McAfee's firewall is ok, I have Win XP SP2 myself and im not even sure i can trust windows built in firewall, i mean like come on isn't a firwall suppose to be updated to be come stonger against certain attacks like "Newtear" attacks among other type of attacks. Although for some reason or another my firewall abruptly stopped working for like 2 seconds, so i immediatly got off the internet and did a full system for virii and spyware, fortunetly none were found, it seems that even for like 2 seconds of your firewall being down, sometimes thats all is need to compromise your system. Firewall's are as essential as virii scanners, because they both work hand in hand.