wfw isnt that bad, its better than nothing. i just use it to know when programs are trying to make connections to the net that are NOT suppose to....like this program i downloaded the other day...a memory address hacker. now why that program would need to access the net i dont know but WFW did its job to alert me that it was not being haved. i never really like firewalls to begin with. i have been on the net for quite a while and i remember when sub7 was popular to stick in everything and it was a pain in the ass to block....Period. even zone alarm...uhhh i dont even remember the other ones back then but they didn't do the job. but im getting kind of off topic, if you want a general baseline security measure that doesnt require any download time or $$ use it. but sygate (if its still free) is a decent one though i hope they fixed the bug with that screwed up long filename that converted to the old 8char length during installation and basically rendered the firewall useless and popped error messages every time you started it.