firewall

[scousemouse]

 
hi
i am new to this forum
am after some info about avast firewall is there a free one about can,t seem to find one help would be appciated  to a newbee cheers

[crisp biscuit]

Avast is only a Anti Virus Product.

For the best free firewall download Sygate Personal.

I would stay away from Zone Alarm as  can be very buggy while sygate is clean.

[techie101]

Not true.  Zone Alarm is very stable in the newer version, especially on older OS like Windows 98.

Sygate is a very good firewall.  I use it myself, but for a new user, I would go with Zone Alarm.

Agnitum Outpost is also highly recommended but the learning curve is a bit higher.

You can find a good review here:  www.snapfiles.com under freeware...antivirus programs.
 

[crisp biscuit]

Sorry you are wrong.

Zone Alarm is far from stable and I come across more users who have issues with zone alarm then they do sygate and this is for a reason.

Sygate is perfect for a first time user but of course the best thing for scousemouse to do is to download both use each one for 30 days and then decide which one he is most happy with.

[DavidR]

A search of these forums for 'firewall' will no doubt return many hits as this topic has been  previously discussed a number of times.

There was even a poll on what free firewall people used/thought was best. Many people use Zone Alarm and since the initial issues with the early version 5 release (which I believe has been resolved), ZA is not buggy.

I don't use it because I don't like the interface, a lack of flexibility and I believe it uses more system resources. But it is not now buggy and is a competent firewall that passes many firewall tests.

[bob3160]

crisp biscuit
If you where to check on the people with problems, you'll find that they aren't using an up-to-date program. The currnt version 5.1.033 has no problems and is a perfect companion to avast! and windows. It even runns well on XP with XP2 applied.

[S.Z.Craftec]

Avast is only a Anti Virus Product.

For the best free firewall download Sygate Personal.

I would stay away from Zone Alarm as  can be very buggy while sygate is clean.

This so not true... best free firewall is not Sygate and that's for sure. Far better than Syagte is Agnitum Outpost, plus it's much easier to set and use.... additional plus, freeware version contains additional very useful plug-ins like ADS, CONTENT, DNS CACHE, ACTIVE CONTENT, ATTACHMENTS FILTER and ATTACK DETECTION. Sygate ? I don't think so...

Btw, Sygate has some issues when you have to Shut off your PC. Maybe you haven't noticed (or maybe you don't have that problem), but there is hundreds of reported cases, and Sygate still didn't respond... here is just one of those reports (Sygate forums):

http://forums.sygate.com/vb/showthread.php?s=503a76d4ac713f91e9f158372eccaf8b&threadid=11098

I had same problem before. When I couldn't take it anymore, no one is doing anything at Sygate to fix that problem anyway, I was so glad to uninstall it from my machine finaly... that is when Outpost started to keep my system safe...

ZoneAlarm had some issues before. I've heard and I know it's true, latest builds are so stable and working perfectly. The only problem is 'cause ZA is still system hog... but saying that ZoneAlarm is buggy, is completely nonsense.

crisp biscuit wrote:

I would stay away from Zone Alarm as  can be very buggy while sygate is clean.

Sygate = clean ? I don't know why, but somehow I can not swallow that...

Cheers !

[honyak122]

This so not true... best free firewall is not Sygate and that's for sure. Far better than Syagte is Agnitum Outpost, plus it's much easier to set and use.... additional plus, freeware version contains additional very useful plug-ins like ADS, CONTENT, DNS CACHE, ACTIVE CONTENT, ATTACHMENTS FILTER and ATTACK DETECTION. Sygate ? I don't think so...

You are absolutely correct about the shutdown issue and Sygate does nothing about it! Guess they will address this in the next build.
But I still use it as it is nothing more than an annoyance and it works better than the others in this thread on my box.
It has a learning curve but it is very easy and the forum is great for getting help setting advance rules.

[Lisandro]

This so not true... best free firewall is not Sygate and that's for sure. Far better than Syagte is Agnitum Outpost, plus it's much easier to set and use.... additional plus, freeware version contains additional very useful plug-ins like ADS, CONTENT, DNS CACHE, ACTIVE CONTENT, ATTACHMENTS FILTER and ATTACK DETECTION.

Fully agree. Very good firewall.
Anyway, ZA is good in very systems and Sygate others.
Three are good free firewalls, depending of the user, system, configurations, etc.