I just got a new Win 7 PC, and I loathe the default firewall. My previous XP system ran Sygate; and while obsolete, it worked great and I wasn’t hacked. Unfortunately, it won’t run on Win 7, and there’s no alternative.
What is a good shareware firewall I should look into?
I don’t think you’d want a shareware firewall. In general, they will stop working after a few days to get you to buy them.
Here’s a list of the best freeware firewalls, though.
Forget software firewalls, they are more trouble than they are worth. Go to Walmart/Best Buy/Office Depot/local mom&pop computer store and pick up a home broadband internet/Wi-Fi access point router like a linksys or netgear and install it between the cable/dsl modem and your computer. Let the hardware firewall in the router do the heavy lifting instead of your pc and get local WI-Fi access to your home network and the ability to share your internet connection between all the machines on your LAN. I have been using a Linksys WRT54G for over a year without complaint.
I have a Netgear router already, and it’s configured. It won’t do me any good when I take my laptop out of the house.