All though Zonealarm is good, Just not my favorite, Zonealarm has allot of problems and does not work well with allot of other software..I do not recommend it.. There is a big difference between windows XP firewall and windows 7 firewall… XP firewall only protects you one way.. And Windows 7 is a much better firewall… As for Antivirus , i would use AVG free or If you want a good setup with AV and firewall, then use PC tools .. It is free.. If you do a little research on google you can find allot of AV and firewall for free..
I use zone alarm on one computer and Komodo on another for firewalls. I really dont have a problem with either of them and they are both free. For Antivirus, I used to use AVG but it seemed to take up a lot of system resources, so now both my computers are running Avast which is free as well. You just need to register it every year which is kind of a pain but hey, its free
I’d like to throw something out there to all of you regarding Antivirus software:
I’ve been an avid AVG fan for years now. I was looking to see if there was something better out there and to my surprise, Microsoft won me over with “Microsoft Security Essentials”. Its very simply and easy to use and according to this forum, MSE has better detection than AVG but AVG has better features. Download it here