My new Photoshop CS3 suite is on the way so I am excited about that and can hardly wait to really test the horsepower of this new Vista machine with some stuff that needs lots of resources.
I'm not real happy about what I have been reading about the new Vista firewall. At first glance, it is looking good, incoming blocking is fine and there seems to be an added outgoing feature, except for one thing... you can either turn it on or off. Unless you have a masters degree in VISTA, you can't allow (or not) some programs to "phone home," and if you have the outgoing part of the firewall turned off (the default setting)or on, there is no way of knowing what programs are getting on the Internet without your permission.
The first place I went to was ZoneLabs to see if their latest ZoneAlarm is up to speed for Vista. It isn't, but hopefully it will be soon and I'll have my security comfort level back. What I like most about ZoneAlarm is the way you can "teach" it the programs you want to allow Internet access and which ones you don't want to allow for one reason or another. I'm afraid the VISTA firewall is sorely lacking in the outgoing department on this issue.
Here are a few links I gathered for you:
Firewall Reviews
ZoneAlarm vs Windows Vista firewall
Vista fails on Outbound
