XP Firewall or ZoneAlarm?

[Sam Woodson]

Which is better? (Higher level of protection)
Which requires less system resources? (Memory and CPU?)

Thanks,

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

WinXP's built-in firewall is fine at stopping incoming attacks, and
hiding all of your ports from probes. It doesn't give you any alarms
to tell you that it is working, though. What WinXP also does not do,
is protect you from any Trojans or spyware that you might download and
install inadvertently. It doesn't monitor out-going traffic at all,
much less block (or at least ask you about) the bad or the
questionable out-going packets.

ZoneAlarm or Sygate are much better, and there are a free
versions
available. Personally, I've been very happy with Symantec's Norton
Internet Security 2002 (NIS 2003 is now available), which includes
Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, parental controls, privacy
controls, and ad blocking. (Just the elimination of most pop-up ads
on the Internet made the price worth-while to me.)


Bruce Chambers

--
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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH

 

[AArDvarK]

Use both at the same time, I do.
Alex

 

[MIke Miles]

Bruce:

What's your opinion on McAfee? I have v 7 but I'm scared
to death to put it on XP (had some bad problems with
98se). Is Norton good with XP?

 

[robert]

have been using norton sec/a-v for months now with no
problems. sometimes a popup pops but it is from the site
visited. got norton from amazon with full rebate so only
had to pay $0.37 postage. i update norton daily.
============================================

 

[Jose Francisco]

Greetings Sam,

I'll give a thumbs up to the in-built firewall of Windows XP

Regards,
Jose Francisco

--
Still Got Problems? Email Me!

*Note* Always do a Windows Update

http://www.betaconnect.com

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Which is better? (Higher level of protection)

ZoneAlarm


Which requires less system resources? (Memory and CPU?)

It doesn't matter. Both are insignificant.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I'll give a thumbs up to the in-built firewall of Windows XP

Note that Windows built-in firewall monitors incoming traffic
only, unlike better firewalls, which monitor traffic in both
directions.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Sorry for interrupting your interesting convesation. It just occurred
to me that my XPHome has both ZA and XP Firewall turned on. Would it
be better if I turned off my XP firewall and leave ZA?

I would turn off the XP firewall. It's just a duplication of
effort. It's doing nothing that ZA isn't also doing, and there
may be some chance of a conflict between the two.

 

[Rick]

Which is better? (Higher level of protection)
Which requires less system resources? (Memory and CPU?)

Thanks,

Use both

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Use both

Why? The built-in firewall does nothing that ZoneAlarm doesn't
also do. Using both does nothing extra for you, creates extra
overhead, and introduces the risk of interference between the
two.