Well, it's time to think about letting go of an old favourite. ZoneAlarm has been the free software firewall of choice for a long time around here. Yet, I'm not running it on Nuklon, my main work station here in the Cave in the Castle of Confusion. Honestly, that machine is running XP's built-in firewall. Mostly, that's because ZoneAlarm screws up BitTorrent downloads, locking the machine up. And while I don't do a lot of torrent downloading on Nuklon, one lockup is too many lockups.
The other machines on my net ARE running ZoneAlarm. But my experiences with my parents' computer, documented earlier, now brings the question to the forefront. Has Checkpoint's manipulative efforts to try and get you to upgrade to a paid version of ZoneAlarm, plus the more than occasional software glitch, made dumping ZoneAlarm a serious thing to think about?
Bluntly, Yes.
The problem is that the simplicity of ZoneAlarm is very hard to beat. I know that the number of pop up dialogs (especially when I'm running a CrossLoop remote access session) is off-putting, but the fact is that they are minimal, compared to other programs. On the other hand, ZoneAlarm has been running low on the security ratings from various firewall comparison sites. What to do?
Well, let's see what Scott Finnie has to say at his fine site. Turns out Scott's done all the heavy lifting when it comes to investigating firewalls (all security products in fact). He comes down to suggesting On-Line Armour over Comodo as the product to put in place.
To be fair, the recommended On-Line Armour version is the paid one. He says the free version is JUST as capable, BUT, and it's a GIGANTIC BUT, upgrading from one minor version to another requires uninstalling your version, then installing the new version, going through ALL of the setup routine. That can be very time consuming, and not a little bit maddening. Time is money, and the OLA folks have hit on an interesting way to make you think about coughing up the 40 bucks. At the very least, trying the free version would result in a knowing decision on whether to pay the fee.
Comodo seems just as capable, is free and fires WAAAAAAY more dialog boxes at you than does ZoneAlarm. It's the uber watch dog. You have to decide whether TOO much security is too much work.
Now, BOTH products are far from install and go. I've run both. I found OLA more confusing than Comodo. But I eventually left Comodo running on a virtual machine I had set up for the testing. The reason is that I'm paying-adverse and the idea of uninstall/re-install for each OLA minor upgrade gave me the lazy chills. While I truly think Scott Finnie's research is persuasive and worthwhile, free Comodo is better than free OLA, both being worse than paid OLA.
A caution. If you have ANY worries about being able to handle the setup complexities, stay with ZoneAlarm. I only have the isolated instances of Dad's and Casey's machines to make me wonder what's going on. So I'm not issuing a fatwa on Checkpoint just yet. Close, but not yet. If you DO decide to experiment, you have to uninstall ZoneAlarm first. So download the new thing to try, uninstall ZoneAlarm, do a FULL RESTART, and then try to install the new program. Remember, you can ALWAYS go back to ZoneAlarm, if you wish.
In the meantime, at least read Scott's blog. You'll find out his dislike for security SUITES and reasons why. Plus his recommendations for the various best of breed security products, and why he likes them. His slightly techy writing style is above that of a beginner, but most of what he writes should be understandable to most of you.
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