Firewall question

The laptop I own has a lifetime service warranty and it started running slow so I took it in to have it looked at. I was told part of the reason was my firewall (McAfee) was slowing down my computer. Then they told me they uninstalled it because I didn't need it. I do use the windows firewall. But do I really not need to have McAfee firewall installed?

 

I agree, two firewalls is a mistake. If it doesn't help to deactivate the Windows firewall, it would be useful to try a different firewall and see if that helps. I like both Zone Alarm and Sygate and both have free versions that are great. Here you can find a list of some different ones:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads34.html

abri

 

Is the windows firewall just as good as McAfee's firewall?

 

Sorry, this is a complicated answer. The simple answer is no. Windows Firewall seems to be one of the weakest ones. Zone Alarm free or Sygate are both better than Windows Firewall. McAfee started out as an antivirus company, which they were good at. My experience of them more recently is that they require a lot of system resources for their services. For some reason, this seems to happen when companies expand into areas which were not their orginal area of specialty. I've seen it happen with Nortons as well, going towards security and with Zone Alarm going towards antivirus.

If you've paid for McAfee and feel bound to use it for that reason, then it would be the better choice over Windows Firewall. Otherwise I would recommend a different combination of firewall and antivirus which is free, works well, and doesn't bog down your computer like either AVG or AVAST as antivirus in combination with either ZoneAlarm free or Sygate for a firewall. AVG is now also going towards a complete security package, so I don't know how that's going to go, but so far I haven't seen many complaints.

abri