Zone Alarm Free-which version

I totally agree with the above. v4.5.594 is the most stable version I've used in three years. I run Win98, and versions 5 and above were constantly freezing the screen, having system errors, and creating large .tmp files in the Internet Log with every event. Frequent reboots were a daily occurrence. Not good. charlie R

I'm certainly no expert, but I told that message box to shut the heck up loooong ago and stuck with V4.5.594.

Go to the Zonelabs site and look at the history for the Ver 4.5 and Ver 5.x products. See where the history for V 5.x is one long series of fixes after another? It's great that they're fixing things, but it doesn't speak well for the product that so many things were wrong with it in the first place.

Also look at all the bloat that was added to Ver 5.x. Maybe some want all that stuff in a personal firewall. Personally I think a personal firewall product should concentrate on being a great personal firewall product and leave nonsense like content filtering, cache cleaning, ad and pop-up blocking to other programs or to simple proper setup of my browser.

Remember that I said I'm not an expert. I promise you I'm not just being modest. I'm really NOT an expert. But I'm also not infected with anything after 4 years on a broadband connection.

ZA free has no content www filtering.

Jim & Charlie,

Thanks for your comments.

It has been my experience that the actual users are far more knowledgeable than the experts.

I, too, have been clean on broadband using ZoneAlarm and malware s/w (adaware, spybot etc.).

If it ain't broke don't fix it, but I will have a look at the history just to look at the bloat you reference.

Mutli purpose most anything (hardware or software) usually has to compromise something. Can you say 'jack of all trades, master of none'

Thanks again - I think I'll stick with what I have.

Posters are usually the ones with problems, not the happy campers. I have been using that version for 11 days, and it has performed flawlessly. Why not just install the new version, and, if you do not like it, it is easy to switch back. It is not that big a deal.

i been using version 5 too, not the anti virus part tho, but the firewall and banner blocking is working fine for me . if it wasnt upto scratch im sure ZoneLabs wouldnt release it, all new programs have bugs but they soon get found and fixed

although with that said i dont trust any software firewall to protect my computer on its own.

Not more knowledgeable than the real experts, but more knowledgeable than the ones who became an "expert" via a Google session 5 minutes before responding. The trick is deciding which is which.

If you have a lower spec machine use version 4.5, otherwise use 5.5 but without the antivirus and instant messaging encryption.

I agree. I've been using the 5.x versions for quite some time. With no problem.