Vista offers Advanced Firewall

With Windows XP, Service Pack 2, came the Windows Firewall.  A pretty basic software firewall, but good enough for a simple end user who does a little bit of email and web browsing. No outbound rules capability, but basic inbound stuff with ability to add port exceptions. In XP, I couldn't find a way to do port-ranges and that always frustrated me.

Then, I upgraded to Vista (Ultimate) and in the Windows Control Panel list, was the usual Windows Firewall option, which showed the usual dialog if opened from Control Panel > Windows Firewall (as a list). It had its usual ON/OFF status and exception list.

That is till recently when Mauricio pointed out that there's an Advanced Firewall control area now, that allows you to configure your network profiles and both In & Outbound rules as well as ranges and a bunch more stuff.







I still use an Antivirus program, Avast, for memory resident and browsing detection/worm prevention.

It appears that this new Firewall feature is present in ALL editions of Vista.
Compare Editions and then show details of Vista Firewall

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