Is a firewall really needed?

Several OT/Personal Posts have been removed.

Would the two gentlemen envolved in their personal dispute please refrain from doing so here. Members and guests are from all levels of knowledge; isn't it better spent energy enlighting, rather than what had resulted here? Yes it is important to challenge "claims" to prevent the spread of misinformation, but I didn't see this to be the case here. While I don't doubt that one of the members envolved did feel that to be the case - a misrepresentation of status/skill, but even seeing it from that perspective didn't warrant the resulting posts, it would've been more helpful to correct what was perceived to be wrong rather than carrying on this way.

I hope you both please continue to contribute in a positive manner.

Please and Thanks

Steve

 

One question:

I never read if this protection is based on one home computer or a number of computers. For very casual surfing on dial-up. Your probably fine. If your trying to anything but get your webmail - your probably in need of some sort of real FW capability.

There are MANY threats out there that don't need much of a hook to infect your computer like sub-seven, etc. An open port is all they need and the XP FW is easily gotten around with port mismatches as stated above (through links).

- beads

 

Can you please post where you got this information? thanks.