Zone Labs Zone Alarm Pro 4.5

If you've looked at the review of Computer Associates' EZ Firewall, you'll notice a marked similarity between that and Zone Alarm. The two share a virtually identical installation, though in the case of Zone Alarm Pro there?s a list of 'safe' programs that can be automatically allowed access to the Internet, saving time on configuration. The list included third-party messaging clients, such as Trillian, but not Netobjects Fusion; even so, it's a time saver when it comes to setup.

In addition to the ad blocking and privacy controls found in EZ Firewall, Zone Alarm Pro has Ebay password protection to shield you from scammers. Automatic cache cleaning can remove a number of traces from your hard disk at intervals, including Scandisk fragments, Media Player temp files, and the caches of Internet Explorer and Netscape - though not Opera.

The default settings put our Lan in the Trusted zone, but still didn't allow file sharing to work; you need to enable that, which is fairly easily done. Other useful controls include the ability to alert you when mail is being sent from your machine with more than a certain number of attachments, or at too fast a speed, which will help combat some email viruses.

And, unlike EZ Firewall, each alert in Zone Alarm has a More Info button, which takes you to the Zone Labs website and a clear explanation of what's been happening, telling you whether you should worry or not. Like McAfee's Hackerwatch, there's the ability to submit information anonymously to Zone Labs so that it can aggregate statistics from a number of people.

The free version - which the trial reverts to at the end of its period - provides only basic firewall facilities, but those are still reasonable, and the provision of the More Info button in both makes Zone Alarm more useful than the CA-branded version.

Contact: Zone Labs
www.zonelabs.com

System requirements:

• Windows 98SE to XP
• Pentium 233MHz
• 10MB free hard disk space

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