How does Vista Fiirewall compare to, say, Zonealarm?

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Cast-it Admin

In XP the teckies were telling everyone to disable Windows Firewall and use
Zonealarm.....is the same to be said of the Vista Firewall????


Ron
 
That might depend on what you are using your computer for and if you have an
external firewall as well. I also wonder how many tests have been done by
third party sources (and I don't mean general users) as to the effectiveness
of the new windows vista firewall. Companies like norton or mcafee or
whomever are going to create their own stories about how their's works
better than the windows firewall (as well as their other competitions) but
then they also want you to buy their software so they are going to run tests
that make theirs look better.

I used Zonealarm in XP for a short while and removed it because it was to
cumbersome and am sticking with the windows firewall built into vista,
however, i'm also very careful as to what I load onto my machine.

If you just use your computer for websurfing and don't open messages from
people you don't know or download software from places you don't know then
you are probably ok. I would wait until later this summer and see how each
of the new firewalls out their are rated before spending any money.
Antivirus you can get free, not sure about third party firewalls.

Hope this helps.

Jeff
 
Cast-it Admin said:
In XP the teckies were telling everyone to disable Windows Firewall and
use Zonealarm.....is the same to be said of the Vista Firewall????


Ron
Click to expand...

It's a bit more sophisticated in Vista. You can get into some fairly
granular stuff with

'Windows Firewall with Advanced Security'

but AFAIK it lacks decent packet logging, so you can't open up individual
packets and read them, as you can with say Sygate Firewall.

I also suspect that 'Windows Firewall with Advanced Security' will be
beyond the average user, and they will find something like Zone Alarm a
simpler interface to use.
 
In XP the teckies were telling everyone to disable Windows Firewall and use
Zonealarm.....is the same to be said of the Vista Firewall????
Click to expand...

Windows firewall in Vista is MUCH better. It also now filters outbound
traffic as well (provided you turn that function on in advanced
settings).

I much prefer it to third-party apps.

Besides, I have a router with a firewall built in, so a software
firewall is mostly redundant.

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Thanks all, for your thoughts, it's a shame there doesn't appear to be any
independent tests carried out on it. As Jeffrey states the major players
(including Microsoft) all have somethign to sell. I guess it will come, but
wouldn't it have been nice if one was carried out with the final beta
release to give early adopters some factual information?

I have a Netgear router which contains a Firewall, but all these router
Firewalls are very basic - unless you get into subscription based Cisco
systems etc. I use Zonealarm in XP, as it is easy to setup and understand -
although having said that, it occasionally throws up a message telling me a
certain file with a meaningless name is trying to access the internet, and I
have to google that file name to figure out if I should let it or not. I'm
sure there must be easier ways of producing a workable firewall without us
having to learn all about files and ports!!!

Ron
 
I've been using the built-in firewall since it was the ICF in early XP, and
I've never had any firewall-related problems or securoty breaches at all.
But ultimately it depends on what you really need and the value of the data
you're protecting. Using a firewall as a kind of "after the infection
malware detection" device is dubious at best. Your anti-malware software
should be blocking that stuff before it gets into your system in the first
place.
 
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