I'm considering getting rid of blackice defender, but can't decide between zone alarm or sygate. Looking for opinions on which is more reliable or easier to use. Also, the requirements for sygate say "pentium 133". Does this mean at least 133 mhz needed to run it?

Thanks

Hey Br-. If you do a search for sygate vs zone alarm your going to find a whole bunch of comparisons and other things. It's a big topic. But since I'm here already :o) I'll give my opinion. I used to use zone labs(pro and free), which isn't all that bad, but for some reason I started to get conflicts and other weird things so I thought I would switch to Sygate (pro and free). I find that Sygate seems to be a little better than zone labs, more configurations. I guess it's a personal preference, some people love zone labs, some love Sygate. The only suggestion I can make is that if you want the pro versions is try the free ones first. I know they don't offer all the features of pro but at least it will give you a feel for the options and interface.

Hope this helps.

Br-

Can't blame you for wanting to get rid of Black Ice Defender. . .but that's another story.

I've used both Sygate and Zone Alarm. Both are good personal firewalls which give 100% port-stealthing; the most important thing.

As for ease of use, ZA sets up easier compared to Sygate, but Sygate has some extra features.

It's pretty much a matter of personal taste. Incidentally, Kerio and Agnitum Outpost are also very good. Out of the four firewalls, Kerio is probably the easiest to install and set-up. Also leaves the smallest footprint on your hard drive of the four.

Solarian

Br-

One more thing. Another consideration is uninstalling the new firewall if you don't care for it.

Kerio, Sygate, and Agnitum are the easiest to uninstall.

Zone Alarm isn't a major chore to remove, but plan on spending some in the registry removing keys that were left behind. 8-)

Solarian

I would suggest Sygate, it is easy to use, has nice features and is easy to uninstall should you not like it. If you are not into flash screens at startup, Sygate and Outpost do not have any.

I would suggest Kerio 4, it is a beta version, but I have been using it for months with no problems. It is easy to use, has nice features and is easy to uninstall should you not like it. You can find it at http://www.kerio/us/kpf_home.html under products-beta. If you are not into flash screens at startup, Kerio 4, Sygate and Outpost do not have any, unlike the free Zone Alarm and Kerio.

I liked Sygate but couldn't get it to work properly on my PC. It kept ending up stopping me from all Internet activity. Weird. ZA never did that so I used that for a while, but would have preferred Sygate.

ZA has some cool freeware log analyzer's out there, though, which makes it a plus. One is Zone Log and the other is VisualZone. I prefer VisualZone. It has some cool features. :-)

Thanks all for the replys. I've narrowed it down to either sygate or outpost. I won't get around to doing anything until saturday when I have more time, but just wondered if these firewalls are pretty much set to go after installation or will there be a lot of configuring to do. When I switched to cable, the cable guy installed blackice, so I never really had to do much with it. This will be my first install for a firewall. Any tips appreciated.

Thanks again

Br-

To make installation of your new firewall a bit more trouble-free, check your registry after removing Black Ice Defender to make sure any BID keys were not left behind. Old registry keys from previous firewalls can cause problems with the newly installed firewall.

To save time--the registry is a BIG place!--you might want to download a free version of RegSeeker. It's a registry cleaner/finder. Click on 'find in registry,' then type in Black Ice in the 'search for' box. Give RegSeeker a minute or so to scan, then delete anything with Black Ice that it finds. Highlight the entries you want removed, then right click and hit delete.

For safety by default, RegSeeker keeps a copy of what it removes, just in case you delete something you shouldn't. 8-)

Solarian

Solarian

I'm still using regcleaner 4.3, so I'll run that after the uninstall. Will also check out regseeker to possibly install in the future.

Thanks