Norton personal 2004/zone alarm

Hi. at the moment i am using zone alarm 5.1 free and have been given norton personal 2004 on a disc would you change or stick with zone alarm which seems to be working fine,is one better than the other? thanks for any advice
Jim

 

They both seem to be decent firewalls but I believe that ZA is much easier to set up that Norton, Try them both and see which one you like the best and works well on your machine.

bigc

 

Are you working behind a router? If not, Norton will give you a lot more options than the ZA free. If you are behind a router the ZA free is all that you need and would be easier to use. To sum up, in my opinion, if this is your only firewall, I would go with Norton, if you are behind a router, I would go with ZA free, whatever you do , good luck.

Acadia

 

Thanks for the input, i have a d-link 624 wirless router if that makes any difference

 

Then I would have to agree with Bigc, ZA free is all that I would choose if it were me.

 

Then i guess i'll just stick with the zone alarm as i said it seems to be working fine,thanks again for the help Jim

 

Also depends on your computer. ZA is much lighter than Norton.

IMO you're fine and in most cases ZA free suits your average user perfectly regardless if you're behind a hardware firewall or not. In one of my incarnations I was a system engineer and can tell you that even with that background, I never use any advanced config options on my firewall.

 

jymmyp,
I use both ZAP 4.5 and Norton Personal Firewall on two seperate machines behind a hardware firewall router. ZA is much more informative, lets you know almost to a fault what is happening, With Norton you are much less aware of your security. Both however seem to protect pretty good. So like Bigc says it is really personal choice.

Only two concerns 5.1 has been difficult for some due to "bugs", but you say yours is working fine. Good. I am sensitive to "high resource security users" which is a negative for Norton too.

If after reading all of this you still just wanted me to make the choice for you. If ZA 5.1 was working fine, I would not change. I would stick with it and put the Norton in a desk drawer.

 

Jim, I'm also behind a D-link wireless router. I use ZAP4.5, contemplating upgrade to 5.1 when I'm convinced it will harmonize with the windowsXP SP2. I have Norton Anti-Virus 2004, V10 which includes the Norton Internet Security with firewall. I like the NIS intrusion detection as a complement to ZAP, but I disabled the firewall portion. This combo works well for me and passes all of the leak tests.

 

Hello Waynet,i have the new sp2 insalled along with zone alarm(free)and dont seem to be having any trouble,i have recently purchaced a new computer and have been looking at as many posts as i can to see what everybody is using for security i have invested a ton of money and dont want to get it messed up i have spywareblaster,avg7,adaware se,spydot s&d,tds-3 am i now covered?i had no idea that surfing the internet had become so bad please let me know if there is anything more that i need, not really up on all this security but im learning thanks for any help Jim

 

You should be reasonable protected with either. Both offer lousy user interfaces, although I think ZA outperforms NPF in this area. I'm not quite familiar with the features ZL offers in the free version of ZoneAlarm 5.1 but one advantage of Norton Personal Firewall would be the signature based Intrusion Detection System which may prevent attacks even in case you misconfigured the Firewall. As others already outlined, in opposite to ZA Norton Personal Firewall does not tend to display alert or notification windows for every normal network event encountered. Maybe a matter of personal preference, if you paid for a Firewall you may want to see that it is working for your money.

 

If you install some more of these you'll need to upgrade you new computer very soon...

Opinions may be different on what is needed to secure a computer, beside an regularly updated AV (which I consider a must have) the most important things you need are common sense and some basic knowledge on what may do harm to your computer. If a software Firewall, Anti-Spyware and dedicated Anti-Trojan applications are really needed IMO depends on the way you (and probably others) use your computer. If you're on an always-on connection a software firewall may be handy, if you regularly download files from questionable sources a dedicated Anti-Trojan application may be of use and if you like to try a lot of free- and shareware applications you may need one of the Anti-Spyware apps sooner or later.

However if you intend to use your computer for things other than being secure and performing scans with every app recommended in security related forums you should carefully select the things you install and just keep the applications you really need (and maybe like, nobody really can answer the question which is the "best").

 

Jim, in response to your question I think the advice from SvS is solid. How you use your computer will prescribe what prevention is needed. In most cases a good AV proggy is a must, especially if you download from the internet. Your router arrangement provides a hardware firewall, however, a good software firewall like ZAP to complement the router is prudent.

I'm by no means an expert in these matters, but this forum has people that are. In addition to ZAP, I use Adaware Pro, Trojan Hunter3.9, and Webroot Spysweeper. Less frequently I'll do a sweep with Spywareblaster. These programs co-mingle nicely on my laptop and occasionally one will find some scumware that the other didn't see. No matter what you use, make certain to update them automatically or on a frequent basis.