Re: [OT] ZoneAlarm alternatives ??

["Ian Lowe" <ianlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My suggestion is to basically not bother.

If you really must have a personal firewall installed (and I don't
think you do need to) then use the windows firewall.

Ultimately, these things hig resources, get in the way and offer a
miniscule amount of protection.

if you have a firewall at the edge of your network, or a router which
performs NAT from a trusted 192.168.x.y or 10.x.y.z network out onto
the Internet, you simply do not need a personal firewall product.

If you have a larger network (ie, more than 25 machines) then there
is something to be said for internal firewalls to stop things
spreading, but for a typical home network? screw it.

I have disabled the firewalls on our internal PCs for the last couple
of years. It's faster, easier to share resources and in that entire
time we have not seen a single problem.

Personal Firewall products are a complete waste of time - a cheap-as-
chips NAT based router is more secure and protects the whole network
without hitting everyone's performance.

Ian.