Trying out ZoneAlarm Free - Transfer mode set to Awesome
http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/trying-out-zonealarm-free-- Shared with Google Share Button
So I had posted in this earlier post that I was trying out ZoneAlarm Free (version 9). Unfortunately, my experience with it has been poor.
On my x64 laptop, I was getting frequent BSODs. Remove ZoneAlarm, poof, BSODs gone.
On my x86 desktop, I was getting infrequent reboots and BSODs. Remove ZoneAlarm. Can't tell as quickly because the issues were infrequent and I've gotten other BSODs (USB error code, different than before), but I have to say I *feel* better about the system without it.
It's unfortunate because some security-conscious blogs I read insist that a better firewall than Windows 7 Firewall is necessary. Aggressive outbound protection is the difference, I guess, but I have other HIPS protection (ThreatFire) that does that for the most risky types of outbound access already.
So for the moment, I'm still using ZoneAlarm on my work machine, where it's mostly a good customer. Pretty quiet and no BSODs, but I'd like to have one solution across the board. I wasn't happy with Comodo's interface, and most of the other firewalls I tried for my Server 2003 boxes would BSOD them or simply wouldn't install (like ZoneAlarm). A single solution across all of my boxes would be less of an administrative headache, but only if the one that works everywhere isn't a headache to begin with.
Privacy Firewall has been working well on the servers, despite it's less-polished UI. Perhaps I'll give it a go on the desktop as well.