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snippy and I first got our cablemodem, we got a free year's subscription to MacAfee Firewall and Virus Protection as part of the deal. And I have to say that it worked fine. No problems, no complaints.
Time passed. The seasons turned. Our free year's subscription lapsed. I had to renew. And I discovered that MacAfee has one of the most user-unfriendly websites it's ever been my displeasure to wade thru. I also discovered that I couldn't just renew the version I was using. Oh no! Too safe, too sane. I had to buy MacAfee Personal Firewall Plus!
The website made it hard to find the firewall software, hard to buy it (without buying extras I didn't need or want), and hard to download and install.
And let me just say this about that! That program sucks like a whore behind on her rent!
It was only then, after getting Firewall Plus running that I started having all the internet connection problems with my system. Problems so bad that I eventually gave up on fixing them (after reinstalling my OS two or three times in the vain hope that that would help, among other attempted fixes) and reinstalled Linux SuSe 9.0 in a dual-boot configuration.
Linux has been running fine. I'm even comfortable enough with it that I'm starting to toy with trying to install the 3D Linux drivers for my videocard (which looked way too difficult and arcane at first). But periodically I've tried booting into Windows again to see how things were going. And I learned things.
I learned that when Windows first boots up, the Firewall wasn't loading. And that was a GOOD thing, sadly, because it meant that Mozilla, Agent, Semagic (the LiveJournal client I'm using this very minute) and so forth would actually start and could connect to the internet. It was also a bad thing, of course, because it meant I was vulnerable to unwanted connections.
I learned that if I started the Firewall software manually, all of the above stopped working. Most of them wouldn't load at all. More often than not, my system became unstable and sometimes crashed. Not good.
So today I googled for free Windows firewall software (using Linux) and downloaded ZoneAlarm's free firewall software. I booted into Windows, nuked the MacAfee software and installed ZoneAlarm.
And, hey, guess what? Now I'm running a working firewall again and I can still connect to the internet! What a concept!
So, to sum up: ZoneAlarm good. MacAfee bad. MacAfee suxor!
snippy and I first got our cablemodem, we got a free year's subscription to MacAfee Firewall and Virus Protection as part of the deal. And I have to say that it worked fine. No problems, no complaints.Time passed. The seasons turned. Our free year's subscription lapsed. I had to renew. And I discovered that MacAfee has one of the most user-unfriendly websites it's ever been my displeasure to wade thru. I also discovered that I couldn't just renew the version I was using. Oh no! Too safe, too sane. I had to buy MacAfee Personal Firewall Plus!
The website made it hard to find the firewall software, hard to buy it (without buying extras I didn't need or want), and hard to download and install.
And let me just say this about that! That program sucks like a whore behind on her rent!
It was only then, after getting Firewall Plus running that I started having all the internet connection problems with my system. Problems so bad that I eventually gave up on fixing them (after reinstalling my OS two or three times in the vain hope that that would help, among other attempted fixes) and reinstalled Linux SuSe 9.0 in a dual-boot configuration.
Linux has been running fine. I'm even comfortable enough with it that I'm starting to toy with trying to install the 3D Linux drivers for my videocard (which looked way too difficult and arcane at first). But periodically I've tried booting into Windows again to see how things were going. And I learned things.
I learned that when Windows first boots up, the Firewall wasn't loading. And that was a GOOD thing, sadly, because it meant that Mozilla, Agent, Semagic (the LiveJournal client I'm using this very minute) and so forth would actually start and could connect to the internet. It was also a bad thing, of course, because it meant I was vulnerable to unwanted connections.
I learned that if I started the Firewall software manually, all of the above stopped working. Most of them wouldn't load at all. More often than not, my system became unstable and sometimes crashed. Not good.
So today I googled for free Windows firewall software (using Linux) and downloaded ZoneAlarm's free firewall software. I booted into Windows, nuked the MacAfee software and installed ZoneAlarm.
And, hey, guess what? Now I'm running a working firewall again and I can still connect to the internet! What a concept!
So, to sum up: ZoneAlarm good. MacAfee bad. MacAfee suxor!
