Looking for a firewall...

[Taidan]

Yeah. After getting sick of the constant pop-ups that were inferring that the current version of ZoneAlarm was no longer secure, (A lie) I clicked the "upgrade" button to take me from version 9 to version 10. Oops.

To cut a long story short, the new version of my all-time favourite firewall is a piece of crap, and I'm currently stuck with the Windows thing.

Anybody care to recommend me a decent firewall? Free is good, but paying is also perfectly acceptable, if it's really worth the doshes.

[Gerbick]

A hardware firewall should be sufficient. Any decent router will do the job, or better yet, a moddable (linksys) router which takes tomato or dd-wrt firmware.

Never had a software one myself, so really can't say much about them.

[Kamikaze-X]

Windows Firewall.

[DigitalSignalX]

Strongly agree - a separate hardware firewall is the way to go, but bear in mind it's one of those "get what you pay for" items without a doubt. A 30 dollar router is going to be more hassle then value.

[imirk]

http://procrast-nation.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/screen32.png

[soldant]

Decent router + Windows Firewall and regular vigilance. That's all you need. I haven't used a 3rd party firewall in ages.

Unless you're running WinXP. I don't know if SP3 patched in blocking in both directions. I know when Windows Firewall first came out it only had blocking in a single direction (inbound?) which was fairly useless.

[kirrus]

Aye, I'd agree with everyone above :) Modern router (most come free with ADSL connections nowadays) plus windows firewall is normally sufficient. And a virus scanner. And rootkit scanner. And spybot search/destroy is a good idea as well.

[DzX]

Comodo Firewall if you're looking for something similar to Zonealarm.

[Nova]

I also agree. Router/Hardware Firewall.
If you want to block outgoing access or something use the Windows firewall with Windows7FirewallControl (http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/order.html).

[Taidan]

If you want to block outgoing access or something use the Windows firewall with Windows7FirewallControl (http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/order.html).

Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. I'm already using a hardware firewall, but being a paranoid control freak, it's software for outgoing access control I'm chasing. I'll give Windows 7 Firewall Control a look-see.

[GraveyardJimmy]

Eset (Nod32) have a good firewall software that comes with their (good) AV, smart security I think its called.

[The Tupper]

I upgraded Zonealarm and haven't noticed any problems. Is there something I should be made aware of or is it compatibility problems?