I went through a lot of firewalls: Norton, Tiny, BlackIce... they all pretty much sucked. I even had problems with the integrated Windows XP firewall because there was no was to allow traffic over IRC (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it). After spending a while without a firewall, ZoneAlarm was recommended on TechTV. So I downloaded the free version. This firewall is great! It really does its job and it's effective. You just have to "train" your firewall for the day and you'll be protected! I then bought the Professional version.

Being a single computer connected to the internet 24/7, this is DEFINITELY a great replacement to the integrated XP firewall. It rarely causes problems and you have a variety of options from ad-blockers to colour-schemes!

On the con side, it interfered with my web browsing (I was unable to sign into THIS site) unless I tweaked some privacy features (which was easy). It appears that ZoneAlarm refused to accept the cookies from eopinions.com. This program can also be intrusive. I’d like to have it alert me when I have an “intrusion”, although the “bubble” is too large and intrusive so I had to disable that feature.

Everyone should use a firewall for the well being of their privacy and the well being of their computer. Over the past 3 weeks, Zone Alarm has block 1500+ attacks that have been high-rated.

Recommended: Yes