486 33 computer, 8 meg ram, 1 gig hd, win95, dos 62 --------------------- No cable, no networking, only home system, with basic modem. Is firewall protection, such as Alarm Zone, recommmended? Or not needed on home small system? Will it slow this small system down? Or is ti needed, only on netwrking systems? Thanks in advance, for reply's.

You don't need any firewall protection. A Firewall will slow your system down (if that's possible, lol) and is really useless to you. Usually only businesses use firewall protection to prevent hackers and unauthorized people out of their network.

From my experience it's needed. I've picked up a couple of viruses just being on line with a dial up connection. I doubt if you notice any slowdown but try it and see.

Correction...I picked up two Trojans, not viruses.

get zone alarm hackers do not care who they go after i had one with a dial up connection and i was not on the internet much then as far as slowing you down it uses very litle resources on my computer system resouces do not change if it is running or not

Go to grc.com and run Shields Up.It will scan test all your ports and tell you how to set them up to prevent outsiders getting in. I've done this to all my pc's. It's just a configuration change.