Best Free Firewall?

[stumartin]

That I can download to my new laptop? Is the windows one with XP SP2 any cop? Help much appreciated

[Plotloss]

www.zonealarm.com

[arcturus]

Zone Alarm seconded. Much better than the XP SP2 firewall. And it's free.

[stumartin]

Thanks guys, I'd heard good things of zonealarm but even the standard (read 'free') 'no frills' one? Does it tell you when programs are trying to access the internet, or am I being an e-hypochondriac?

[Plotloss]

Yep its pretty full featured.

Will scan away to see which applications get access, grants it automatically to known ones etc etc.

I see no difference really between Zone Alarm and Norton Personal Firewall.

[stumartin]

Excellent. Much obliged!

[pdV6]

Plus the latest version actually installs cleanly (I've had a few problems with the previous couple of versions).

ZA thoroughly recommended

[guydw]

however it is worth considering a PIX 501 ... only a couple of hundred, and possibly less on Ebay....

[timsta]

If you want a standalone firewall you could try gnatbox lite.

www.gta.com
www.gta.com/products/gblight/

[tja]

Sygate Personal Firewall, free for personal use.

Much better than ZoneAlarm (IMHO)

[stumartin]

tja said:

Sygate Personal Firewall, free for personal use. Much better than ZoneAlarm (IMHO)

Oh now you've done it, before I left work it was a settled matter, now there's choice in the offing!

[CooperGreen]

Second Sygate.
Used Zone alarm. Sygate seems more usable.

[hornet]

Used to use Sygate personal 5.5, then it updated to 5.6 which just wouldn't work on my machine, so I switched to Zone Alarm. Sygate is IMO slightly easier to navigate around and do stuff in, but I've not had any problems with ZA.

[pdV6]

pwellsie said:

Then Zone Alarm stopped my computer from connecting to the LAN.

Add the IP address range of your LAN as a trusted zone.

Think about what you've just said... a firewall that allows access to other machines by default wouldn't seem to be of much use now, would it? (Windows XP, anyone?)

[GregE240]

Plotloss said:

I see no difference really between Zone Alarm and Norton Personal Firewall.

There is one Matt....Norton runs out after twelve months and stops working, asking you for money like some firewall beggar.

Zone Alarm does not.

[tja]

I used Norton Internet Security. I couldn't adjust it to my liking, application of rulesets were in a strange (immobile) order.

Switched to ZoneAlarm, everything seemed fine. I firewalled Outlook Express so that it couldn't access the internet except ports 25 & 110...ZoneAlarm "forgot" to apply the rule every few days and needed a reboot before it would work properly.

Switched to Sygate, not had a problem since.

[trooper1212]

I used zonealarm for a couple of years and finally got annoyed enough to try something else after it locked up my internet connection for the umpteenth time and had to be reinstalled yet again.

Now onto Kerio and had no problems in the past few months.

[docevi1]

Sygate Personal Firewall or BlackIce personally

[vex]

We use Zone Alarm, but keeping it up to date by reloading it every 30 days is a pain.

The latest version screwed wifes lappy so that every time you used the scroll wheel on the mouse the pc crashed.

Back to the previous version and everything is make to normal.

Might look for something else next year.

[Alex M]

I've been using Zone Alarm for quite some time and am quite happy with it.
However, we've just installed a router which has a built-in firewall, is it still useful to use Zone Alarm now?