Any recommendations for good firewall software for an entry point computer on a home network? I inherited Norton 360 and it slows, slows.
Use Microsoft's free Windows Defender firewall and get behind a router. Routers are the best firewall. Change anti-virus to something like CA antivirus. There are also good free antivirus's out there too.
As stated hardware firewall on your router is always a good idea. I also use Eset Smart Security 4 which includes firewall, antivirus, email checking, etc. I have it on an XP machine and Vista 64bit and it works well without getting in the way. Norton and McAfee should be avoided.
hardware firewall or router not going to show you, if some unwanted/suspicious application are sending data FROM YOUR PC
Not trying to be wise here but the best Anti Virus software is yourself and good practices. All of them will slow you down.
Hardware router and then for software Comodo and Online Armor are two of the top free ones. Comodo seems to sink in a bit deep, and I had another problem with it. Been using OA for a good while and can't say much bad about it. Not sure about Vista, but Windows XP firewall can't stop outgoing connections, and is therefore one step above worthless.
Thanks all for advise. I've now running COMODO and Windows Defender - Norton 360 is gone. BTW: this is an old computer that I'm cleaning up with a lot of junk on it and is not dedicated to trading. What about Registry Cleaners, are they worth it? There's a number of commercial products that out there. I've done several scans (without registering) and I usually come up with 500> Registry err's to fix.
The best firewall is a hardware firewall. Note that a router that has some firewall features (they all do now) or acts like a firewall is not the same as a real firewall. If you want to monitoring outbound activity the firewall can send log records (syslogs) which you can then have another application monitor/report against. If you want to be really secure, configure the firewall to only allow the specific outbound access you need (to your broker, ISP DNS servers, etc). This type of deny-by-default configuration can be painful to setup but its going to be a lot more secure.
Some people argue that unless there's a specific problem you are trying to fix, cleaning out the registry doesn't do much and can mainly only hurt. Having said that.... I generally use Revo Uninstaller and Glary Utilities. Others like CCCcleaner. All are free and good. There are other good ones, I'm sure. Nowadays, it's not often you need a commercial product for much of anything on a personal computer. Oh yeah, forgot to mention when I mentioned Online Armor, I don't know if many others can do it, but it has a nice "run safer" option for every program. Click on that, it will put a green border around the program so you know it's on, and it will limit the user rights to that program, so even if something messes with it, it (hopefully) can't do much serious damage.