hello techdude,

You certainly do need a firewall,your ip address is static it doesn't change as would someone who was on dial-up.To the best of my knowledge,the problems you referred to with Outlook were caused by a Microsoft service patch for 2000 which caused lock-ups and inability to connect to the internet.ZoneAlarm has come out with a fix for this.I use Netscape on my Dell, ZA has not caused problem 1, it doesn't even interfere with defrag. Remember,ZA also stops spyware from dialing out.Evertime I use realplayer or realjukebox,they ask for permission to dial out,which I always deny.What bussiness is it of Real knowing what I do? ZA is free so why not? I keep my security at med.,you can tell ZA what programs are allowed access.I am relatively new to internet security,I'm no expert. Let me refer you to a few sites: www.grc.com click on shields up. also, http://www.zdnet.com/community/ , they have a virus and security alerts forum with some experts who can advise you far better than I ever could. You must register with zdnet to use the forums,but it's worth it, there's some great people there.
Good Luck hope I've helped,
Tony

It's a great little product, and i have not experienced any difficulties with it. As is often the case with downloads, many never bother to access the excellent help manuals which accompany the product (in zone alarm, press F1 while it's running) to get an overview of the product.

I used to be one of these types, but my experience with another excellent product, 'window washer', cured me of this laziness after it deleted numerous files I wanted to keep because they were located in a folder that it purged as part of it's wash: clearly stated in it's documentation that i had not read!

Zone Alarm works well with the default configuration, but can easily be configured to suit your individual requirements.

I'm running ZoneAlarm on two systems. The first is my Dell XPS T550 and the second is my Compaq Presario 5x86 which my daughter uses in college. On the Dell I dial up to the Internet where as my daughter has an ethernet connection in her room. On both systems I have yet to experience any problems with the software. I have ZoneAlarm set not to log any events and the Alert notification has been shut off. That way it can just do it's thing and not bother me. By the way, the Dell has IE 5.5 and OE 5.5 and the Compaq has IE 5.1 and OE 5.5.

Thanks to all who responded. I learned quite a lot. I'm now using Zone Alarm and so far, no problems!