What do you feel about Jetico Personal Firewall

Indeed : I'm using jetico because it's the coolest and lightest thing I found for my 5 years old 512 Mb toshiba laptop (also used as a SSH server + proxy + VMC server, has already died several times, coming back to life like a cat). I've been using Kerio and others in the past, but they were too heavy for the poor thing. (*)

I'm no expert at all, and I'm sure I have "over authorised" some programs while configuring jetico... but I'm quite happy, I have only 2 problems:

1. as u say, I can't run it as a service, and I'm sometime forced to use my PC in "login page mode" to access my SSH server because when I'm logged in with my XP user I often experience "sudden auto swith off" of the PC (which is not easy to fix since I'm not home...) so I realised recently this meant "no firewall" for me !! You have a solution for this ?

2. by running shields up common port probe I realised that port 139 is open, port 113 is visible though closed, and 443 open (the only normal one since it's my SSH port). How can I stealth port 139 (and eventually 113) like all the other ones ?

Thanks for your help
Jerome

(*) for the same reason I abandoned Norton AV, then AVG, than Avast AV, they would all eat much of my CPU and memory very often while surfing or doing very regular tasks... to the profit of NOD32 AV which is also really great and really light on resources.

 

Jetico is very good, but in light of Free firewalls, including CoreForce and even Windows Vista coming with a very good 2 way firewall, making it for pay is not really a good idea.

 

For me, Jetico filters (very well) TCP/IP packets (down to (user config) flag level), I know it can be a pain for those who dont fully understand TCP/IP. If/when Jetico where to release another (paid for) version,..... well,.... it would have to be better,.. could it be better,.. maybe easier to use,.. but better,... I dont know?
I use Jetico, not because it is free, but because of the TCP/IP (user config) filtering (I have full licence for quite a number of firewalls, including OP, ZA, but prefer Jetico)

 

Any suggestions / answers to my 2 questions above ?

Thanks !

 

Um, does it mean that it runs as an application under a user account?

What would be the effect of funning it on an XP machine with fast user switching and several users concurrently logged in?

 

Yes it's what it means, it's user based.

But switching to another user doesn't let the first active, so only one Jetico session and ruleset would be active at a time anyway. But in my case I want ton run the PC and SSH service outside a user session ==> service required, how ?