Help me choose the ultimate firewall (hardware or software) for home

I am tired of malware screwing my computer up. Once I get things fixed, I am going to end the horseshit where it begins. Please post your suggestions as to the BEST firewall for home use (either software or hardware). I am going to be upgrading to a wireless netowrk very soon and am looking at a few D-Link routers but wanted some input before I purchased anything.

I want the security to be so damn tight that I never have to worry about spyware and malware ever again.

 

Hi,

I would suggest a general approach :
- get a router
- get a personal firewall
- install a sandboxe

With all this three points, you filter almost all junk

For a router, I know D-Link has good one, Cisco too but much more expensive.
For a personal firewall, it's hard to advise you, give a try to firewalls like Zone Alarm, Look'n'Stop, Outpost, Kerio, etc... they all have free trial.
For the sandboxe you can use Process Guard, very nice piece of security software (nothing can run without you allow it).

A router will block all inbound garbage coming from the Internet, a personal firewall will filter applications trying to access the internet from your computer, and the sandboxe will prevent from running any unwanted program.

All of this ask a little of efforts, but then you will get rid easily of spywares and others

(it might be good to switch from IE to Opera or Mozilla FireFox too regarding spywares).

regards,

gkweb.

 

GKWeb's reply says it all.

 

I'm pretty pleased with my sme server and Outpost combo.
SME server is a linux distribution. It needs an old pc and provides you with not only a linux based firewall, but also lots of other goodies (mailserver, webserver and plenty of installable addons like AV, Anti-spam, you name it.) Do you need to learn linux? No way. And it's free

Sorry, back on topic now.

 

I've sygate personal firewall and this is my result:


http://grc.com/transpixel.gif
http://image.grc.com/passed.gifhttp://image.grc.com/trustealthanalysis.gifhttp://image.grc.com/passed.gifhttp://grc.com/transpixel.gif
http://image.grc.com/graypixel.gif
http://grc.com/transpixel.gif[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif,MS Sans Serif][size=-1]Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.[/size][/font]