Comments on: Essential (and free) Software Every Computer Should Have

By: LookingSoftware

LookingSoftware — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:10:40 +0000

Now there are some changes. ZoneAlarm only provides basic personal firewall as free version. I think Comodo Firewall Pro (www.personalfirewall.comodo.com) is good solution for firewall. It is free of charge and has more features.
And for anti-spyware solution, Spyware Terminator (www.spywareterminator.com) it good choice as free solution.

By: Lead

Lead — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:57:40 +0000

I have an Advent T9303 with 1.5Gig of ram. Still a reasonably quick machine I would guess, but it slows to an absolute crawl when I’m running Zonealarm. I don’t have AVG. When I stop Zonealarm the speed comes right back up. I like ZA, so does anyone know a solution?

By: Izrul

Izrul — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:59:15 +0000

I have to agree with some people. I just downloaded AVG and Zone Alarm. All of the sudden, my PC tend to slow down a lot. I’m not quite sure whether it is because of AVG or Zone Alarm, but based on what people have experienced, the culprit will be Zone Alarm.

By: SwitchBL8

SwitchBL8 — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:13:20 +0000

Found it: http://www.firewallleaktester.com/tests.php

Better late then never, I suppose.

Cheers!
Reginald

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:05:04 +0000

Very useful link, thanks SwitchBL8.

By: SwitchBL8

SwitchBL8 — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:01:53 +0000

Sorry, can’t find the URL anymore. But here’s a useful list of free software, categorized.

http://ttshare.googlepages.com/Freeware-Utility.htm

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Thu, 25 May 2006 05:25:52 +0000

I will try SpyBot in addition to Windows Defender. Better be double safe than sorry.

Non of my PCs connect directly to the Internet since they all connect to my Netgear router which has a built-in NAT. Yet, I still feel that ZoneAlarm is useful because at least it gives you control over what programs can connect to the Internet and what programs cannot.

By: Peter K

Peter K — Wed, 24 May 2006 21:56:52 +0000

I too use ZA and AVG but for Spyware, I use SpyBot. Preference is to use multiple anti-virus software but my original Norton’s lapsed and didn’t get to renew.

By: Howard Rogers

Howard Rogers — Wed, 24 May 2006 17:39:24 +0000

No anti-spyware product is anywhere close to 100% effective. But none goes about detecting it in quite the same way, either. Therefore, the general advice is to run several different anti-spyware products on the same machine. Personally, I use MS Defender and SpyBot Search & Destroy and Adaware 6 (all free). Unlike anti-virus software, there is no harm in having two or three versions of these things installed at the same time.

Firewalls are problematic, especially when Oracle is involved. I access the Internet via a cacheing proxy (Squid is free, because it's a Linux thing), and therefore none of my working PCs ever has direct access to the Internet, so I have no need for one. Iptables is an effective and free firewall for the proxy server, too.

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Wed, 24 May 2006 14:37:52 +0000

Well, I believe that nothing is for free. Although the above tools are free, they just hope that you like them so much that you upgrade to the paid version. I do like them, but the free version is more than enough for me.

@SwitchBL8: ZoneAlarm works fine on my machine and it does what it's supposed to do. But I'll check the other two products.

@Bill S.: Yes, I had Norton AV, I do not deny that it is the leader in the AV market. However, I found AVG to be more light weight and faster. So far, I have not been infected with a virus since I first started using computers :). I think Windows Defender is supposed to be a replacement to Ad-aware. I have not tried to run them both at the same time.