Has Zone Labs Lost It? > Alternatives???

Alternatives???

sygate

Another thumbs up for Sygate, works great.

Tiny personal firewall.

reply to CameraAssist
Sygate Personal firewall Pro. »smb.sygate.com/

I've used Zone Alarm Pro for over three years, but the last 12 months have convince me to quit Zone Labs products, permanently. Even though I'm behind a router, I can't leave ZAP up for any length of time because it kills my connection. I thought I had hardware problems, I'd lose my connection and nothing I tried would work except rebooting my system. I swapped NICs, did clean installs of XP Pro, nothing. Finally all I had to do was stop ZA, and instant connection. The next problem turned out to be that if I left ZA off for too long, my connection would be lost.

I finally gave up on ZAP. I've read good things here and other sites, about Sygate, and two weeks ago, with 5 months still left on my ZA subscription, I uninstalled ZAP, installed the free version of Sygate, and haven't had a bit of trouble. I'm getting ready to upgrade to the Pro version.

Zone Labs has taken a once great product and turned it into a POS. I would never recommend ZA to anyone, even the free version.
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"If a man says something out in the woods, and no woman is around to hear him, is he still wrong?"

reply to CameraAssist
Try out NetVeda Saftey.Net

Works awsome on my box! low resource usage..good features.

»www.netveda.com/consumer/safetynet.htm
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»www.spreadfirefox.com/

reply to Fatal Vector
Kerio 2.1.5

I'm going to agree with the Kerio there. I've been using it and it's been a great secondary firewall, next to my netgear router. Kerio has let me see what is trying to get out of my computer, and what is coming inside. Heck, it's stopped some random named file from connecting to the internet. Let's just say after I discovered this, I locked the computer down, til I ran everything...AV and Spybot.

Even the free version gives you a ton of options to work with.

reply to CameraAssist
Sygate Pro. Yep!

reply to dchrsf
Have you ever tried leak tests etc. with Safety.net and what not? I heard it fails a bunch of them. I never bothered with testing that much out since the computer I tried safety.net (v3.61 free) on was behind a router with NAT. However, what problems I did encounter was the fact that it didn't remember trusted application settings as well as specific rules when encountering user accounts over time. More or less, even though kaspersky and internet explorer were trusted applications, they mysteriously quit working and was blocked by Saftey.net unless you delete them from the list and add them in again. The same thing happens for individual rules for a user account except it gets more complciated; you have to delete the account and remake it. There may be no problems if you only have one user however.

It did have very low resource usage and the parental filter based on ratings was fairly decent overall I suppose but nothing special. While free, I really can't recommend Saftey.net to anyone based on my trials. As for a free solution, I did have a fairly good experience with Sygate but after trialing several firewalls, I settled on outpost pro for the paid one to get.

reply to CameraAssist
started with zone alarm, found it to be a resouce hog.
went to tiny. much better but became a money program.
kerio was next as they wrote the engine for tiny.
tried sygate, no joy
tried outpost, no dice
have been running jetico firewall for the last year.
jetico may be the only software firewall to use stateful packet inspection and is free.
rt firewall may be worth looking into as well.

reply to qdemn7
If you are using the SBC connection software then beware. I had so many problems with those programs that load in the background when XP starts up. I recently used a feature in Spy Sweeper 4 to disable those SBC programs from starting up and now I have NO more connection issues. That SBC software including the Motive.exe program monitor your system and communicate with the SBC DSL modem. However, in conjunction with Zone Alarm they slow your connection and constantly cause it to drop. I would have my DSL connection drop all the time and I would have to click on to open and then close the SBC self support software two or three times before it reconnected. It was really depressing especially when I requested during the time I set up the SBC account that it DOES NOT install ANY software except what is needed to establish a new account. It installed all this crap including the Client Foundation software and this other stuff that screws up your connection when using Zone Alarm. What a nightmare ! You might want to check your msconfig file to see if you can disable that SBC software. If you are using the Yahoo browser and other software doing this might make some of those additional Yahoo programs cease to function in addition to the SBC self support program.

reply to jayster46
I doubt that any of those firewalls even come close to protecting the way the new Zone Alarm Pro 6 does. Sure they will all block most unwanted ingoing and outgoing packets but the extra features of ZAP 6 such as cookie handling, selective mobile code (script) blocking, pop mail attached executable file quarantining, and the new OS system file security and anti-spyware security. This program kicks some serious butt !!! Anyone who really wants ultimate internet security will look into using ZAP 6 along with a good Antivirus program.

reply to Tech-2005
Thanks for the tips, but I uninstalled all that SBC / Yahoo crap a Looonnnggg time ago. I use Google as my Homepage, and the only Yahoo functions I use are the email and Photos upload. I've got a DLink router so THAT takes care of the accessing the SBC account. I don't have an SBC broadband portal on either my PC or G4 Mac.

I've know it's the ZAP since I've had my PC up 24/7 since I installed Sygate, and have not had a bit of trouble accessing the net.

Once again thanks for benefit of your experience.
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"If a man says something out in the woods, and no woman is around to hear him, is he still wrong?"

I thought I would try to help with some info and throw in my two cents into the discussion for what its worth. You know what they say about free advice...sometimes you get what you pay for. Anyway, maybe you do have it all disabled but then again maybe you don't. I thought I removed all of those programs last year after I signed up with a new account but I was wrong. Those SBC connection programs like to hide in dark places only to pop up when you least expect like a bizarre form of virus or spyware. I run a Linksys VPN router with the 5100b Efficient modem. I had to tweak the settings to get the most out of this setup. I left the router as it was with it doing the PPPoE automatically and the Linksys is grabbing the IP address from the modem similar to how you set up most cable modem connections. Now that I disabled all that SBC crap that was hiding in the background my connection never drops. Before I used to get drops several times a day, weird issues with applications, the browser not loading when first opened, etc.. Now it is rock solid 24/7 along with ZAP 6 installed. Zero problems here with ZAP 6, Linksys and SBC. If Sygate works for you then great. I wouldn't mind trying some of these other firewalls but I have had so much good luck with ZAP (except for the first versions of ZAP 5) and now ZAP 6 I feel is the best release yet.