Zone Alarm!

[I_Broke_My_MHZ]

I tried Kalpersky which wasnt good. Then I tried Sygate, all it did was crash on me. When I got it to not crash I was still disappointed. ZoneAlarm Security Suite all the way

[Lost Soul]

za is ok but i found it to be a bit of aa resource hog, and i didnt like that it kept attacking a few progs that were not even virus,, so then i switched to Kaspersky and to me thats the better choice,,, but as they as each to there own, i guess the best method to choose one is try a few free firewalls 1 at atime and compare then if you find one you like more then the other you could always purchase the pro version

[rjz]

I would get SAV 9 or 10.0+

I would also get a good hardware firewall. I used to recomend zone labs int desktop but recently it been worse than the free consumer version.

[DonDamm]

Have any of you tried Protowall? It happens to be a very good one. I'm still using ZA 4.5 on my main machine. early 5.1 and 5.1 versions had some issues that seemed to get better with later versions.

Once you get it set up it just does what it's supposed to. In general it is user friendly. Sygate is fine too. I don't trust the ZA AV. I've always done well with the corp version of Symantec. Version 10 is great if you turn off the auto startup scan!

In truth, this is a moving target, so check all the reviews and try a combination for a while. Then try another one. You'll soon know what suits you. Kaspersky gets high marks, but I'm not ready to switch.

[suryad]

Tried zone alarm and always had a great expeience with it. Not sure about what other firwall softwares are out there besides ZA and Norton...but I would not recommend Norton at all.

[dusteetrails]

I've used alot of firewalls & various antivirus sw. i'd say for a home (personal) use firewall that compared to Black Ice, Symantec's Norton, sygate, outpost and kerio that zone alarm has all the protection and pis robably the easiest to use, although outpost is right there with it. Also tried Computer Associates E-Trust EZ Firewall and it was also good but then I found out it's based on the code used in Zone Labs' Zone Alarm so you pay more for the same features. I really like kerio but it's more the power user (doesn't give you all the "browse" features and since I write scripts, etc that doesn't way alot with me). Outpost is just like using Outlook guiand it also has alot of content blocker plug-ins that you can download from their site for no charge. i heard that some of the personal firewalls out there report info to their sites so be careful and use a well-tested product from a reputable company.

Personally I'd pick a firewall separate from my antivirus software. Still don't know anyone who keeps up with Symantec (Norton) as far as viruses go & that is somewhere that I wouldn't want to go sub-standard... i run two antivirus programs along with various anti-spyware packages. As far as firewalls, if you're the average PC user, then Zone Alarm Pro gives you easy pop-ups that auto-configure the firewall to not permit certain programs to access it (none should have server rights on a home PC).

have zone alarm running on one of the small business servers I support along with Norton Antivirus and it works great.. i even let the business owner configure it 'cause it's so easy. I also have a the free zone alarm version running at two of my friends houses (one is Win2000 and teh other PC is XP home OSes) & they find it very easy to configure the auto notification features etc. In fact you can get it free if you just want to use the firewall feature. On the small bus server, we run alot of different applications and I haven't had seen any problems with the firewall not recognizing the software that is trying to access the internet (very simple interface and much easier to configure than Symantec Internet Security (have that at home on two of my pcs 'cause I got it for small price when upgrading my tools, but now I regret loading IS and wish I'd gone with Zone Alarm and just left the Norton AV and Norton Tools alone). I'm working to back it out without to re-install windows (zone alarm, sygate and outpost completely uninstall clean by the way).

Look at some of the pcworld reviews where they've tested a bunch of them & you'll see it's the top 2.

quote: "Opinions are like Aholes. Everyone has one and most of them stink."

hopes this helps in your decision.

I am planning to purchase Zone Alarm antivirus and firewall, can someone who is using zone alarm product confirm me that is it good or not.

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