Because there are still tons of ways your machine can become infected. A software firewall looks at what is going on in your machine instead of just network traffic. So if you accidentally click OK, or click on a picture with an embedded worm, it can detect it and stop it. Yeah there is some overlap with antivirus; but a firewall takes a slightly different approaches and catches stuff anti-virus software might not. In short if you never practice unsafe computing, for example if you never ahem anything, then you can probably get by without a firewall. And if you don't let anybody who is less careful than you are on your computer or network. Or if you have a Mac or Linux rather than windows, then hardware alone is almost enough. But, if for any reason, you have windows, especially if you have computers networked in windows, then you do want a software firewall.
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It seems to me that "anti-virus software" + "a hardware firewall" does all that, but perhaps I'm missing something.
I use windows firewall. It is okay for my needs. Zonealarm fucked up my machine too.
I am grumpy because my host decided to upgrade me to Plesk without telling me. I must be in the middle of migration right now, because I've got all half functionality on everything. And their tech support chat is not going right now. I really don't want to sit on the phone with someone.
I'm looking to upgrade from my pokey 1GB flash drive.
Any recommendations? I was thinking I wanted one with some sort of protection (biometric or password), but am skeptical of the cross-platformability.
When I bought mine, 1GB was hot shit. 4GB would be nice, 16GB...well, depends on price.
What are you guys using?
Umm - 256 meg.
Not helping, I know.
Heh, I'm still excited about upgrading my 256mg to a 1G, myself.
Microcenter tends to have good prices.
A while back they had generic 2gb thumbs for $15...
Geeze, and I used to think that my 256meg was teh shiznit.
I've got a few SanDisk 1GB Mini Cruzers, and I think one of the 2 GB ones, also a couple of the 512 MB ones. They've been reliable and crossplatform. I've not used any with the biometrics or otherwise in them though.