Tiny Personal Firewall vs ZoneAlarm

Steve Holden sholden at holdenweb.com
Mon Nov 5 08:05:09 EST 2001


"Roger Due" <radue at thuntek.net> wrote in message
news:cdg8uto0sj2g8jm0f0iu15odf145uvsk0u at 4ax.com...
> 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.
>
For what it's worth I have been using WinRoute Light, another Tiny product,
to multiplex my five-host network out through a single cable IP with Network
Address Translation for over three years now. The only time I ever had a
problem (two years after buying the product, during a brief period of DSL
connection) Tiny got back to me within 24 hours with a sensible and helpful
response.

A good case for considering cost of ownership rather than cost of purchase:
Tiny shoud be encouraged.

[obDisclosure: I am a registered Tiny reseller, who has never resold
anything].

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/








More information about the Python-list mailing list