Win 8 installation/security

[OldRoy]

I'm about to take advantage of the Win 8 upgrade deal for my secondary PC, a self built Intel Q6600 XP Pro/32 box with 4 Gb RAM. I currently use this very little but was thinking of configuring it as a test-bed for all my main applications under Win 8 rather than immediately updating the AMD Win 7/64  box which is my primary PC.

I was wondering if anyone had an opinion about the security of Win 8, specifically whether it's now still desirable to install 3rd party firewalls like Zone Alarm?

I've run the MS Win 8 update evaluation tool on both machines but I think a "real" test is the only way of evaluating Win 8. And the upgrade is currently very cheap.
Roy
Uh huh... forget it. The offer expired on 31st Jan. It''ll be win 7 and XP for a good long time to come.

[John.Murray]

Win 7's network zones feature works great; when a new connection is detected it will prompt you for:

Public - SMB file sharing & Network discovery, OFF
Work - You trust the network, SMB (128bit) ON, Network discovery, OFF
Home - Home "workgroup" - private key required for filesharing, SMB (128bit) ON, Network discovery, ON

If you need to check your existing network connection, look at your Active Network, in Network and Sharing Center

Win 8 continues this with the addition of cloud-based doc storage if you choose to accept it.

I've not been impressed with any 3rd party software-based firewalls for some time.  There's no substitute for a good hardware based firewall, Sonicwalls are excellent, but expensive for the SOHO.  A nice alternative is pointing your existing router to OpenDNS....

[neile]

Windows 8 (like Windows 7) has an integrated firewall feature, and unlike Windows 7 comes with virus scanning built in (what used to be Microsoft Security Essentials, a well-regarded free virus scanner).

There's no need to bog your new computer down with add-on firewalls or virus scanning software.

Neil