Zone Alarm or Win-XP Firewall

There are several advantages to using Zone Alarm, it is a much better product and can be configured with much more granularity.

That said, SP2 firewall is free.

If you are asking which is more effective, it is Zone Alarm for sure, but if all you really plan to do is surf, the firewall with SP2 should be fine.

Good luck.

If you're already familar with ZoneAlarm, go with Zone Alarm.  The free version should be fine.

The Windows Firewall mainly monitors incoming traffic only, while ZA will monitor incoming and outgoing.  (Monitoring outgoing traffic helps you find out if you have spyware or viruses on your computer.)

Zone Alarm.  Plus, I wouldn't trust MS Firewall not to have some code in it somewhere not to allow some suspicious, I meant "helpful & user friendly", communication between it and the Mother Ship ... I meant Microsoft.

Note:  there is NO such thing as the SP2 firewall. There however is an XP firewall that is a part of EVERY XP version ever distributed. XP , XP sp1, XP sp2 etc.  All SP2 did was turn the firewall on that has been there the entire time if you do a default install of SP2 without any switches.  

Simply : Zonealarm is a firewall built by a company which sole purpose is to build security software. Microsoft is an OS builder which needs lots and lots and lots of security updates every week....who do you trust?

MS is a software builder, including but not exclusively OSs. They have 100s of other products, some of which you may have heard of: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Visio, etc, You may have heard of these, or perhaps you may have even used some of these products.

MS releases secuity updates every week, Zonealarm does not release their updates or they simply dont make them. Which product do you trust?  I'd go with the one that corrects their problems and adapts to new threats frequently personally.  The problems are there in Zonealarm, they just aren't fixed or updated to adapt to new threats

yeah yeah yada yada they also make secretary software, well personaly untill now I find Age of Empires/mythology the only MS software worth buying :-) but that's just cheapo me.

' Zonealarm does not release their updates or they simply dont make them ' mmmm...I wonder why you have an automatic update option with zonealarm if they don't make/release them...oooo the world is full of very very naughty software builders....

MrAruba,,, you are the one that said that MS had updates every week implying that MS's product was so bad that it requried many updates while zonealarm didn't. If you are going to compare two products you have tell the whole story about both products.   First you imply zonealarm is so good that it doesn't need updating every week and now you are saying its so good it even has automatic updates to keep up with its many updates.   Which is it??? Sounds to me like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.  maybe you should go into politics rather that IT,, oh wait, your argument is so bad you wouldn't be a very good politician either.

woooooooohoooo someone got stepped on his toes....luckily I 'm just wearing some light Puma's :-)

first of all Mickey , wash out your eyes every morning so you can better read what people are posting. I never wrote Zonealarm is so good it never needs updates, if you really want to argue please use valid arguments and not ones you want to be true.

secondly, read my BIG 2 line post, I just wanted to imply that Zonealarm is specialised in security matters and MS not.

third, you just gave a perfect example of weak argumenting yourself mickey. A hint : grab a cool beer or chocolat milk if you wish, and don't get stressed about something you didn't even read well.

ah well, nice weekend to ya mickey, I'll think about you and hope you can relax yourself.

grtz,

Mr Aruba.

ps. Man you are a psychic !!! as a matter of fact I've got my degree in political and social sciences but got into IT just because I love it !

I say neither.  XP's "firewall" is a joke.  ZA is also bypassable and specifically targeted by certain malware code.  Although some of the techniwues used to bypass ZA also are effective on some other application layer firewalls, ZA is a popular target.  I use Sygate personal firewall (free for personal use, the pay "pro" version has a couple more bells and whistles, but few people would need them on a home box).

just one of many examples of XPSP2's firewall's shortcoming:  

http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Full-Disclosure/2004-10/0565.html

ZA problem fixed earlier this year (by an UPDATE lol):

http://www.securiteam.com/windowsntfocus/5FP002KELE.html

But note Sygate didn't need to be fixed in the first place for that one...

Here's a poor ZA user that had his ZA autostart disabled by a piece of malware:

http://castlecops.com/postt104390.html

ZA is far better than the built in XP garbage non-firewall claiming to be a firewall (just as Yugo claimed to make a car....yeah, it had 4 wheels and drove around a little...but it's not a car in my book)...but sygateis personal firewall is free and better IMO.

i personally say neither is a good choice either like fixnix said, but its really hard to argue with a complete idiot who won't even stand by what he says and can't make up his mind about if updates are a good or bad thing.  They are good by the way.  FYI, you show your ignorance in far too many ways for me to waste my time explaining to you  here. You wouldn't understand what i wrote anyway so it is useless.  FYI, mickey is a mouse down in Disney World. My name is Mike. You probably were trying to insult me by trying to say Mikey (which is a child's name), which you are too ignorant to even spell correctly. Unsubscribing now since simply aren't worth my time.

tss tss mikey....

ZoneAlarm

This is interesting, because many times I had to remove malware and spyware from my PC even though Zone Alarm is running. Is this a weakness in ZA, or some of these nasty little rats just get thru nomatter what..

>>This is interesting, because many times I had to remove malware and spyware from my PC even though Zone Alarm is running. Is this a weakness in ZA, or some of these nasty little rats just get thru nomatter what..

I've you've opened ZA for webtraffic to go out and back in - as is normal, and you hit a malicious website with spyware encoded in Java or ActiveX, it's not ZA's job (nor can it in the first place) to tell you you're downloading malicious code through port 80 and your browser is about to run it.

You have to configure your browser correctly, run anti-spyware software, and be prudent about where you surf.

Ismaily - to answer your question, it's a matter of personal preference.  I prefer not to put all my eggs in the Microsoft basket, but there's others that like everything to come from a single vendor.  It's up to you.

Does this answer your question?