Octopus Overlords

Just switched from Zone Alarm to Kerio Firewall 4 and wanted to know what people think of it. More info, or rather different info, is being shown than what I'm used to seeing so I'll need to read up on it. It doesn't seem to ask for permission for various programs like Outlook Express, my Avast anti-virus program, Firefox, etc. to access the net unlike Zone Alarm. Do people leave it in its default configuration and trust it to do its thing effectively? I went to the Shields Up site and I at least seem to be stealthed after going through their port probe tests.

Also, the full version is free for 30 days before reverting to a scaled back free version. The added functions, however, seem to be duplicated in Avast and Spybot, as well as Firefox with its popup blocker. Anyone have an opinion on whether the full version is worth shelling out $45 or so dollars?

Thanks as always for your opinions!

PS Just loaded Sygate and uninstalled Kerio. I figured I'd be going back and forth so if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it.

What the heck are the optimal settings for either of these firewalls anyway?

Have a good Christmas y'all!

IMHO, it's junk. Tried it for 1 week on my Win98 machine. Crashed my machine silly. Switched to Sygate Personal Firewall and haven't had a problem since.

Ive been using sygate a few weeks since my router seems to not like my cable provider anymore (after months of smoothness it now drops connection every day).

I havent changed any settings and it seems to work fine. It blocked 2 port scans the other day..yeah!

I'm a big Sygate fan. Has worked perfectly for me and appears to take up little resources.

Another Sygate fan here. Used Kiero for a while, didn't like it's piggishness, so I switched to Sygate since it was getting very positive reviews. Haven't looked back since. Sygate is excellent.