Is it time to change from Sygate PF Free?

Hello folks,

A few years ago, I did a comparison of all the major free firewalls at the time, ZAF, SPF, TPF and the then new KPF and concluded at that point that SPF best fitted my needs.

Looking around recently and reading various reviews in magazines and on the web they seem to suggest that things have moved on and one of the others may be a better choice.

In my last test Kerio came out as my second favourite staying on one of my secondary machines until I added another user who was a complete technophobe and would have been scared off by KPF and hence better off with ZAF. I am thinking of swapping from ZAF to KPF 4 as this seems to offer the most features for a free firewall. However I have heard some reports that it has a number of problems. With XP SP2 coming out soon this seems like a good time to consider a change as I will make another HD image at that point.

What do people think of KPF 4 as an alternative to my current SPF 5.5. Does it suffer from the same proxy limitation? Would people recommend a different software firewall in preference?

Thanks,

Morpheus

 

I am useing Za Pro and am very happy with it, it seems to work very well and does everything I would expect from a software firewall.

 

I think you are looking at the free firewalls ?
If not, " look n stop" with enharnced ruleset is up there as the best https://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=28 ,
or for a really decent firewall / sandbox you cannot beat " Bitgaurd " http://www.tryus.dk/bitguard.asp .
Im pretty sure that the KPF4 is not free after a month.

 

all software firewalls have weaknesses that can be breached and are thus a compromise,the sygate free is still quite a good firewall but things have progressed and others are now better(I thought the best free one was outpost free but it is down to personal needs/opinions).
For my needs I have found the outpost pro V2(not V2.1!) best(can be a bit of a pain to configure for certain sites but I can live with that) but if you want a free one try them all,after all the only cost is your time,I've also got a copy of the old Tiny free firewall if you want to give that one a wirl,I know at the time it had one of the best compromises of usabilty and protection ie:- dead easy to configure,if you want a copy drop me a line
Steve

 

"Limited free edition does not provide the content filtering capabilities such as blocking pop-up windows, ads, VB scripts, cookies, etc. and other extra features." Comparison table.

Regards,

CrazyM

 

Past experience (about 2weeks ago) with ZAP Pro and ZAP free edition shows that theirs possible memory leak and thus creating a CPU usage of 100% and memory to be used up.

These problems occured on 2 occasions. XP SP1 and XP SP2. Now the latest built of ZAP is at fault. Zonelabs have confirm possible exploit of this memory leak in one of their email with one of their techs. A patch or built version to update this issue should be out soon.

If it wasn't for that problem with the latest release I would still have it installed on the DMZ machine. I'm hoping that these little quirks will be fixe. Has it will less of an a*s for this gaming machine.

 

I have used all of the 6 major firewalls and ALWAYS come back to Sygate Pro v5.5. ZoneAlarm is in the top three BUT many people have issues with uninstalling it. I am an IT Pro and I HAD problems! They really need to fix their uninstalling codes, since it does not delete ALL problematic files. Outpost is excellent but a little complicated (at first) for most home users. Stick with Sygate, the personal free edition will do for 85% of Internet Users.

 

I would recommend one of two firewalls. Either Sygate 5.5 or Kerio 2.1.5. I've tried most of them and I believe Sygate and Kerio are the best two. At the moment I have a slight preference for Sygate, so if I were you, I'd stick with it.

 

Thanks folks,

I'll have a play with KPF 4 and Outpost (I chose SPF over the 2.x versions of KPF in the past) and see if I prefer either to SPF. I agree with the criticism of ZA's uninstallation (as an IT pro myself) but it is still one of the easiest firewalls to use for beginners which is why it is on some of my secondary machines which are used by my folks.

In terms of ad, cookie and referrer blocking most of that is taken care of by Mozilla and various extensions so they are not big issues for me.

Morpheus