It is true that most people don't need a firewall, but firewalls are pretty much the only way to actually see what is happening. I have never used zone alarm, but i am guessing that it isn't that great of a program. The only reason people use it is because it is so easy to setup. And just because you have a firewall installed doesnt mean you are safe. You will still get viruses, you will still get trojans, And maybe, just maybe the firewall will stop the trojans. The Tiny Personal Firewall is great i think, because it shows you all open connections, and a summary of your upload/download speed. It shows you what applications have open ports, and who they are connecting too. That way, you know what is happening, and helps put you in charge of you network connection. It still isn't going to fully protect you, but if you have a basic firewall and a good anti-virus software, you will atleast have peace of mind. I know what NightShift means though, because a lot of people are paranoid, and they all think that zonealarm is going to save them. IT WON'T.

All i'm saying is that Tiny is great to find stats on network connections. Xolox doesnt tell you ANYTHING about what it is doing, so if you want to know more, download Tiny, you might be surprised at what you can find out.