[driftdiver]

Bitdefender crashed my system. I use avast and have had no problems.

“I’m not defenseless even without a firewall app, because I have a hardware router. “

THIS IS NOT TRUE. Firewalls will not stop email viruses or web based viruses. Nor will they stop attacks which use open ports.

[savedbygrace]

I understand that, and I probably should have worded that statement differently. I would not want to run without a software firewall, but the hardware firewall does provide some protection, thus I’m not ‘defenseless’.

What sort of system do you have? WinXP? Dell? Home made? How old?

I built this WinXP SP2 box some years ago, so it’s getting long in the tooth. An old Asus 2.4GHz mobo in an Antec 1080 full tower, a tank of a case.

[RSmithOpt]

Most folks out there (60-70%) never change their router's default IP address and password, not to mention deploying WPA2 and MAC filtering.

That's one of the biggest security problems for most users addicted to the Internet.

[Poser]

“THIS IS NOT TRUE. Firewalls will not stop email viruses or web based viruses. Nor will they stop attacks which use open ports.”

I believe the routers do stop the open port attacks, however. Educate me if I am wrong on this.

I run a router with no firewall on the computer.