I've taken the plunge and installed the latest Zonealarm Pro 2010 to Co-exist with Avast pro 5. Surprisingly theres no wait at boot-up as per previous versions of ZA, which to me is a HUGE! plus! Apart from the interim pop-ups and having to allow access to a few programs ZA pro 2010 seems to be living more cozily along side Avast! than what Outpost Pro 7 did. Theres several good reviews floating about, about this version so for now, unless anything untowards happens I'll keep it installed.
i believe ZA has done a very fine work in refining all of its products within this lates version. But i always liked it even before
I tried it for a few days. It seemed pretty stable. Just had one caveat. When I was using IE8 and was downloading a big avi file from Megaupload in one tab and browsing in another I checked the Task Manager and Zonealarm was using about 60% CPU and making the scrolling choppy in the web page I was reading. When I shut down ZA, the problem went away. XPSP3 Intel E8700 @ 4200 MHz
I haven't tried the PRO, but after a long time i tried the new free release and browsing was very fast. I was surprised. Faster than Win7 firewall control+Win Firewall that i usually use. No BSODs either. But, similar to what noway said, CPU usage when downloading from FTP, was constantly 4-6% of my CPU while this was at full frequency (AMD quad core@2300Mhz). Also, to my amazement, by lowering the security to medium, Emule was actually having the ports correctly open. For someone with router, this could work. It's groundbreaking achievement, since ZA has ignored the pledges of emule users since... forever! (their usual reply was "buy the pro"). So, such a shame for the CPU. I just can't accept seeing 6% for 3 download threads. Maybe one day they will lower the CPU usage and i will use it.
I have seen this with java based upload/download sites. May be worth participating into the next beta round. May be sometime next year (?) to point out to the developers the issue. Does it affect your system speed and stability like in the case of noway? Or it is something that you don't like to have anyway? Try to do the same test but with a naked configuration (MSCONFIG to remove any third party software. There could be a conflict with something running altough 4-6% sounds pretty low anyway). Thanks, Fax
It doesn't affect stability (i wouldn't even consider it if it BSODed), i simply like background processes to be as light as possible since they run all the time, and i 'd rather have my video encoder get a 4% boost rather than having ZA taking it. I tried uninstalling Avast, but the behaviour doesn't change. I don't run many things at startup, so the only other possibility is some hardware driver... Anyway, 4-6% may seem pretty low, but when other firewalls can manage the same job with 0-1% (Like Win7 Firewall control, OA Free, Comodo, PC Tools), it seems a waste to me. What i like about ZA free is that it has simple interface. No HIPS no too many frills, doesn't slow down anything. With OA and even more Comodo i can sense a slowdown when browsing explorer windows. Even Outpost eats a bit less than ZA. And it has HIPS too. So if ZAF eats more CPU than firewalls with HIPS, then i 'd say it lacks efficiency. I didn't even notice how much ZA eats with p2p, but if it needs 4-6% for 3 FTP connections, i wonder what will happen with 100 connections.
Just an update...I restored an image I have with ZoneAlarm Pro 9.3.037.000 and retested. Once again the Megaupload avi download usually hovered around 60% CPU!!! This was the case even with both the Internet Zone and Trusted Zone firewall sliders in the OFF position and Program Control set at Medium (no OS Firewall, no Component Control). Just using the basic firewall...no other optional modules. I just use my browser for the Megaupload download since I am not a paid member and download managers are not supported. My max connections per server is only 6. Tried downloading a mp4 file from hotfile to compare and it was much less CPU...around 5-7%. I remember weeks ago I tested the same Megaupload download with ZoneAlarm Pro 9.1.008.000 and didn't get the heavy CPU use (but as is the case for previous versions, it had another issue) so this seems to be a newly introduced problem. I was very surprised since I just used the fw for basic program control (since I have a router) and had everything else shut off.
