I've only dealt with Cisco ASA's in the past. But have heard Checkpoint firewalls are much better.
Can you run Checkpoint Firewalls on an PC using an emulator like you can with Cisco ASA?
How good is Checkpoints documentation on their firewalls?
Checkpoint FW are better from a management perspective. You manage all of your policies in the smart dashboard, and push it to your devices. With Cisco, you gotta go to each ASA and make your rules. If you work for a big company with hundreds of firewalls, it'll become a pain real fast.
Here's the documentation for R75:
https://supportcenter.checkpoint.co...doGoviewsolutiondetails=&solutionid=sk58362#3
And yeah you can run it in a VM. I've ran R65 and R70 in a VM, you just gotta find the right ISO (I believe I used the SPLAT version). It runs as Linux.
The cool thing about it is you can have your ASA running in GNS3, your CheckPoint running in a VM, and have them communicate like they're on a live network.
I was using it to go for my CCSA cert, but CheckPoint be acting real funny style with their cert books.
Check Point eStore
$600 for the damn training kit
.
After I pass my CCIE Security, I'll probably take the plunge and buy the book. I have way more Cisco experience than CheckPoint, and I think it's been holding me back a little bit in my career.