Eric Bland

Sygate has a free personal firewall for those of your looking for one. Downloadable at Cnet
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Danny

Bah... firewall...

Is it any good? Have you used it?

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Eric Bland

It is pretty good, not full protection. It is something though.
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Rudolph

Unfortunately, in my experience, free means below standard. I am currently using the McAfee Personal Firewall Plus. Works great! Excellent user controls.
The Plus makes it sound that much better doesnt it?

Danny

Why do you say that? Ever used Firefox? Ever used Spybot S&D? Ever used any of the thousands of free tools that beat the paid versions?

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sam12345

I am not saying that money means that it is good, but the fact that those are free does definitely mean something. For safety, I would pay a little extra to protected a little more. The cost of some anti-virus programs will be much less than the cost you will have to pay to fix your computer after your free anti-virus didn't stop a major virus.

Danny

I understand the logic, but in this particular application, it's not correct. The concept of open source software is that any programmer can contribute to it. Any individual with new ideas, or who sees new problems, can help fix the software. On the same hand, anybody is free to check for vulnerabilities and bugs in the source code.

In this respect, open source software can be better than its paid counterparts. I agree that sometimes paid software performs better and usually guarantees better tech support, but its certainly not a "rule of thumb" as you seem to imply.

I should also add that not all free software is open source software.

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wmtoolbox

I was reading some magazine, and they conducted atest for which spyware deletion program is. They compared free and paid programs and Spybot: S&D came out on top, followed by Adaware SE. Goes to show you, more expensive isn't always better (at least as spyware deleting programs go).

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GEEKY TOM

Another good free firewall is Zone Alarm. Easy to use too. Am currently using it on my laptop along with Avast anti-virus. So far no problems.

jroxonline

Doesn' anyone like using the Windows XP Firewall? That already works quite well and there is no need for another firewall. Well, only for those on Win XP anyway.

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Skinnybrown

Danny makes an important point about open source software. Because anybody can look at and ammend the source code, it means that there are often far more experienced programmers working on open source projects (most of whom have full time jobs as programmers as well), than there are on projects that are run by companies that have to pay everybody who works on it. This means that you will often find that bugs are found and patched in open source software much faster than in comercial software.

However, you also have to make the distinction between free as in beer, and free as in speech. Open source programs are not all free to download, and not all free to download programs are open source. For example, ZoneAlarm is free as in beer, but not as in speech.

As with ZoneAlarm, they are usually not available for free because they don't work properly, but because the company also offers a product which is more powerfull that you have to pay for. If you want the extra features, then you buy the full version, that's how they make their money. Very few people would buy a more full featured version of a product just because the current one doesn't work properly, they would go somewhere else.

In answer to jroxonline, I have used both ZoneAlarm and the built in XP firewall. I think that ZoneAlarm is probably more secure than the XP firewall. This is not because I have reason to doubt the XP firewall, but because ZoneAlarm allows you more control over what traffic is allowed and what is not. However, this is also the main drawback to ZoneAlarm over the XP firewall, because not only is it more complicated to use, but it can sometimes be too restrictive. I have just switched back to using the XP firewall because I kept losing connection when making phone calls. The software was allowed full access, but for some reason I kept getting cut off when using ZoneAlarm.

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GEEKY TOM

Am still a big fan of the FREE version of the Zone Alarm firewall...It seems to work very well once it "learns" your habits and what programs you allow to access the Internet...Although I'm SURE Danny will disagree, I really believe that Webroot's Spysweeper is by far the BEST anti-spyware product available...Have tried the others and don't personally feel they can top Webroot's product...

Skinnybrown

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post, is that sometimes with security software, going with an obscure program can actually be an advantage to going with the most popular products, even the ones you pay for. The reason for this is because when creating a new virus/worm/trojan/etc, the creator will test it agains the most popular security products to see how well it will achieve it's goal. If you are using a relatively unheard of piece of software that works slightly different to the mainstream programs, then there is a good chance that the malware won't know how to avoid it's detection mechanisms.

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megahost77

I am currently using the Norton Personal Firewall. but i mush check this one....