Anyone using Zonealarm software with W7 ?

... gmail?
software? for what, outlook express? never use it..

While I agree with sexy on the Spybot and Adaware, I have to disagree with the opinion about Zonealarm.

I have been using Zonealarm free version for years and never had a problem with it. I regularly visit grc.com to test and have never gotten anything but a "stealth" result.

I just installed Win7 and am heading to grc after leaving here to test the windows7 firewall. I'll be back to find firewall software that works with 7 if it fails the stealth test (I'm inclined to think it will and I'll be returning).

Believe you me, if Zonealarm comes up with a 7 compatable firewall, I'll be one of the first to sign up!

BTW

Some people are not security savvy and appreciate software that is user friendly AND does what it's supposed to do.

I guess I'm a monkeys aunt...MS finally did something right. Got a full stealth result with just the win7 firewall. Congrats MS!

If you have a decent router, you should get stealth results even without ZA.
That's why i say it's unneccessary.

How many games have you played lena? Do you P2P ? Do you skype or do anything out of the standard "Comes with windows" capabilities?

When you start using programs like STEAM with ZA, it becomes extremely annoying as you need open ports for punk buster, the STEAM client, Valve Anti Cheat system, PLUS the game you're actually playing, e.g. Call of Duty.

ZA simply doesn't handle that, it just has a fit.
Same with any program that requires more than 2 ports open.

EDIT: And then you try to remove it, and you can't get a working network afterwards. It's just poorly coded.

As close as I get to gaming is on FB. My daughter, however, Skypes, plays RO and several other online games, P2P's and has managed to get ZA to play quite nicely with others. She doesn't have any probs with it.

How old is your daughter? introduce me? just kidding hehe.

In seriousness, it could just be the fact that working in tech support / administrative capabilities the only time i really have to deal with ZA is when there's something wrong with it.

On the OTHER hand, sygate personal firewall or any other i could list off, have far less problems.

Some P2P apps like limewire will play nicely and have done ever since ZA came out, yet i think Vuze/Azureus has always had an issue with it as with bittorrent in general.

Keep in mind too, RO is a very basic game, it only requires the one port open and it doesn't modify it's own executables/dll's.
STEAM does it every time you start it.

sexytool said:

In seriousness, it could just be the fact that working in tech support / administrative capabilities the only time i really have to deal with ZA is when there's something wrong with it.

Ah, yes. I never really worked tech support, but for sure it's all the users not configuring well or don't even know how. Then the phone call to you guys to fix it for them lol. That alone would probably make you not want to hear about ZA again lol. I hear ya on that. :)

Nah, torrents in all clients work very well with ZA though, even when they don't have any serving rights. In this situation, clients just behave as if the router is blocking ports but the downloading/uploading still goes along well. This is how I used to run, purposely, when my main OSes were XP/Vista. And if you configure ZA for full access, everything works perfectly as in getting green light in Azureus. I even would use the tor proxy network to communicate with trackers instead of directly.

Honestly, everything I had ever tried or wanted to do, ZA did not break a sweat. Only time I had any problem was when I was learning long ago when it came out and didn't set things well.

About multiple ports needing to be open...ZA is customizable for any app for that and many other things in expert settings part of it. You really can make it behave exactly as you want.

LOL! She's 16, but she's smarter than she thinks! She had a problem with Skype for about 5 minutes. All I did was show her how to use ZA and she took it from there. (and she thinks I'M the computer genius just because I can build one and fix a prob here and there.) She can out-tech me any day of the week!

Well, I gotta go fix this stupid freezing problem. Off to turn on some MS services and see what's freezing this puppy up! I kinda like this 7 so far...if I can get past the freezing.