I've never had an active firewall for as long as I remember. I just read an article on Firewalls because I want to know why people use them. Ever since my folks upgraded to DSL, we've always had a linksys router. First, the model that was supplied to us via Earthlink [i.e.: ended up shitting on us], and last year at some point I went ahead and bought a WRT150N, which has been superb IMO. In the article, it explains that hardware firewalls [routers] are extremely secure and easy to configure. I have static IPs set up on my network [like my laptop never changes from 192.168.1.102, as an example.] I forward certain ports for uTorrent and other games/etc that need it.
Do I NEED a firewall? I've only had a bad viral infection via limewire when I used to use that, and that was due to my own stupidity at the time. [some virus with a hello kitty logo] Ever since then, I just scan every week or more than once a week with Spybot and Ad Aware. I also use the Powersuite from Uniblue every once in a while to speed things up, clean the registry, etc. I never see my PC [any of them] slow down or get infected just through normal internet browsing. It would have to be deliberately downloaded adware hax/keygens warez kind of shit for me to get anything remotely bad. The worst I've had it since the hello kitty thing are tracking cookies, and everyone has that.
Ideas? comments, etc.