Apparently it has been discontinued, are there better FREE firewalls out there (excluding Zonealarm (buggy)/Kiero (going to be discontinued).

Are these any good:

SoftPerfect Personal Firewall - http://www.softperfect.com/products/firewall/

Jetico Personal Firewall - http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/jpfirewall.htm

Turan says that Outpost Free is good, but on the official site its a trial, nothing more than a trial, I need freeware... Unless, is it a trial version which then slips into Free version after x amount of days?

Everywhere I look for google for it says its just version 1, and that isn't from the official sites. Plus they don't update it, which means its no better than mine?

I am only interested in spyware/adware/virus free programs.

Thanks.

Did you look here?

At the bottom it says Outpost Free Firewall, and this holds more info.

Hmm, I didn't see that, well, I'll probably get that now.

I like it, its prety good, and I feel better that I know it isn't being discontinued. Anyone know the plug-ins for it?

Is there a good reason for me to replace Sygate now? Unlike anti-spyware and anti-virus programs, firewalls aren't updated on a continuing basis, right? Should it really matter that much, assuming there's no overwhelming reason not to use Sygate in the first place?

Up to you. They've been bought out by Symanatec, and there are alot more options for Outpost Firewall. Considering that it and ZoneAlarm are the most used software firewalls in this community, I would recommend it.

Sygate Personal Firewall is buggy, it blocks update components (a problem you're having) and it blocks some perfectly safe websites such as Apple.com, at least that's the experience I've had with it on my two systems; Win98 and WinXP.

I'm downloading SoftPerfect Personal Firewall right now, I'll give some comments on it within the next few hours.

When I tested Jetico Personal Firewall some months ago it didn't pass the http://grc.com ShieldsUp test as TruStealth, therefore I removed it.

The freeware version of Outpost I don't like, as it has some rather different approaches to "terms" that I'm used to in all other software-based firewalls I've ever used, so much so that it seems alien -- to each their own.

Gotta go, I'm going to install and test SoftPerfect Personal Firewall

OK I briefly tested SoftPerfect Personal Firewall and I've come to the conclusion that it's good, with one caveat:
In order for it not be so annoying and constantly popping up allow or block for known unwanted connections that could be system attacks you'll have to input into it block rules for certain TCP ports and UDP ports. The ability to input rules is a very good thing that makes it very configurable similiar to capabilities of Kerio Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall. To figure out which TCP ports and UDP ports to block visit some security sites which have Kerio Personal Firewall block rules which can be easily adapted to SoftPerfect Personal Firewall block rules.

The problem I see with such firewalls constantly asking for allow or block from TCP or UDP connections is if someone else is using a system and knows nothing about unwanted connections and allows something to slip through which could very easily in this day and age be a system attack or Windows exploit.

As i recall, SoftPerfect doesn't permit rules by application, which to me is the only logical way to organize rules. (I'm not a "power user" aka nerd, ok? )

Why not use the windowsXP firewall built in windows? The main issue is that it reports searches to sa.com , but i can live with that actually. It passes the leak tests, so why go for a bulkier app?

Netmeter is a lightweight freeware for monitoring bandwidth, so what am i missing by using XP firewall?

thanks.

That's exactly what I'm using now after ZoneAlarm started to really annoy me, and I don't care anymore that WinXP's firewall doesn't block outgoing traffic since I scan everything that get's downloaded to verify it doesn't contain any malware. I'll just live with the no outgoing filtering vulnerability versus a third-party firewall causing system-wide issues.

Outpost really does the job for me, I'm used to it already so nothing annoys me, I'm probably going to give Softperfect a miss as I have Outpost now, so I'm happy (I assume the way things are layed out differently is the only problem with Outpost?

I'm just used to the way things were in Kerio Personal Firewall 2.1.5 being fully configurable without generic descriptions like "Download Manager," "Browser," however it's vulnerable now and will let some nasty things through.

Ahh, I see what you mean. I just hit allow or block most of the time to b honest. I assume as a firewall though it was O.K on http://grc.com ShieldsUp test?