Re: Is additional firewall necessary?

B. Nice wrote:
On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 04:37:57 GMT, Super Lemon <fruit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

What I was trying to say before was that XP's firewall is more rudimentary
than
ZA and isn't needed if you have ZA.

"More rudimentary"? - What exactly do you base that statement on?

The XP firewall does exactly what it claims to do. It is non-intrusive
and (contrary to most 3rd party firewalls) provides true
boottime-protection. That it does'nt provide features like "outbound
protection" doesn't make it rudimentary if that is what you are
referring to.

So you think I used the wrong word. Sorry.

What word do you think I should use when one product does not provide a desired
service that another does?

You don't seem to think the service is needed. Fair enough. We do seem to
disagree on this point. It is a service that has been useful to me. I do want to
know what goes on in my computer.

You mention three very good concerns; boot time control, packet
filtering, and intrusive FWs. I have found several web sites that claim PFWs
(all that I know of) are low enough to provide boot-time protection. If you are
behind a router (Siemens Speedstream in my case) handles SPI why would you need
a software packet filter? As far as intrusiveness. Yes most PFWs were once bad
but they are all getting better. To compare them to CSI is absurd since CSI
doesn't even provide the service that causes that intrusiveness.

No, Microsoft didn't lie about it's impotency (is that an ok word?). In fact,
lets give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that this is one case where
Microsoft didn't make a gross overstatement that bordered on a lie.

If I read the OP correctly, our arguments should be about whether ZA has a
service that CSI doesn't which implies the question "is this service needed or
not"? What you call a product that lacks that service is another debate.

Please get your arguments straight in your head before you engage your fingers.

Excuse me while I add another worm to the opened can. I see a real need to have
a third party program keeping Windows at bay. Using Microsoft's FW it is like
letting the fox guard the hen house.
.