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I've been switching from ZoneAlarm to Tiny Personal Firewall (the free for home/personal use version). I find that Tiny is very hard to configure compared to ZoneAlarm, the Port Probe scan results at www.grc.com were displayed as Stealth, I ran the same test with ZoneAlarm and it was "Closed", which is a better firewall, Tiny or ZA?
I've found TINy to be VERY easy to configure. It virtually configures itself!
Man.....there's a heap of "firewall" threads......:o
I think that would depend on your interpretation of better, if we were to assume by better you meant more secure, i don't think there's too much in it (i can't speak authoritively here, as i've never used either). If we were to take better to mean more configurable, i believe TPF would be your answer - going by what people have said here. On that note - have you read through other threads regarding this subject, i've seen this question come up 20 or more times in the 3 months i've been posting here - definately one for the FAQ!
If on ww.grc.com. ZA displayed your results as closed, then you have poorly configured your ZA... I have used grc to test a ZA protected computer with nearly no config. changes, and I have gotten stealth results...
If you could tell me what settings ZA was on when you tested it, I could test further, but I have never gotten a closed port result on grc that I can remember.....
I haVen't used TPF, so i cannot say which is better....
but I can tell you that stealth is better that closed.. closed identifies that your computer is actually there, but is not accepting connections... stealth provides no reply, basically saying that your computer is not online or doesn't exist....
Both of them have characteristics or features that set them apart from each other. Both of them are great. I like ZA for its ease of use. I like Tiny for its rule-setting, and configurability, and for the fact that it has to ask you about every single connection before you set a rule, whereas ZA only goes by program. I couldn't decide on just one of them, so I decided to hell with it and got them both. But NOTHING makes up for a good ol' hardware firewall, such as a Linksys router.