Zone Alarm help

[MrWooster]

Hi,

I recently ditched norton internet security (guess why) and installed AVG and zone alarm. AVG works great but I am having some issues configuring zone alarm.

Firstly - do I really need a firewall? Is it essential?

Basically, if I enable zonealarm it blocks EVERYTHING. I can't get on the internet, none of my poker software works. I went through the settings and enables most things, so now the internet and some of my poker software works, but there are still a load of things which are blocked and I can't find how to make it all work. I have gone into the program control area to try to enable all the programs I use but there is still a lot of stuff that does not work.

Anyone know of a good guide to setting up zonealarm?

Thanks