said by Jim Gurd:I don't even bother with a software firewall anymore. A router, IE-Spyad and safe hex are all the protection I need. I am even starting to turn off the resident protection on my virus scanner.
Simply watching where you surf will go a long way towards keeping malware off of your machine.
That approach is good if you are the only one on your network. I watch were I go but with 4 other PC users on the same network. I can't count on them to be as careful. I have had Zone Alarm(free version)for years and has served me well. The only issue I have had...well indirectly had was with my sisters Win98SE PC. She had a buggy upgrade so I just made a clean install and it worked fine after that. I found out later that there was a little bug with Win98 and the upgrades. I have tried the other firewalls and didn't like them. Zone Alarm was the most user friendly and ease of use. I even tried the Zone Alarm Pro version but I didn't like it much either. I went back to the free version. I just don't like all the bloat that Zone Alarm Pro has. To me a firewall should just be a firewall and not 10 million other things. I think when you start adding on features the program suffers. Look at Nortons Security Suite...I had that for a very short time. It screwed all kinds of things up for me. lol Anyway, that is my $.02 
