Ditching the software firewall?

[Vulcan]

That's silly statement. Most of the households have LANs with multiple PCs and Laptops.
What if your kid plugs his/her infected laptop into your LAN switch? Imagine the possibilities...

You'd be pretty dumb to rely on low cost consumer router/firewall as your single point of defense on just one of many points of entry.

Do you really have to be told, or you'll figure it out?

Told what by whom? If only you had an inkling of how silly your advice is.

Good AV software takes care of that, overflow attacks through common ports are already protected. Most users end up opening their Personal Firewalls anyway to enable file/print sharing and other LAN/WAN activities anyway.

The only time a Personal Firewall may be of use is if your AV software completely sucks or dates from the 90's.

[Masherbrum]

I've been running Threatfire ever since one of you guru's recommended it for anyone running AVG over a year ago.

Since install it has caught 3 or 4 infections, stopped the process, told me about it. Then deleted and killed it before it could do any damage. In short, it catches it early, before it can disable your AV protection.

One time 3 seconds after I closed Threatfire, AVG came up and said HEY you have a virus but by the time it had finished scanning it couldn't find the file. Because it was already deleted and gone.

I do get a warning now and then, usually when I'm installing new software. Normally that the program is changing registry etc. I did upgrade to AVG8 and after 2 weeks of battling with it over a false positive ended up dumping it.

Just running Threatfire now, although I have used the online housecall scan just to make sure I'm still clean.
Was thinking I might end up taking a look at Avast, but haven't done it yet. Just haven't felt the need.

My opinion, lose the firewall, get Threatfire. Put your AV on the back burner.

I download Threatfire and PC Tools Free AV.   I like them both and will use them for a while. 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I have a firewall and an antivirus running only on my wifes computer, she sucks sh.. from ladies ring e-mail every day. Women and their idiotic chain emails are probably the number one threat to network safety. We get videos in mail sent from government offices for example.

I gave my mother only my spam-dump account on hotmail. She has sent me about a hundred messages I never bothered to read as I'm one of the 100 recipients. Gee how d'ya think spammers get e-mail addresses so easy?

[Skuzzy]

My Wife is the same way.  I solved my own headaches by subnetting our LAN so she is own her own subnet behind her own router.  Allows me to keep my box free of anti-this and anti-that programs.

Her computer is constantly being wrecked.  There are probably 4 or 5 viruses on it right now and untold amounts of spyware/malware.  Even though she runs anti-virus (McAfee,..OY!), anti-spyware (Adaware, Spybot, and something else) and some other file security something or another.

I just look at when she boots it up and shke my head.  Once every 6 months, or so, it gets so bad I have to re-install the operating system.