling was not a problem providing the protection was suspended.. Hopefully they have this issue with the upgrades ironed out with this version or 7.5.1
I would surely hope I would not have to use safemode each time to upgrade..

 

[NathanF1]

I've uninstalled McAfee Internet Security that came bundled on a single-core netbook [Intel Atom N455 @ 1.66 GHz, 1 GB DDR3 Memory] and installed OSS PRO 7.5 [only the Firewall and Proactive Protection components] and Avast Internet Security. I suspected McAfee may be causing the sluggishness, but before uninstalling it I tried to extract as much performance as possible by having Process Lasso Pro [installed to try and improve the responsiveness] and TuneUp 2011 trial [to evaluate, among other optimizations, the Program Deactivator].

The slow and unresponsive netbook is now noticeably faster and more responsive, indicating the intrinsic light use of resources for both OSS PRO 7.5 and Avast IS 6, 2 products easily providing excellent protection on a hardware configuration they most probably haven't been considered to run on, and subsequently, optimized for.

I'll experiment a bit more to get the overlap of functionality as low as possible.

 

[illumination]

I've uninstalled McAfee Internet Security that came bundled on a single-core netbook [Intel Atom N455 @ 1.66 GHz, 1 GB DDR3 Memory] and installed OSS PRO 7.5 [only the Firewall and Proactive Protection components] and Avast Internet Security. I suspected McAfee may be causing the sluggishness, but before uninstalling it I tried to extract as much performance as possible by having Process Lasso Pro [installed to try and improve the responsiveness] and TuneUp 2011 trial [to evaluate, among other optimizations, the Program Deactivator].

The slow and unresponsive netbook is now noticeably faster and more responsive, indicating the intrinsic light use of resources for both OSS PRO 7.5 and Avast IS 6, 2 products easily providing excellent protection on a hardware configuration they most probably haven't been considered to run on, and subsequently, optimized for.

I'll experiment a bit more to get the overlap of functionality as low as possible.

I have actually placed this suite on my nephews netbook, which has the same processor as you mentioned, the Intel Atom 1.6 GHz, also 1 gig of ram memory, and it is light, runs great for what it is.. He is extremely happy with it..

 

[NathanF1]

I upgraded 7.5 to 7.5.1 and this has highlighted the somewhat "fragile" nature of Outpost Security Suite.

The upgrade went alright [I made sure I have suspended the protection before proceeding - thank you, wolfsmith ], but I've experienced some other issues which made me question whether it was worth upgrading. The major difference between my using 7.5 and this upgrade [7.5.1] is that previously I had Outpost installed first [and then added Avast].

Once again, I only installed the Firewall & HIPS [using Avast Internet Security without the Avast Firewall, both products mutually excluded].

There was a noticeable lag to interacting with Outpost after restarting, which I "fixed" by restarting few times without running Avast. This seemed to fix it and fortunately I'm now running both with the performance almost matching the 7.5 levels. Almost, because in certain scenarios I seem to have lost some of the gains Agnitum made between 7.0 to 7.5 - there is still a lag when interacting with Outpost prompts. It could take 3-4 seconds sometimes between the click and the prompt actually disapearing.

I would also get alerts from Action Center occasionally that Outpost Firewall is OFF, not a very confidence-inspiring situation.

The other, more serious issue were the inconsistent leak test results, given that I only upgraded Outpost and haven't made any other changes to the system. The issue was that various tests would fail, compared to 7.5 when everything was passing. Outpost's HIPS doesn't seem to be as imperturbable as I had expected and hoped it would be.


P.S. Off-topic, but after looking at Kaspersky 2012 I'm impressed by its Application Control [HIPS], seems that it's comparable to Outpost's HIPS. Performance-wise KIS 2012 seemed quite fast too, so I'm considering installing it on the netbook [thank you and so long Agnitum and, sigh... Avast].