Firewalls
A firewall is important. Windows has a bulit in firewall which is effective, i use better protection as i found out how many ports were insurure.
Two excellent free firewalls are
Zonealarm and
Sygate.
Sygate:
I personally use Sygate. Although Zonealarm has better protection, it takes up a huge amount of process memory are start-up is extremely slow.
Firewalls protect you from hackers are block certain content from entering your computer and for certain programs connecting to the internet. You should regularly
test your firewall.
It is recommended you have only one firewall.