2
Aug
2006
Before connecting your new Dell desktop (or whatever brand you prefer) to the internet, or any other network for that matter, you must make sure that you are running some type of personal firewall. I know many of you may be thinking "Duh!", but believe me there are many people out there who don't find the previous statement as obvious as you do. I have triaged more than one desktop and laptop in my time where the owner didn't know anything about personal firewalls.
People using Windows XP have the Windows Firewall installed and turned on by default. But those with an older OS don't have that luxury. Windows Firewall is a fine product. If you are comfortable with it then I recommend you stick with it. I am running Windows Firewall on the computer I am using right now, my business laptop. However, there are other options.
All my home Windows computers besides my laptop (currently at 4 and counting) use Zone Labs
ZoneAlarm - two of them are Windows 2000, one is XP Home and one is XP Pro. I chose to go the ZoneAlarm route because I have been using it for years, I am comfortable with it, and I think it is a better product.
The thing I like best about ZoneAlarm is that when an application tries to use the internet (or network in general) it notifies you and asks you to approve. You can choose to allow the program to alway connect to the internet without asking again or you can choose to allow it just the one time and the next time it tries to connect ZoneAlarm will ask again. This is particularly useful to people who, like me, like to be totally in charge and know what is going on with every detail of their computer. This can be a bit of a challenge for less knowledgable computer owners, though. Whenever I setup ZoneAlarm for friends or family I tell them to expect the little popup for a while and to make sure they know what program is asking for permission and why. It doesn't take that long to get used to it.
I also have some experience with other personal firewalls, like
BlackICE and
Symantec's Norton Personal Firewall. A couple of friends and companies that I have done some work for used BlackICE and I have more stories of configuration problems with it than I have stories of success. This may have more to do with my lack of experience with the product than it does with the product itself, but I have been unimpressed nonetheless. I haven't used Norton Personal Firewall as a standalone product, but I have had two PCs delivered from Dell a couple of years ago preconfigured with
Symantec's Norton Internet Security suite. In both cases the software suite seemed to be a CPU/memory hog and accessing any site on the internet was a very slow process - sometimes taking up to 30 seconds to load a page. Needless to say, it was quickly uninstalled and replaced with ZoneAlarm. Once again, the fault may have been my own rather than the sofware's and newer versions of both BlackICE and Norton Personal Firewall may be easier to work with and perform better than the platform/version that I used. YMMV (your mileage may vary).
I'm sure there are other personal firewalls that some of you may be using fruitfully. What ever product you are comfortable with is fine by me - just make sure you are using some kind of personal firewall.
What personal firewall are you using? If you're using one of the firewalls mentioned in this article, what experiences have you had with them? If you are using a product that I didn't discuss then please let me know which product and the features you like/dislike.
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