Do free firewall/virus scan programs like avast or sygate personal firewall work on vista? If not, what are the alternatives? I'm setting up a friends laptop and i'm not sure if i trust windows firewall to do its job..

 

 

Thanks in advance.

Wouldn't their websites tell you that?

Perhaps he wanted to know if they really work, not what vendors say?

On the other note, I thought Vista has a decent integrated firewall unlike XP's atrocity, no?

Edited May 26, 200718 yr by Diamond

Yeah i left the Vista firewall up, i've previously read that it's good enough. My friend's also got Norton Antivirus for free for 2 months (yippee.... ), so after it i'll have to install a free one for her. I'm thinking Avast, it has served me well enough on XP. I'm open for suggestions though.

Whatever you do stay far away from McAfee and Norton. Theyre pretty much viruses already as they slow down the system a lot and take hours to remove properly.

There was a lot of anger in the Security industry when Microsoft kept their Vista kernel design so tightly under wraps from them; I think this may have been adjusted now, though, and it is likely that Microsoft was just trying to get to market before the competition. If a company has a Vista product, then it will have been re-engineered for Vista (unless it's a dodgy company).