I use the older version of ZoneAlarm Antivirus + Firewall Pro, mainly for it's excellent application control feature. I recently tried the free trial of ZoneAlarm Antivirus + Firewall Pro NextGen (version 4.2.712.19773) to see if I wanted to upgrade. But I have returned to the older version since NextGen's application control no longer asks if you want to allow permission or not. When set to max security, the old version used to notify you whenever a new or updated program tried to access the internet, accept incoming connections or modify the registry in a significant way. The popup gave you the option to allow or block the action, as well as tick a box to remember your choice in future. NextGen simply adds the program to it's application control list with an "allow" setting automatically and silently without asking. You can go in and change the setting to "block" later, but of course you have no idea anything has happened, so why would you? And this only seems to apply to internet access, there is no control at all for registry modifications. This is less intrusive, sure, but provides no real control over programs. The old ZoneAlarm also has auto-learning mode and game mode to reduce or completely eliminate popups if you wish, permanently or temporarily. NextGen give you no choice. There were a number of missing features in NextGen compared to the older ZoneAlarm, but this is the main thing that has caused me to stick with the old ZoneAlarm Pro. It would be good if it was implemented in NextGen too. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 2