News and Reviews > Best Firewall
agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?
m_s:
Because I was looking for a good firewall for a Win 98 machine (which doesn't run KPF), I started this thread at Wilders Security - you might find some good advice there... http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=102806
(BTW, Kerio requires very little intervention - that's why I first chose it over ZA, which asks far too many questions.)
Carol Haynes:
Article here http://www.consumersearch.com/www/software/firewalls/fullstory.html is interesting. Doesn't say anything radical but although it does require some configuartion ZA free version aquits itself well against the paid for versions.
Since I am also behind a hardware firewall I think for the time being I may give ZA firewall a try - at least it is free, and is reputed to be fairly secure.
The trouble is all the major players are now going down the bloatfest route ... Zone Alarm are really pushing their suite hard, but when you look at what it tries to do you begin to wonder what CPU time is required just to manage the security. Norton and McAfee seem to be universally slated these days, whilst Trend seems to be OK on the AV front no one seems to rate its suite.
It is interesting that Outpost came out well in that article as a standalone Firewall, but they were using version 2.
Out of curiosity is the old version of Outpost still being supported, or are they insisting that users update to version 3? If they are supporting version 2 I may contact them and ask for an older version until they iron out their current problems.
m_s:
The best support for Outpost is via their discussion boards - and it really is excellent. I kept a copy of 2.7, so if you already have a license and find that it's hard to download, p.m. me and I could email it to you.
Carol Haynes:
God what a nightmare ...
I have been playing for hours with ZoneAlarm Pro and the free version ...
Strike One ...
Free version - excellent firewall ... effective in the extreme ... one tiny problem, there was no way I could connect to the outside world at all. Didn't matter what I did nothing connected. Couldn't use the documentation (that was written for the Pro version and didn't work with the free version) ... the only documentation on how to set it up was online - but since I couldn't get online to read it .....
Strike Two
Pro version 15 day demo ... talk about unstable! I might give Oupost 3 a try it can't be worse than that!!! At least it configured itself sufficiently to allow an internet connection, but it installed two processes that combined to use over 90% of CPU time permanently (even when no other programs were loaded), the number of popups for non-firewall related stuff was completely intolerable and pushed the system to instability. On four occasions I had to hit the reset button just to get control back of my system.
Strike Three - its gone
No way I'm having that crap on my system.
At the moment I am using the Windows XP SP2 built in firewall. It passes the security response tests at symantec fully so I'll use it until I can find something worth installing.
Zone Alarm have really lost the plot in my opinion. I downloaded the Firewall (not the suite) but it is so busy trying to do spyware detection and monitor your system for unusual activity (like running programs - not just accessing the internet) and a myriad of other unwanted/unneeded stuff that it really isn't worth installing. Add to that horrendous stability problems ....
Some one somewhere must produce a decent maintained firewall product ... surely ???
m_s:
Here's a link to ZA 5.5 (hosted on a PC World site) - version 6 has received a huge amount of criticism, 5 was much better (and is the version with which I am most familiar): http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download.asp?fid=7228&fileidx=1
Non-ZA: try Netveda too - that seems pretty good...
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