Tiny Personal Firewall vs ZoneAlarm

[Roger Due]

I recently implemented Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0.15 (12 Oct 01) on
our Win2K server that also servers as an application development
workstation, email, & internet access. TPF is easy to setup and
operate and seems to work well. You can get a copy from
www.tinysoftware.com. It understood that I was on a local network and
configured itself properly and set itself up to run as a service. By
default it configures itself for medium security, which means that you
are prompted when one of your applications initiates outside
communication and you can either accept or deny this access and have
the option to tell it to create the appropriate rule for the next
time.

Before I installed TPF, I had downloaded their 37-page pdf manual and
read it. For someone who is not an expert on firewalls, I found it
easy to understand and much prefer this over help built into the
program.

By using IE & Eudora & Agent to access the internet, I quickly
configured TPF to allow their traffic. I also used www.grc.com to
refine access further. Then used all the tests found on
http://scan.sygatetech.com  to further validate the effectiveness of
TPF. So far it has passed every test.

Now why did I switch to Tiny Personal Firewall when I had already
purchased ZoneAlarm Pro 2.6 back in June and ZoneAlarm seems to get
all the publicity? The primary reason is that the people at ZoneAlarm
don't have a clue about customer service!!! I tried 5 different times
via email, each time rewording the request, to get an answer as to how
I could get the latest version of ZoneAlarm Pro 2.6 to use with my
license code to install at this time instead of having to install the
older 2.6 version first and then upgrade. Never once did they answer
the question satisfactorily. Of course they don't provide phone
support, but when I managed to get hold of a sales person he was
annoyed and hung up on me without helping.

So I started doing some additional checking. Some of you have
mentioned WinRoute Pro and I have seen reasonably good reviews of Tiny
Personal Firewall. I placed a call to Tiny and got hold of one of
their sales people. What a switch!!! He was very helpful. I didn't
mention anything about ZoneAlarm at first, but had a lot of questions
about what would be best for our configuration. We decided that TPF
was the way to go. I then called another person who writes reporting
utilities for different firewalls, and he confirmed what I had already
figured out. He also uses TPF and is satisfied.

Today I called back the salesman at Tiny and thanked him and then
logged onto their web site and paid my $39, since this is being used
in a business environment. For personal use, it is free.

Hope this helps someone else who might be thinking about firewalls.
-- Roger