The best firewall (reliable, powerful, etc.) EVER in my opinion - Zone Alarm

RejZoR


Yeah, and as far as concerning Zone Alarm, you can have both enabled. I mean WindowsXP default firewall doesn't conflict with Zone Alarm, and reverse, as I said, you can have bot enabled and working in "completion" to each other (this "info" is provided and guarantied by ZoneLabs)


Cheers

 

Hello Stalker. I'm a ZA Pro user with XP Home. Can you explain briefly what additional protection can be realized by having both firewalls running at the same time?

 

Well, I must admit that probably there is no "additional" protection. It is just that probably Windows XP firewall monitors (and blocks or permits) Inbound packets before ZoneAlarm could even have an opportunity to catch this traffic. So Windows firewall do some work for Zone Alarm.


I suppose in Zone Alarm Pro this is not so useful as it is in Free version. It is just an additional layer of monitoring (for example if in some rare cases Zone Alarm fails).


Yeah, and also to mention here. Zone Alarm Peo has also one very usefull feature. If vsmon.exe process (started by services.exe as NT-service) fails by itself (corrupted database, or something), or is unexpectedly terminated, and similar, Zone Alarm Pro automaticly restricts all access, Inbound/Outbound, I mean all traffic is stoped.



HTH

 

Thanks, Stalker. I do like ZA Pro, but I occassionally find things don't act as they should. Even experts at their forum can't explain.

I did check out some of the screen shots of Kerio on their web site. I may give it a try when my ZA subscrition expires just to compare.

 

exactly. For the masses they want to be able to run a firewall and not have to think of TCP, UDP, packets, rules etc. Most would be confused by it all. From my experience helping other people they don't stop to think that half the battle in securing a computer is directly related to the things they do (or don't) to their computers and expect their firewalls and AV's to clean up after them.

I've run outpost, ZA and sygate. Sygate wins hands down. I've never liked ZA, the day it got tossed into the dustbin was when my CPU climbed to 100% and my computer became unresponsive when I was running a program that could act as a server (was running win2k at the time). Recently I tried ZA again - this time on XP Home. ZA hasnt changed much since I first used it 2 years ago. I ran into similar problems that I had encountered on win2k. Everything slowed to a crawl...

On the other hand, I have yet to run into conflict between sygate and another program. It has never let me down and I'm happy with it and recommend it all the time.

ps: i like the packet logger in sygate

 

As I am concerned I tested several firewalls in the past: ATGuad, NPF, Sygate, ZA, Kerio, Look'N'Stop, OP and F-Secure.
I really enjoyed ATGuard which was IMHO one of the best.
Today I vote for OP. However there are too many BSOD that they could not get rid of. Then I went back to ZASS which I totally disliked.
Which means I am leaving my router doing the job for the moment.

 

That feature is common to all the ZA's...including ZA Free.

 

Stayed up too late,
Which version of Sygate are you referring to? There's the free version and the $50 Pro version (this price includes one-year of updates).

I made the big mistake of upgrading to Zone Alarm Pro 5.0 and now I'm experiencing many problems with accessing websites. I'm planning to revert back to ZAP 4.5 this weekend (the primary recommended solution on the Zone Labs user forum), but I'm looking for Plan B in case that doesn't work.

Regards,
Stro

 

I am running za free and so far it runs very well on my xp pro machine.

 

I have to agree. ZoneAlarm is the ONLY firewall I will use.

 

i like Outpost Pro. i use to have XP firewall. i had Bad Experiences with ZA

 

I tried ZA but I don't like it. I tried a lot of firewalls - i'm testing Outpost now. After the initial frustration getting to know Outpost, i'm starting to like the configurability (presets and plugins - like Firefox!) - but enough - this thread is about ZA of which I have not had a good experience with in the past (conflicts,blue sceens, etc).

Some ratings (i'm sure you all know this site but anyway) - The new Outpost is far ahead of it's competitors - not sure how valid this test is but i've heard of PCflank http://www.pcflank.com/art41c.htm

 

This is an awful old test things have changed a lot since then

 

Not that much because I just got rid of ZA and i'm using the new Outpost. In fact here's a review of Outpost 2.1 - http://www.pcflank.com/review_outpostpro1.htm

Actually I was using the ZA that came with Etrust AV - as a suite. But it's not version 5

 

But the test's from PC flank I just take with a grain of salt.

 

True. The last 3 times I tried ZA - I hated it. So it's up to the individual to make his/her own choice. I was a Sygate pro user but grew tired of it and wanted something new. I've been through all the majors already

 

Truthfully I have had pretty good luck with several of the firewall's available, I finally just picked one that worked well and have had it for several versions now.

 

Probably the best investment in security I made was to buy a router. That coupled with a software firewall, I believe to be the best defense.

 

Same here hardware and software firewall.

 

Yeah but mines better - -hehe - j/k big C

 

Maaaaaybe? Maaaaaaybe not!

 

I used ZA Free for a long time. I'm running ZA Pro now, and I have not experienced any of the problems with 5.0 that everyone else is talking about. It's not perfect, but it works great for me.

 

There is one thing I don't like about Outpost is the log clearing - when it occurs, the CPU usage is high. I haven't gone that far into the configuration yet as i've only been testing for a short time - but there I go again off topic (bad habit - sorry)