I began to get angry when ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite kept growing more features, so I downgraded to ZA Pro. I acquired, installed a program that does not depend on signatures entirely, Prevx1, and ZA wouldn't install when it was present. I figured that the best firewall and the best CIPS would be the bomb to malware. ZLs finally solved that spurious conflict. Alas the OS 'firewall' and Prevx1 causes some problems. I retreated, thought, I thought about when I, yea years ago, chose the free ZL firewall. It was the best, then. I have XP Pro now with its native firewall; the argument of some against it is that it only protects in-bound. I learned and realized that Prevx1 is the out-bound protection and more. Prevx1 nowadays is light on resources. When I downgraded from ZAISS to ZAPro I was without an antivirus. I tried ClamWin, liked it, but no email protection for Thunderbird. Lack of real-time didn't bother me, you can schedule all kinds of scans hourly, daily, weekly, weekdays. I tried NOD32. Excellent. Probably the best in the world. Some of the others have stability or conflict with other apps problems.
Eventually I discovered that there really is a conflict, sorta, between ZA's OS firewall and Prevx1.
This is a difficult time for me. Sure, I'm peeved about a year left on my license that I won't get value use; I am irritated that ZoneLabs has lost its way. I want these in, to use ZoneLabs lingo, a firewall:
Basic network and program firewall
Advanced network and program firewall
Privacy Protection.

That is all that I want in a firewall. I wonder if I can transfer my license to someone else. I have gone light on system resources with Prevx1, AVG Free, Ad-Aware SE Personal, RootkitRevealer Port Explorer, SpywareBlaster, and Trojan Remover. Note that only Prevx, AVG, SiteAdvisor, and PGP (these last two are security programs too) are real-time in memory for their operation and protection..

I am afraid I am with you on this S3. I too have been with ZoneLabs a long time, ever since Steve Gibson first suggested it many many years ago.

I left McAfee long ago when it became so bloated it started to buckle my system. I moved to a new upstart - Norton AV. I had long been a fan of Norton Utilities and figured Peter knew what he was doing. He did. Norton was a great AV and in a couple years, he sold out to Symantec and it went downhill - corporate arrogance and greed took over. Before long Norton became the bloat and intrusion king, so I switched to AVG Pro. So far so good - but they are pushing the do-all suites too.

Now ZoneLabs has been taken over by CheckPoint - are they the ones that ruined the original PCTools? As I noted here, it is sad when the program still addresses Netscape, and does not mention Firefox - I'm not even a FF user but I think that is sad.

ZA Free was a fantastic program. And as I do with most free programs I like and use, I try to show support by buying the Pro version. I have been happy with ZAP, even stayed with it as it blundered through 5.0. But I feared as they added extras, they would lose track of the basics, and that seems to be the case with 7.0.

7.0 has strained my patience. I just rolled back to 6.x (not exactly simple either) because zlclient keep hogging 43-49% of my CPU resources, bogging down my system. If 7.1 does not come out soon and fix some of these issues, I may forfeit the rest of my subscription and move on to another firewall. With 6.x, my zlclient is sitting 0% and this 3.06Ghz is starting to run like a decent system again.

_________________
Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom is NOT Free!

It is sad that they have gotten that way because I started using ZA from the start and am still using it but I got the 3.x box version and installed it and then having the one year subscription I updated it to version 4.5.538.001 and I am still using the same version.
Funny you said that the Cache Cleaner for firefox is not on the newer versions and I was thinking it would be. With so many people using firefox I don't see why it has not been added because it sure should be part of the Cache Cleaner.

With the new "Online Armor v2" I wonder how it will be as a firewall because I won it here in the contest but am using 98SE and it will not work. I can install Online Armor v1.1 on 98 but it does not have a firewall.

Please all contact customer support at ZoneLabs and let them know your views. I still support ZoneAlarm as a good firewall, even though I agree with some of your points of view. Let them know what they are doing.

I am still using the free version 6.5.737.000. I downloaded the bloated 7.0, but never installed it because of all the problems I have heard.

bill_bright
to be fair i downloaded the latest ZA Pro, since I still have an active license, and I still don't like it. I uninstalled it and returned to using the Windows Firewall.
I have gone on to a different notion about how to defend my system. Folk criticize the Windows Firewall (XP Pro SP2) for not monitoring outbound, but it monitors inbound and protects as well as any. I bypassed my router and tested it at testing sites; it stealths all ports, including 113, without any fiddling on your part.
Prevx2 is my outbound check. A freeware which perhaps check much the same is Threatfire.
The Windows Firewall has good inbound protection, uses few resources over and above the OS usage, and is easy to configure. It is better to have a separate HIPS, host-based intrusion prevention system, which uses behavioural, heuristic detection (mine, Prevx, also uses community approach), a good antivirus like NOD32 or Kaspersky, or freeware like Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic (the best free antivirus, unfairly criticized for not scanning email, ignoring that it's better than most commercial ones), Avast!, and AVG, and running browsers and email clients sandboxed with Sandboxie or virtualization apps.

Firefox has the extensions NoScript, McAfee SiteAdvisor, KeyScrambler, Cookie Safe or Permit Cookies, and Web Developer to protect it and system.
Actually there is no need, if you choose from other categories of security apps carefully, to use any other firewall, no matter how good, effective, and light on resources.

S3 - I have two systems still running ZAP, but their subscriptions are within days of expiring. At that time, they will be converted to Comodo.

I have several other systems, however, that are running just fine with Windows Firewall, Windows Defender, and IE7 (along with AVG Free) and they are doing just fine - and, I must add, seem quite a bit quicker than they used to be. The two systems mentioned above will get Comodo mainly because these machines are intentionally exposed to threats as part of my work - otherwise, they would probably get Windows Firewall.

So I am with you that Windows Firewall is more than adequate if (that's a "big" if - ) the user is otherwise disciplined at practicing safe computing - that is, the system is kept patched, updated, scanned, blocked; sites where badguys are known to wallow in (porn and P2P in particular) are avoided; and downloads and attachments are always scanned prior to opening, regardless the source. If you are the only user of that computer, and you are disciplined, then IMO, WF is just fine. I would still recommend being behind a router with NAT, however. But if that computer may be used by less disciplined users, then a firewall that allows for tighter control and easier configuration may be a better choice.

Do note that Windows Firewall in Vista does protect against unauthorized outgoing access attempts.

_________________
Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom is NOT Free!

I like to know how the Online Armor v2 rates with other Firewalls because I hear from those that installed it that it is great.
Just on Firewall ratings, leak test I have not seen Online Armor v2 in the rating.

http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php

Online Armor (both free and paid versions) and Outpost are the first and only firewalls that score perfectly in all the leak tests. Online Armor (again both versions) is also highly resistant and cannot be terminated by any of the usual tests for termination like DiamondCS' APT. That is from my personal testing of OA. I have not tested Outpost, and so cannot comment on that.

Wow Online Armor Personal Firewall 2.1.0.19 FreeFREE is listed at the very top and the paid version does more so should be better.
http://www.tallemu.com/comparisons.html

Outpost Firewall Pro is up there at the top to but there Free version is in the red at the bottom.

ZoneAlarm Pro is no longer at the top either.

I had ZA Pro, no Vista support so I switched to the free version.
Got rid of that because of the printer/Vista/ZA software conflicts.

Got rid of ZA completely....no printer conflict (works perfectly now) and Vista starts and responds more quickly overall.

I switched to Comodo Ver.3, and have no problems whatsoever with it.

If Check Point doesn't get it's stuff together soon, they'll be losing more users than they gain.

Paul