Norton v. Zonealarm

Well as NEW CONVERT from Norton (Symantec) software, I would say that there is NO competition, as anything is better than the system hogging, bug ridden crap that Symantec sell at rip off prices!

I would suggest that use the:

Free Version of Zone Alarm.

with:

AVG Free Edition.

Both work seemlessly, and both able to run, with out any noticable side effects.

ZoneAlarm Pro is more consistent and does not nag to allow programs to access the net the way Norton Personal Firewall does. Basically, set ZAP once and it works with no further attention. However, the next to most recent upgrade was very unstable and crashed many user systems with no warning or error, not even a BSOD. The current version seems OK, but I am waiting for the next update which is said to be even more stable.

Neither of them.

For outbound protection, the best I found is Look'n Stop 2.05 firewall. It blocks Firehole, Yalta, Tooleaky, Outbound and Gibson's Leak tests. I've tried F-Secure, ZoneAlarm, Sygate, McFee, Guardian, Norton, PC-Cillin and none of them could do that, at least without tampering.