Hi Ya'll, Techno-challenged senior citizen here. Have a cheapo e-machines desktop and a Toshiba laptop. Connect to internet now via dial-up. Use free ZoneAlam, Spybot, AdAware, SpywareBlaster, and Avast! AV. Signing up for "Hi-speed broadband cable internet" to see what all the fuss is about. Want to know about "hardware" firewalls, but too lazy to dig the facts out for myself. Anybody venture a link for me to read about it or maybe a quick and dirty explanation and recommendations? I've been happy with newegg company for s few things I've bougt...Xd memeory, replacement power supply, cheapo DVD player, etc. Thanks, Jim

Hardware firewalls are good because the are fast and fast is needed because a firewall is nothing more than a filter…. And if you put a filter in a line… ANYKIND of filter, you create a potential bottleneck situation. Most people believe they are better than software for this reason… but they are wrong. Hardware firewalls only monitor what is coming into your machine… which is only half the battle. You also need to monitor the outflow as well, and this is where software firewalls beat out the hardware ones. (XP firewall not included… it’s a cheap firewall that only monitors one way) Most routers come with a hardware firewall and that’s great, but I would not give up the software one though… it is safe and does not bother speed too much if you run both at the same time.

I use Sygate and it works great. I use a free program called hitman pro which install spybot s&d and adawar and all that stuff and in one swipe downloads it and runs all of them and gives you the results. AMD Athlon 64 3500+ ClawHammer ECS SLI Extreme 2 gig Corsair Value ram Geforce 6800xt256 pci-e WDC 80g Plextor