Having a discussion at work regarding this, now I believe if your on a lan behind a hardware firewall or home router/firewall its fine and worth having on.
However, if you are connecting direct to the internet via usb modem you would want something stronger.
The aguement is that when you probe XP SP2 FW when on a USB modem it comes back all ports steath and thus secure because of this.
Now I realise that it always allows everything out, its incomings that's the issue, as even on a home router/firewall everything can go out.
Can anyone nail down why it's not a good idea or is it OK to use it, other than because it's microsoft etc
However, if you are connecting direct to the internet via usb modem you would want something stronger.
The aguement is that when you probe XP SP2 FW when on a USB modem it comes back all ports steath and thus secure because of this.
Now I realise that it always allows everything out, its incomings that's the issue, as even on a home router/firewall everything can go out.
Can anyone nail down why it's not a good idea or is it OK to use it, other than because it's microsoft etc