noob question: ZoneAlarm -- good or bad?

Hi, this is my first post, so be gentle please. I'm on vacation and I've noticed that my uncle has a program called ZoneAlarm installed.

I see that the basic version is free and I'm wondering what people's opinions are about it. My gut instinct is to be highly suspicious about any program if nobody's prepared to give it a strong recommendation via word-of-mouth. My experience has been that if a program like this is very worthwhile then at least a few people will be willing to sing its praises in a forum post

My main priority is to increase performance on my machine by eliminating superfluous programs, processes, and network activity; however, I am also interested in having a high level of control over my computer's network access even if it will result in a performance hit of one type or another. Generally speaking I want to block all network activity that is not either essential or specifically allowed/ requested by me; but I also want high performance for 3d games. I do not have a hardware firewall.

My general machine specs and software I'm using:

Dell 2.8ghz /1gig/ WinXP Home
Norton Antivirus Pro; Ad-Aware; SpybotSD; JavaCool Spyware Blaster; CacheMan memory manager; and an old, expired and un-updateable but still functional trial installation of Norton Internet Security. (Edit: Ad-Aware, Spybot, and Spyware Blaster are all the free versions.)

My main questions are as follows:

-Is the program a spyware risk?

-Will it unduly interfere with my computer's normal operation or cause a significant performance hit?

-Does ZoneAlarm itself send or receive data over the Internet? If so, what for, and can I control whether and when it does so?

-Will it cause conflicts with other programs or services? If so, what types of programs/services or what specific programs/services can I expect to encounter problems with when running ZA?



Any answers to these questions or other advice about this program would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

yeeha! we grow old while the sea grows older.

 

i also use is and it works fine

 

I have used it also, and it is good at what it does! There are several more free firewalls in the downloads section of MajorGeeks.

 

Another firewall to consider is Sygare Personal Firewall http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3356.html

 

I am a newbie too ! scary in here
I downloaded on advice of a smart computerwise friend and I find it doing well,just wish I was as good at this stuff as the ZA

 

You can trust ZoneAlarm. It is highly recommended and used by a lot of geeks. I used the free one for a couple of years then upgraded to Pro because I like to reward folks that create good and beneficial stuff.

 

I've been using the Free version and love it ! It is very safe and does not include any spyware. Have found that it does not work as well with XP as it does with ALL older versions though. My personal opinion... and that of alot of geeks: Sygate (Free) version seems to do better with XP. Just an opinion though. I do use Sygate with all my XP machines and Zone Alarm with 98, 98SE, and 2000, so...you decide. Found that Sygate has to be disabled at times for certain kinds of updates as in Ad-aware but it is just a simple click till updated and then another to enable?