Zone Alarm Pro?

Question

If I have 950 MB of RAM, will my computer be slowed down if I install Zone Alarm Pro?

Also, is Zone Alarm Pro a solid firewall?

Please give me details on ZAP & the resources it uses. Thanks so much.

Answer 1

i have it too on 512MB RAM and it works great...

and Zone Alarm is great firewall,it will ask you at beginning should he let thru some programs,like Firefox or Win media player,but no programs will use your Internet connection without your approval in Zone Alarm Pro.

Answer 2

No, I actually use Zone Alarm Security Suite which also has the antivirus and antispyware. But I used to use the Free ZA and Pro before. They are, IMO, the best firewall available.

The only thing that's flaky about ZA is if you run a big game, especially an online game, then it seems to hog a little more CPU power (I guess it's trying to analyze every packet coming through). Another thing is sometimes on SOME programs (not all) that you run the install for the first time, it might run slow until it gets done. I usually put if offline in either of the two situations.

I haven't had any hacking problems with the program.. I have inadvertantly got a trojan or spyware program before, but the second it tried to transmit something on the internet, big popup, the program gets blocked and it tells what program and location is trying to access the internet. At least now you know that something malice is going on.

Answer 3

Zone Alarm is one of the best firewalls out there indeed.
It doesn't takes much memory, so your 950 MB (I supose you have 1024 MB, which is 1 GB) is more than enough.

Yes, it is a very solid and nice firewall, and it informs you basically of every thing in and out of your PC.

Windows XP firewall is good only for protecting from the incoming connections to your PC, but it won't detect most of worms or hacker's malwares that try to communicate from your computer to the exterior world (Internet).

However, Zone Alarm ( http://www.zonelabs.com ) does protect you from every unauthorized access including whichever application or malware is trying to connect from your PC to the Internet, so you have then the option of allowing or stopping that. -Plus it keeps very detailed logs and info of everything, you can even track an attack, so you will be able to tell exactly where your attacker is from.

In general, again, Zone Alarm is one of the best firewalls, no doubt about it, and it can be used for free until the time you decide to upgrade, Zone Labs is an excellent company.

If you don't have it yet, you can get it here:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp

I hope this helped.

Answer 4

I can't give you the resources that your asking that it uses but I just wanted to share my info about zone alarm pro.

Honestly, If your just looking for a GREAT firewall and that's all you need period, Zone alarm free is all you'll need.

I've used just zone alarm free for years thats how good I think they are. I just like firewalls that are really quiet and dont bother annoying me except for the beginning of a fresh install.

The only things I've noticed that Pro offers other then free is more email viruses or file extensions it looks for.. (Do you use client based email?) and a few crappy other features that act more on the "annoying" side then the benefit side like spyware protection (yeah right).

Like I said, if your looking for just a great firewall.. Zonealarm free is by far, the best choice for a free firewall. So easy to use.. so great on protection.

Anyway.. hope I've helped :-D

Dominick

Answer 5

950 MB of RAM is more then a enough for Zone alarm pro.
Zone Alarm Pro is the best firewall out there!!!!

Answer 6

ZAP is a Personal Firewall with a good reputation. What it does is ensures you approve every application that you need to access the internet. Nothing gets out without your approval.

The shortcomings of ZAP and other Personal Firewalls.

If you are silly enough to allow nastyvirus.exe to grant access to the internet to copy your confidential data to an web site, you are on your own.

As Zone Alarm sits over Windows, if there is an exploit in Windows network code (for buffer overruns and the like), ZAP intercepts after XP initially receives the packet which means you need to make sure your computer is up to date with patches.

ZAP is not a proxy firewall, so interpreting whether packets meet the rules of an application's protocol will be limited in nature.

If you download a virus, it will not find it for you, like spyware and phishing and viral emails. You still need anti-spyware and antiviral software.

I would suggest that any equipment in between the internet and your PC which has NAT (Network Address Transation) or SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) , you enable these features and you update the firmware on a regular basis.

Last issue is that a hacker hammering your computer with different attacks could potentially cause a denial of service.

ZAP is a good product, but the class of product has its own limitations

Answer 7

Yes 950 MB is okay. But zone alarm is not good for firewall. I tried like two days, my computer freezes up. Now am using Norton Anti virus. Or you can just go to control panel, click on security, click on window firewall and turn it on.

Answer 8

950 that's good.. My dell only has 520mb.. make sure you turn off the firewall on your norton or what ever virus protection program you have because it will slow your pc down.... and yes zone alarm is a solid firewall and good choice

Answer 9

ZAP is a really good firewall. I've used it on and off (when I get a new PC and it comes with some other firewall besides Mircosofts, I use it until it expires) for quite a few years.

If you have almost 1GB of RAM, your system should be fine. I have it running on a laptop with a Pentium III processor and 512MB of RAM, and it doesn't affect my performance noticably.

It was using less than 6MB according to my laptop's tskm footprint. Not bad at all.

I recommend it.

Answer 10

ZAP is a Solid Firewall, and a Good One, as far as resources, it uses less then McAfee, Norton, or some others. Good Choice



Quote: " if you have windows xp..it comes with it's own firewall."
This is the worst firewall setup that you could hope for, You could run NO firewall and be just as safe as XP's Firewall.........