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For over a year I've gone without a 3rd party software based firewall because I've never felt the need. My routers in the past have done a really great job at advancing my security but what if I didn't have a really great firewall? I'm planning on giving 3 firewalls a chance to prove themselves. I'll run Comodo, ZoneAlarm, and Outpost all for 3 days and review how they take a toll on my computing experience. This will mainly be experience and not number for number performance. I'll start with my good old friend Outpost. Outpost Firewall Pro Day 1 When Outpost made their free firewall solution it looks like they forgot about their 64 bit users. I can only share a sigh with my fellow 64 bit users but hope is not lost, we'll instead try their Pro version which does have 64 bit support. Installing Outpost was a very smooth process with an automatic update to insure that your protection would be up to the latest standards. It did require a restart but with a high performance computer it didn't take long. Starting the computer was much rougher then before. Firefox refused to start up and Windows Media Player froze as Outpost began analyzing them. Once turned on, Firefox also had the same reaction as Windows Media Player but fixed itself quickly. Even with all of the analyzing, Outpost turned a blind eye when testing known bad websites were tested. To make things worse, Outpost detected that our fresh trial license had expired a few minutes with in our testing. Day one proved that Outpost just wasn't cutting the cake when it comes to basic security or even trials versions of security software. My early experience with Outpost lead me to instead move on the list. ZoneAlarm Day 1 Installing ZoneAlarm was very simple and quick. The installer is actually just a small download client which receives the latest revision from the ZoneAlarm server and installs it. Sadly, ZoneAlarm does require a really annoying toolbar to be installed and does change your homepage. Removing the toolbar is simple but fixing the ZoneAlarm browser modifications does take some looking inside of the configurations files. ZoneAlarm doesn't require a restart and works out of the box which I really liked but for test sakes I restarted anyway. Unlike our first test, ZoneAlarm started quickly and smoothly. It silently began watching over my connection and began asking questions on program permissions. Even with ZoneAlarm on guard, programs did not lag once during our testing and the experience was great. Much like Avira, this program does come with pop up boxes advertising it's paid security suite. Overall for a free program, the ads aren't very bad and the security feels very good. Day 2 After a bit of digging into applications and files, ZoneAlarm began to show how watchful it really was. Constantly the firewall would ask if a connection was safe. I would of preferred a stealthy firewall but by asking instead, I feel I'm more in control of accepted and rejected connections.