I think the best defence against getting a PC ‘zombied’ is to install as little software as possible on it (only trusted software from trusted sources), keep it up-to-date and to avoid accessing anything you don’t trust. Once some bad software is on your machine, it’s essentially game over. Yes, a software firewall at that point might be able to prevent other machines getting infected, but it really is too late.

But having said that, I accept that this is an ‘ideal world’ sort of scenario I’m asking for. In the real world, with non-technical users, it might be difficult to enforce those conditions.

I personally tend to rely on the built-in Windows Firewall on the Windows machines that I run and are responsible for, in combination with a firewall at the router level. Again, though, I make sure those machines don’t do anything ‘dodgy’, so I trust the software installed there.

So to actually answer your question – I’m not really looking at that type of product for the stuff I do, so I’m not sure what to recommend. This list of recommended firewalls at Lifehacker might be something to look at, though. Again, as I say, I haven’t looked at this type of product, so I can’t personally vouch for any of them.

I recently installed Zone Alarm and ran into problems with some apps not working unless I turned off Zone Alarm, but also not logging anything in ZA’s log! I started a couple of threads on their discussion forum that turned real geeky, real fast! Unless I’m willing to talk ports and filtering that’s a no-starter!

But non-geeks can’t talk ports and filtering.

The biggest problem in PC’s today is that security software like malware-/virus- checkers and firewalls STILL require too much geekiness for Aunt Martha and Uncle Ned, so they don’t do them, and thus there are vast armies of zombied PC’s speading trouble!

Thanks for the great tutorial!! Your youtube video helped me out alot.

Michael

You say the ribbon is useful to you – but it is that much more useful than the existing menu structure where you probably knew roughly where everything you needed was? Is it really worth the massive overhaul for something that is merely useful and doesn’t seem to provide you massive benefit?

The other key issue is that many less techie users find themselves needing retraining to use the new interface – and this can be extremely frustrating, particularly if they are switching between machines using the old UI and the new UI, or only just became comfortable with the old system!

I’ve had the same problem you describe with Helvetica Bold on Windows. Helvetica and Oblique work fine, but when you try to make some Helvetica text bold, it simply turns into Arial.

I don’t know what it is about Helvetica Bold and I’m afraid I don’t have a solution, but I do have the same issue.

Nice Post