Safe At Office 500 Internet Security Appliance 5U

by Check Point

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 10 x 3 inches ; 2.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000HZES4W
• Item model number: CPSB-500G-5-US
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,158 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

SAFE AT OFFICE 500 INTERNET

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice appliance - support is horrendous, November 6, 2006

By 

Robert Deutsch "Blackberry fan" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Safe At Office 500 Internet Security Appliance 5U (Personal Computers)

I recently bought a Safe@Office 500 for our small office. The appliance itself is very nice, throughput is decent. The issue pops up when you subscribe to antivirus and support. The division of checkpoint that handles this is Safaware. Their website is currently broken so you can't register (11/4/06). This of course does not stop them from getting you to buy subscriptions through the appliance... unfortunately you can't use them. There is chat help on the sofaware website but you can't use it if you are not signed in which of course you can't do. No support numbers are listed in any of the documentation. It took three calls to Checkpoint to get a number. The tech answered "hello"... no company name. I could barely hear him... he blamed it on a VOIP connection to India.

Most of what we were able to figure out we did on our own, a waste of two business days. We still cannot figure out how to subscribe to or use the antispam features. Getting the right ports open for Quickbooks was not easy. The wireless and wired are on a different range of IP addresses, so you will not see any peer to peer networking without mapping the directories.

Great little appliance, terrible support.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Affordable firewall from the world-class vendor, November 30, 2010

By 

ZBatia "cyber teacher" (MD USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Safe At Office 500 Internet Security Appliance 5U (Personal Computers)

Let me start with what I hate in this unit(yes, it's the right word). When you buy the standard, 5 users version, be ready for nasty surprises - you are going to run out of licenses very soon. Keep in mind that if you also want to use the VPN, every remote user is being counted as 1 more license. I have faced the situation when I had to force my client to spend more money on the add-on licenses after I have recommended this product based on my firewall experience and knowledge of the vendor.

I was thinking my previous experience will be helpful when it comes to configure this firewall. I was wrong because many functions are automated and are hidden, so you really don't know what must be done for certain operations. Due to fact that the documentation is horrible and all the modes and functions are messed up together in each paragraph (instead of separating them by functionality and the purpose), you are on your own to configure it by the method of trials and errors.
I spend quite a long time to play with an interface (even if it is web-based and very simple) because I did not know what is already functioning under the hood and what must be added in order to make the needed functionality.

So, it's better do not have any previous experience because you will be confused if you have some.
Overall, the unit does a job and I trust the security expertise of Check Point - the leading firewall company. If the documentation and the licensing mode would be not a problem, I'd give to this device 5 stars.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad VPN Router, April 5, 2010

By 

CS (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Safe At Office 500 Internet Security Appliance 5U (Personal Computers)

This router is good for anything but VPN. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but after wasting significant time and getting no support from Sofaware I find the device is almost useless to access shared resources behind firewall. I am not a beginner and I have done my share VPN setups including other products from Checkpoint. The only thing that works and pretty stable is Remote Desktop over VPN. I tried office mode, setup port rules, etc. I upgraded the firmware, tried the latest Secure Client, I still get the MTU Status as failed (peer too old) error and can't reach any shared resource behind the VPN from Internet. I can only ping. I will try a Cisco.