free to download or purchase only ones? i've been reading reviews for zone alarm which i used to use on XP and apparently its not very good at all. so does anyone know any good ones? i'm currently running mcafee but just looking at other possibilities.

PC Tools Firewall Plus Free Edition 4

 

 

 

Comodo Firewall Pro

 

 

 

Online Armor

 

 

 

Ashampoo FireWall 1.2

 

 

 

All are free. Otherwise get a firewall together with a security suite. I personally find Zone Alarm over-rated.

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm running XP, and McAfee, but I'm looking for a new firewall.

 

 

 

I would suggest looking at Comodo. It's free, and I haven't seen any really bad reviews (like those made for ZoneAlarm) on it, so you may want to give it a try. I'm probably going to download it soon myself.

 

 

 

I head about Ashampoo firewall too, one of my friends was telling me about it, but I don't know much about it. I think one review said it crashed a bit frequently, but its still great when it works.

I agree, Comodo is an awesome firewall. Award winning too!

Comodo all the way \

I use Windows Firewall and that's fine for general web browsing.

 

 

 

If you want something a bit heavier, both Comodo and Zonealarm are good firewalls.

I use Windows Firewall and that's fine for general web browsing.

 

 

 

If you want something a bit heavier, both Comodo and Zonealarm are good firewalls.

 

 

 

*rings doorbell* common sense, are you there?...*leaves after a few minutes*... Trusting your computer's safety to windows firewall is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute...It's not going to end well. Windows is the 5th lowest on the matousec tests. It's about the same on every review. I wouldn't say it's good for anything, except taking up hard drive space.

I use Windows Firewall and that's fine for general web browsing.

 

 

 

If you want something a bit heavier, both Comodo and Zonealarm are good firewalls.

 

 

 

*rings doorbell* Common sense, are you there?...*leaves after a few minutes*... Trusting your computer's safety to windows firewall is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute...It's not going to end well. Windows is the 5th lowest on the matousec tests. It's about the same on every review. I wouldn't say it's good for anything, except taking up hard drive space.

 

 

 

Common sense is your best protection anyway.

 

I use Comodo for firewall on my xp partition, panda firewall on my other computers.

Common sense is your best protection anyway.

 

I use Comodo for firewall on my xp partition, panda firewall on my other computers.

 

 

 

What I meant was that it's built in to windows. Windows is not, nor will it ever be, renowned for it's security. Plus, It's built in to all windows systems (maybe not, but it's on XP and Vista, so yeah). So that would mean that anyone with a windows computer could access the firewall, which means hackers can work on finding holes in it easier. And, since most people with windows has the firewall, one unpatched hole can affect a lot of people.

 

 

 

Window's record on security (with weekly patches and all) should be a bit of a warning sign that "hey, maybe we can't protect your computer too well"..Aside from the fact that they don't really make any security products (how often do you hear of people in the tech community saying "I love my Windows Firewall, it's better than Comodo and Zone Alarm"? Never).