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Can anyone give me some insight as to which is better, Zone Alarm or Norton internet Security. I have been running Zone alarm for some time now. I just came across a copy of Norton, and was curious. Does anyone have any reasons why I shouldn't switch?
ZA is ok but if you've never used any other firewalls you might be missing out. I had to try a few different fire walls before I found one I liked.
My top two picks
Sygate
http://soho.sygate.com/products/pspf_ov.htm
Free trial is only 30 days but you can, how should I put this, crack it if you feel you need longer to evaluate the product say 1-2 years.
Tiny
http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny2?la=EN
Powerful firewall doesn’t hog up to much of your cpu time
Zonealarm is nice, but it really eats up CPU and RAM memory. I would recomend Tiny personal firewall -- that's what I use.
i like zone alarm but i only use it when im doing something that makes it easy to get my ip, otherwise i only use tiny software's personal one
i am currently using a symantec firewall device (the 100 model seems to work good, especially since it was a freebie, thanks to my vendor). the firewall device, is about $350, pretty pricey for home use. i have tried the norton's product also and it seemed to work good and not as resource intensive as za. i have also used Tiny Personal Firewall and that would be your best bet all around. it's not to bad on resources and is a pretty flexible firewall. i use it for my clients.
hope this helps
Kerio's my personal favorite
Outpost Firewall, http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/ , is rather nice and you dont have to worry about intellectual copywrite infringement.
Had used Norton for years until the 2000 version (combo AV and Firewall) which crashed my OS twice in a row on it's first "Live Update". Could get no info from Norton after several tries, so boxed it up and it sits on the shelf with a lot of other old stuff. i changed to Panda AV and ZAPro, been happy with both of them 'cause Panda updates itself every day without interferance, and ZAPro does a decent job after you get used to it. Was going to try Tiny someday when i got the time, since a lot of our AO folks speak highly about it. :D
Kerio uses less resources and is very unintrusive!! :cool:
I was a bit unhappy with ZoneAlarm. It was always resetting rules I had applied. Have been using Norton FireWall on 2 systems and it has caught backdoor trojans on downloaded shareware. I also use a program called attacker. I am happy with that. You need to add additional ports that common viruses and trojans use but it works. I see alot of referance to tiny firewall and will have to try it out.
I'm personally very happy with my ZoneAlarm Pro/NAV CE combo (though I also have a hardware firewall... my ZA is just an extra precaution). I've used NIS before, but I wasn't very happy with it. Granted, the setup is fairly simple and maintenance is a piece of cake, with the automatic LiveUpdate, etc., but I just didn't feel that it performed how I wanted it to. Also, I did not like the log. I have one license of MCS ZoneLog Analyser I use over my network to keep track of all of my ZoneAlarm logs, and I feel that it does exactly what I want/need. I also tried some of Norton's enterprise firewall programs, but was not too thrilled about those either. If I were you, I'd just try out a few different firewalls and see what you like most.
AJ
I used Zonealarm until recently when I tried the free version of Sygate. I find that Sygate is geared towards the more knowledgable computer users. While both work, as does Norton's firewall, I like the logs that Sygate produces and the automatic shutoff to IP addresses that are scanning your system. Also, as an added plus, the program does a great job in catching worms before they can do any damage (and before they can be caught by Norton AV). There is a computer security web page that was in my list of favorites. I tried to access it, and was immediately notified by Sygate that the Nimda worm was attempting to access my system. Sygate quickly shutdown access to the site.
Just a thought -- if all computer users had Sygate, then the Nimda worm probably wouldn't have spread as much as it did.
zone alarm is a good firewall, except like yanksfan said it eats of cpu and ram. it was killing my system resources and i had to delete it, but that was just because i put it on an older machine. Its a great firewall if you have the room. as for NIS, im yet to try that out.
I've been using Norton for a little over a year and a half. I've been very happy with it. I tried Zone Alarm briefly and found it was too resource hungry.
Norton is pretty easy to install and configure. It seems to catch just about anything that is thrown at it, although it can be quite stubborn if you want to disable it when it pops up a violation warning.
The liveupdate feature is great, no maintainence required. The logging is quite detailed as are the rules features. I've never tried the content blocking feature, so I can't comment on it. The only thing I would say is a concern, although not a great one, is that it keeps track of the sites you visit. Obviously an important feature for a firewall, but if you share the computer with someone else it would be easy to use the feature to see where other people are visiting, or have them see where you have been.
I think Zone Alarm is good for peeps who are not too 'puter literate or prefer something that works without too much tweaking (once you get past the usual list of pop ups). And of course it's free for home use.
I like Nortons for the ability to beable to customize down to the ports level. Norton's is usually too complicated for most of the home users I've setup and helped, and of course it's not free.
I personally like Sygate and Tiny firewall both, though I like Sygate a lil more.
If you want some more info and maybe some charts to help you make your choice (most peeps love 'em charts, heh)... check out http://www.firewallguide.com/
Have fun and good luck. Keep in mind most of the firewalls are really comparable as far as effectiveness, it really all boils down to how complex you want it and what looks good to ya, which you won't know til you've tried 'em all ~~what fun~~ ;)
in my opinion they bolth suck. You may have better luck though. I am more of an outpost kindof guy