Norton Firewall vs XP Firewall

[don]

Can anyone tell me how much better (if any) Norton is
over the Firewall in XP Professional?

thanks

[Dave]

I use Norton FW and I have XP's disabled. There is absolutely no comparisson
between the 2. I did use XP's FW for a while and it was "good enough" but
Norton is all that and a bowl of peaches ;) XP's FW will monitor incoming
traffic, but does not monitor outgoing traffic. I could justify with 100
reasons, but in 2 words: get Norton

-- >>Scanned With Norton Anti-Virus<<

"don" > wrote in message
...
> Can anyone tell me how much better (if any) Norton is
> over the Firewall in XP Professional?
>
> thanks
>

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

In today's environment, only a fool would go on-line, regardless
of connection type, without both a reliable firewall and a good
antivirus application.

WinXP's built-in firewall is fine at stopping incoming attacks, and
hiding your ports from probes. It doesn't give you any alarms to tell
you that it is working, though. What WinXP also does not do, is
protect you from any Trojans or spyware that you might download and
install inadvertently. It doesn't monitor out-going traffic at all,
much less block (or at least ask you about) the bad or the
questionable out-going packets.

To enable the built-in firewall, Start > Network Connections >
Right-click the connection > Properties > Advanced > Protect my
computer.....

ZoneAlarm or Sygate are much better, and there are a free versions
available. Personally, I've been very happy with Symantec's Norton
Internet Security 2002 (NIS 2003 is now available), which includes
Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, parental controls, privacy
controls, and ad blocking. (Just the elimination of most pop-up ads
on the Internet made the price worth-while to me.)



Bruce Chambers

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----
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having both at once. -- RAH


"don" > wrote in message
...
> Can anyone tell me how much better (if any) Norton is
> over the Firewall in XP Professional?
>
> thanks
>