Firewalls

I'm thinking of getting a firewall and want to know which one is best. I've heard that zone alarm is good.

Any other suggestions?

Zonealarm is quite good. If you have windows XP service pack 2, you can also use windows firewall (although it does very little about outbound connections...and thus is only ½ of the way secure).

Buy a router. They're cheap and they're better than software firewalls in many ways. Plus they serve as a router.

I'm using Kerio personal firewall. You can download a 30days trial to test it.

Kerio personal firewall version 2 is free (which is what I use), unlike the latest version.

Zonealarm is probably best for the average user due to it's simple interface, but personally, I wouldn't touch it :p

So either get kerio personal firewall version 2 or a router right?

Only get Kerio if you understand stuff like port numbers, IP addresses, incoming and outgoing connections and their differences, firewall rules and the importance of getting them in the right order, TCP/UDP, ICMP, and other stuff like that, or you'll have a problem configuring it :p

Norton Internet Security, with a little TLC that baby runs like a charm and doesn't kill networks :)

Unfortunately, Norton kills system resources instead, so you better have a half decent computer if you pick them :p

My computer's crap so I don't think I'll go with norton

Norton works for me..had it for 3 years, on 2 different computers and have gotten exactly 3 viruses in that time..and all 3 times my sister had disabled it to download something.

A virus scanner and firewall are different.

I've found the firewall isn't too system resource consuming, if your running XP your usually fine, but then you have to spend a good 10 mins setting it up else it does go around blocking the wrong things.

Norton Internet Security is a giant, steaming heap of bat feces. Don't buy it unless you have a gun held to your head.

Ignore Baka-loki. He just forgot to add the "yet" to the end of the sentence when he said he hasn't had any problems. He will, it's only a matter of time.

I work in tech support, and I get calls every single day because Norton has b0rked something or other. Usually it likes to change your email settings so all your email servers are set to "localhost." Which is fine if you're an ISP. If you're anybody else, that's bad news. And even better, if it doesn't change your email client settings it just creates entries in your PC's HOSTS file that maps all pop and smtp server settings to localhost so that the problem persists even after you grab a brain and dump Norton.

Additionally, Norton Internet Security also loads ccApp in memory. ccApp is a portion of Norton Antivirus, so it will b0rk any non-Norton antivirus product you may try to use. Also, ccApp prevents any SSL-enabled outgoing email, so if you want to have ccApp running, you have to send all your email unencrypted so that just anybody with a packet sniffer (takes 10 minutes to find on Google. If you have the IQ of cheese) can read all of your personal email.

Lastly, the firewall component of Norton likes to cause inexplicable Connect Can't Browse issues. In layman's terms, this means that even if you're fully connected to the internet, with full sync on your modem, and you can ping any web server on the internet, you can't view any pages, no matter if you're using Firefox or McBrowser. I don't know how it does it or why, but it solves the problem 100% of the time if you go into msconfig and disable all components of Norton.

Don't believe somebody who's had the dumb luck to not have a problem with one of the most notorious pieces of crap software on the open market. Believe someone who works 9.5 hours per day in tech support and has heard it all.

Unne's right. Get a router. That's all the firewall you should ever need, and it doesn't suck up system resources like a Hanoi prostitute.

Routers are the best option I admit, but its not dumb luck I've had, its because I actually spend the time to set these things up rather then clicking the big button saying "OMG CLICK HERE FOR DEFAULT SETTINGS WHICH NEVER WORK BECAUSE NO COMPUTER IS PERFECT!". If you do just go for defult settings its bound not to work.

However if you make the effort to go through each and every option and also make the effort to turn off the crap features (such as privacy control and e-mail filtering) its a damn'd good piece of software. Just because most people don't take the time to actually install their software properly doesn't mean its the softwares fault.

And the non-connect issue is something called 'script-blocking', kill that and usually everythings fine.