Norton P Firewall 2005 2006 difference?

What's the difference between

Norton Personal Firewall 2005
&
Norton Personal Firewall 2006

I like this firewall and thinking of purchasing it, I'm sure I can find 2005 for sale cheaper so just wanted to know what the difference is between both versions. I can't seem to find any information on the Symantec site.

betauser2

 

maybe 2006 is more stable and fixes bugs but i dont know which to pruchase:\

 

I can't seem to find the version history, an update should fix any bugs knowing how Norton products update.

My hitch is that there is no major change only the title to 2006 to help their sales (i.e it's pschology).

I've trialled NIS 2006 and really liked the firewall and I have decided to buy. Just thinking of saving some bucks by purchasing 2005.

Anyone else know?

betauser2

 

2006 is a much smaller resource hog than 2005.

 

And if your not using XP or 2000pro you can't use 2006

 

I saw a couple threads about bugs in v2006 here (not sure if it was just NIS or both NIS/NPF):

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15003228

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14846968

I briefly tried NIS2006 and noticed that the Statistics wasn't there anymore(Network, Online Content, Firewall TCP Connections, Firewall UDP Datagrams,
Firewall Rules, Network connections, Last 60 Seconds) I'm not sure if it was intentionally removed forever or just a bug that needed fixing, and whether the same would be noticed in NPF2006. If you like this feature like I do, I would check into this. I think it's interesting to see a summary of all the firewall rules and number of matches for each rule, etc.

I am using NPF2005 right now. So far (time will tell!), I haven't noticed anything major I would like to see changed and the only other personal firewall/packet filter software I could say that about would be CHX-I 2.8.2 and I've tried pretty much all of the previous and current stuff. On this XPSP2 machine, the NPF2005 processes total about 31-33 MB RAM. I usually like less, but I haven't found anything that uses less that I could live with, other than CHX-I which doesn't do application control. I have seen trial downloads via the Symantec site for both NPF2005 and NPF2006 as recent as today.

 

No one has mentioned this so I will: NIS 2006 has a "learning" feature, I assume it is some sort of artificial intelligence. The "learning" feature is turned on by default when you first install, and lasts for two weeks then turns itself off, but you can manually turn it on or off {check or uncheck a box in options} anytiime you want. The "learning" mode kicks in for apps that don't have preset automatic rules. It's pretty cool .. and of course you can always go in and manually edit your rules, or override the "learned" rules, etc. for any application. HTH ..

 

Cheers Ran, I agree this feature is cool and so is the preset auto config. rules in NIS 2006. I'll stick to the complete suite.

BTW anyone know how to turn off the Protection Center? It keeps on alerting me to have Windows Auto update ON (which I have intentionally disabled) I find it really annoying as it still keeps on alerting me each time I boot even though I unchecked Windows Update Alerts under Alert Options.

betauser2

 

I left mine on but if you want to turn it off:

1. Start, Run, "services.msc" {without quotes}, then OK
2. Navigate to the Norton Protection Center Service
3. RightClick, Properties, Disable

 

thanks