Best Firewall

I'm thinking on installing a firewall on my new laptop. I currently use Online Armour, and its quite good, but it only supports 32bit Windows. What do you guys recommend for a firewall?
My laptop has Windows 7 64bit,
I was thinking of
-ZoneAlarm( I've heard that it doesnt support 7 64bit)
-Comodo Firewall
- or anything that is decent

 

Well a few questions first:
- Are you doing or storing anything important on the laptop?
- Do you have a router? If you do(which you probably do), then is it secured and is the network encrypted?

Basically, a well configured router(and its own built in firewall) and network is usually the first defense a hacker would hit before your firewall and usually it's enough to deter most common hackers(by 'common' I mean those who would bother trying out on common households) if well configured.

Anyhow, long story short, the Windows 7 built in Firewall is usually enough for the common user if behind a good network. If you want other alternatives, Comodo is pretty good as well although the Defense+ does annoy some users(I don't really find it that bad). ZoneAlarm does work on 64bit, but it's not officially supported IIRC.

 

@Forever Melody
Yea, I have a hardware firewall on my router enabled. As my personal computer, my laptop does have important files on my laptop. However, I don't think that my network is encrypted, but it is a wireless network with WPA encryption. Is this what you are referring to? So you recommend that I should use comodo right? I've had a bad experience with Comodo a couple years ago and never went back to it. It blocked Windows Update, which screwed up my computer with windows update continuous attempting to install and download updates, resulting in all fail. Not only did it not fail but it took at least half an hour to boot up because it kept trying to install the updates. Does your computer have this problem?

 

If you worry about Boot times, the Windows Firewall is possibly the quickest.

I used to love KIS but 2010 is a mess - and their firewall slows down boot times
I suspect any third party product will affect boot times to some extent.

 

Well the first thing to do is get a WPA2 encryption key(if it wasn't a typo and you still are on WPA); WPA2 is currently the most secure amongst the mainstream network encryptions available to the mass public.

I've personally tried Comodo, Online Armor, Norton's 360 firewall, ZoneAlarm and the Windows Firewall(only the XP and Vista ones however). I've never had any issues or bugs with any of them such as you did so I can't really comment on it. I normally customize all my settings on my firewall and antiviruses so I tend to avoid any such "behind the scenes" screw ups.

In terms of pure protection, I can't exactly comment by user experience since I've never had a situation where I had to actually engage in using the firewall as a protection method. I do have a friend who dabbles in online security and apparently he tells me the Comodo one is the most secure of the free ones(with the built in Vista one being the easiest to enter); he had a hard time coding an exploit to get through the Comodo firewall with Defense+ enabled. Nonetheless, like I said earlier, chances are you won't ever need to access the protection capacities of your firewall if behind a good network.

In terms of resources, the Windows Firewall is the lightest on the system and the least intrusive in terms of popups(something which ZoneAlarm and Comodo are particularly fond of) so if you want the fastest boot times and the least resources consumed, the Windows one would be best.

 

Go here and check ur Firewall

click the Proceed button and click on All Service Ports.

 

What does that tell you?

For me I got green -> stealth on all but port 80 (which is web traffic)

 

It just give you basic idea about your firewall. I got all green with KIS/NIS 2010

However it failed with ZoneAlarm.

 

I'm on the Windows Firewall and I was web browsing at the same time - sound good

 

Found the problem with ZoneAlarm .It stupidly "counter-probe the prober"

 

If you have good Hardware firewall router no need to worry about 3rd party solutions.

 

Comodo supports W7 and 64 bit. After you run all your programs you'll get few pop ups unless you install a new program.

 

Problem is with laptops you're often connecting on a remote network.