Hi hifibloke First, welcome to Wilders This is a fairly broad question and everyone's experiences are likely to be different depending on the system in use, connection type and software firewall being used. Ideally, a software firewall should not slow down your connection at all, at least not noticeably. Software firewalls that incorporate filtering for active content, adds and such, may have an impact on some systems/connections. The same is true if you use a proxy type program to do this type of filtering in addition to a firewall. The impact is usually minimal. Regards, CrazyM
My experience with firewall and resourses have Zone Alarm using the most resourses and Looknstop and Tiny being the least..c
Thanks 4 comment so is Norton Internet Security Professional 2003 a good choice ? in terms of reliabillity and stability on win xp
Depending on the features you are after, NIS could be the one for you and has many satisfied users. In terms of reliability and stability on XP, I am not aware of any major issues. I do not have XP, but have run NIS2003 on W2K without any problems. The active content and add filtering in NIS2003 is very effective and you have to pay attention to the logs for adjustments that may be required for content on trusted sites. Just in case you were not aware, the current version for NIS/NPF is 2004. I have not had an opportunity to look at this yet, so cannot comment on it. Regards, CrazyM