Windows Vista Firewall vs. McAfee Firewall vs. Zonealarm Free Edition

Which of the three have the best protection? Which of them slows down your connection the least? If I get Zonealarm pro, will I be able to turn off it's antispyware component? Thanks for your help.

 

Get ZoneAlarm AntiVirus if you are running Vista. Pay close attention to the crosses in this table.

 

If you run ZA on Vista your choices are either the free version or the full security suite with AV and AS. You can turn off both the AV and AS components, but you have to pay for them. The free version is hardly worth bothering with if leak test results worry you. IMO, the Vista firewall is pretty decent, although it is difficult to set up if outbound filtering is desired.

 

Not true.

Look at my previous post in this thread and examine the chart referenced in the link.

 

OK, the landscape changed a bit since the release. All I can tel you is I ran ZASS on Vista and was not happy with it. Vista is a bit slow and bloated to start with, and some security software only makes things worse. Based on a 6 month run with Vista (I am back with XP these days), I got the best results with Avira Classic and the Vista firewall, leaving Defender and UAC enabled to cover spyware. Its also a good idea to enable SRP, but that might not be available on all versions of Vista.

 

And if you are running Vista paying close attention to those crosses and the footnotes associated with them shows a clearer picture.

Essentially, the majority of the features in ZASS do not exist in the Vista version.

I am running ZAAV under Vista because it is the fullest set of real features, the lowest price, and the full Firewall (with Program Control) and it runs quite well on my Vista notebook.

 

Ok,

There are a lot serious firewalls, but Vista's own firewall is not bad at all. When you want lean, free and simple this is the one for you: VistaFireWallControl 1.2 It uses the Vista Fire Wall 'engine'. You can turn of VistaFireWall after instaling VFWC 1.2

Off course when you want more control, more rules, more filter options the freeware version is to simple.

Regards Kees

 

Wow...I installed Comodo, and everything was really laggy. So I went to DSLreports.com and ran a speed test. My download speed was 50 times slower than usual! I should have just kept my malfunctioning McAfee! Does anyone know a firewall that doesn't slow down my download speeds?

 

ZA does not slow down connections (here)... have you tried it?

Fax

 

Fax, are you sure I won't have any lag? Because I'm not spending $40 on it otherwise.

 

-50x? I would probably clear all browser cache, reboot, and retry the test. If consistently -50x, I would uninstall (or at least disable) Comodo, clear all browser cache again, reboot again, and retry it. Not that I'm a fan of Comodo (I'm not), but -50x is hard to pin on any firewall.

 

You can try ZA for free for what, 15 days? 30 days?

 

Always test before buying.... there is a 15 days trial on all ZA products.
15 days should be enough to test for major problems.

Cheers,
Fax