Desent free firewall for Vista

[JuggaloBrotha]

My new laptop came with Vista (only till windows 7 is publicly released) and I was wondering what free software firewall(s) would be good for this thing?

[Nightwalker83]

I use PCTools Firewall Plus:

http://www.pctools.com/

[mendhak]

There's also ZoneAlarm (but not for x64) and Comodo.

[mburr]

I use ZoneAlarm, not a bad firewall, but if you are using x64, I don't know. I'd do a Google search for free firewalls if I were you, ask some friends and family, research some reviews, and refrain from using Vista's built-in firewall. I haven't seen anything wrong with it, but for all we know, there might be a loophole in it.

[mendhak]

They wouldn't deliberately introduce a loophole into their products. They're a business software development company - they want to give you reasons to use it.

[Kasracer]

Just use the build in Firewall. Unlike Windows XP it protects incoming and outgoing traffic. You [probably] don't need anything fancier.

[JuggaloBrotha]

Just use the build in Firewall. Unlike Windows XP it protects incoming and outgoing traffic. You [probably] don't need anything fancier.

At home, not really, the router's firewall is turned on as well. However at school and the coffee shops, I would like a little more piece of mind.

[Kasracer]

At home, not really, the router's firewall is turned on as well. However at school and the coffee shops, I would like a little more piece of mind.

So to get additional piece-of-mind you want another product to run in your system tray and take up more resources to do the same-thing? Well whatever makes you feel better...

[JuggaloBrotha]

So to get additional piece-of-mind you want another product to run in your system tray and take up more resources to do the same-thing? Well whatever makes you feel better...

No, the other firewall would run all the time and the vista one would be turned off, no sense in running 2 firewalls.

[Kasracer]

No, the other firewall would run all the time and the vista one would be turned off, no sense in running 2 firewalls.

I wasn't trying to imply that you would run both. What I'm saying is that I haven't seen a more efficient firewall for Windows than the built-in one. Most third party firewalls (even the good 2.15 Kerio) have additional features like notifications that are unnecessary and very rarely useful.

Obviously you can choose whatever firewall you want I just don't see why you'd want to replace a well working firewall that's probably better integrated into the OS. Things like mburr's "loophole" is just conspiracy theory FUD and not something you'd need to worry about.