AJUK said:Indeed, if people don't know the difference between an antivirus and a firewall then they shouldn't post advice!
Kerio 2.15 is an excellent choice and very light on the system, you won't have to search around on the interweb for it either as I have done that for you:
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/downloads321/keriopf215.zip
BlackICE PC Protection is very good and also offers IDS (intrusion detection) to guard against trojans and worms etc.. Ashampoo, Kerio 4, Kasperky Antihacker and Comodo, Netveda, Private Firewall, Jetico, Softperfect, Tiny, Zone Alarm.....blah, blah...there are loads. However, if you are running XP SP2, just use the inbuilt Windows firewall as it has hardly any system load at all, won't slow surfing and requires no configuration. The only disadvantage is there is no outbound filtering but if you have antivirus and antispyware there shouldn't be anything on your system that you don't want to 'phone home' anyway.
BlackICE got discreditted ages ago, its seriously lacking according to quite a few experts.
1 example would be the guy over at grc.com
I used loads of different firewalls before i had a router and constantly got told by techi friends to get a router instead.
Its been far better with the router all round.
XP firewall only monitors traffic one way.
Yes the topic is firewalls but the av topic kinda came up to, and since most AV manufacters also have firewall security i don't see the problem with tying that in on the topic.
