What Firewall programs does everyone here use?

^^. Currently, I'm just using the built in Firewall Microsoft provided. What is everyone else using?

What firewall out there is top-notch and free?

 

http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpostfree/index.php

 

I disabled Windows Firewall and Windows Defender in Vista and now run avast! antivirus, PC Tools Firewall Plus, and PC Tools Spyware Doctor. All free.

Links to each on my website.

 

Is ZoneAlarm any good? Does this program conflict with any other programs?

 

I liked ZA on XP, but not on Vista (yet). See this post for more details.

 

ZoneAlarm conflicts really badly with Norton Anti-Virus 2005 and 2006 (not sure about 2007) on startup, so don't use both together. Both the newest and older versions of ZoneAlarm have this problem.

But other than that problem, it does its job quite well.

edit: I have XP.

 

I view that the other way around; that Norton conflicts with practically everything. I went out to the Symantec website and downloaded and ran the Norton de-installer to completely remove all traces of Norton from my machines.

 

i use onmy xp ,zone alarm firewall for two reasons , its free and its really good.As of right know there is no vista comp. za so u can use vista's built in firewall which now blocks in and outgoing traffic, and as far as antivirus i use avg antivirus , its free very lightweight and does the job, i listen to paul thurott's podcast (windows weekly w paul thurott ) and he said that vista is pretty secure and u can use vistas firewall with avg and u are good to go

 

If you see this poll, most vote for what they use/tried I presume

I myself use AVG Pro+firewall. Excellent firewall, have it on auto default settings and seems to block most ports and controls inbound/outbound nicely. Also remembers rules, unlike stupid "every 10 seconds ZL". Total 33mb, though the firewall component alone uses 7300K. Not free though

 

Believe vista's firewall is setup to block incoming traffic only by default. You can block outgoing traffic with vista's firewall (according to something I read) by downloading and installing Vista Firewall Control from SphnixSoftware. So this is what I'm using for the time being.

See my post here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=137349

 

There is a released version of ZoneAlarm for Vista, it just does not include all the features that the Zone Alarm Security Suite for XP did (yet).

The Windows Vista Firewall is actually pretty good, as far as it goes. What I take exception to is the omission of a discovery mode for outgoing traffic. There is not even a list from which to select. In order to use outgoing blocking in Windows Vista Firewall one must manually configure each individual program.

 

^Yeah thats true. I'm using Zone Alarm at the moment, and its pretty decent. Alerts me whats going out, whats coming. On top of that, I also have Windows Firewall enabled.

 

i dont think u can nor u have to run both firewalls at the same time

 

You can, but as the saying goes "unpredictable results may occur".

 

Well so far, nothing has gone wrong/unstable etc. Can never be too careful.