I've also noticed in some @ home testing that when a SYN attack is launched against a machine running the MS SP2 firewall service it starts stumbling all over itself (mouse gets jerky, it eats up alot of CPU time). Now I know I'm about to speak linux, but I think it has more to do with the firewall being in "kernel" space than "user" space (hope that makes sense) Now as all know, this is the purpose of a SYN attack but even good ol Zone Alarm handled it more gracefully. *shrugs*

However, Zone Alarm is NOT installed and activated by default so I have to give credit where credit is due.

Now if only MS would stop pushing half finished **** out to market...