I have really learned a lot from this forum and the Adware/Spyware forum. Now, because of the information thrown around, I have removed my nortons and installed AVG with great results. Now I am looking into a comparison between Sygate and ZA. I have used ZA since version 3.1 with different levels of success. I have never received a worm/virus/hack while I have had ZA up, nor have I had an issue with my network sharing. However, and there is always a However, I have noticed a performance degredation on both the network and my server and laptops since the latest ZA update.

Owen has mentioned that ZA is a resource hog. I would like to know what everyone else has to say. I do trust Owen but I like to hear all experiences first before making a security change.

Thank you for all your input.

Of course, I'll have to offer my input on this . Just so you get the clear picture.

The earlier versions of ZA (2.X) were brilliant, and the security on the current version is still brilliant, but as the versions have increased, the size of the installation file has steadily increased and the programs resource usage as well.

I can't moan about the protection, I used ZA for about 3 months on my old 500Mhz, no problems, but as more updates rolled out, my 1MB broadband connection slowed down so terribly it resembled being back on dial up. And the startup time for the PC was horrendous.

And not from personal experience but from many people on other forums, it does cause some problems with home networks, denying connections, etc. It is dependent on your configuration.

I used to be a fan of ZA, and the majority of people used it, but many are choosing Sygate now. A lot of people do use ZA.

I also have a friend on an old Windows 98 machine. She has ZA installed and whenever the PC stops responding, she'll press Ctrl+Alt+Del and its nearly always vsmon.exe which stops responding, which is True Vector, a part of ZA.

As well as all this, there are many problems with the actual removal of the program, as with Norton, many have problems. Quite often people have to manually remove some of the program.

Thats not just my opinion, but of many other users and advanced users I know.

I have been using sygate for years with my network and have never experienced any problems. I have tried other firewalls, some of them paid for versions and none of them were as good as sygate.
I have never tried ZA personally, however after years of reading problems with networking on other forums ZA appears to cause major conflicts with networking.

I've used sygate for a few years now the only other firewall I've used was Norton and the main reason I ditched that was I had to pay for it..

I prefer sygate but i cannot get a net connection since i had the HD replaced unless i choose allow all, in a shields up test sygate gives a better result than ZA and i would recommend sygate over ZA any-day.