The only thing that I am wondering about with firewall is if it restricts things like messangers.
I have come across ppl who have mentioned that they cannot get their messangers to work because of their firewall.
A Firewall doesn't restrict a program if the owner/user has decided that a specific action shouldn't be restricted.
If there are any problems with a specific program and a firewall, it's almost always due to the users bad configuration or otherwise the use of a bad program.
A good Firewall should be easy to handle even for a beginner when creating rules.
In short, you allow or disallow programs to interact over the Internet when the firewall asks what to do with specific requests from a program for the first time.
Totro also has posted some general advices
here and from there you can also reach a link to Mitch (Phantom Phixer) great webpage for further information.
And yes... I've also helped people when they've got trouble with for instance MS Messenger and their firewall, and the problems has been due to Messenger every time.
For me, that's no good reason to forget all thoughts about a firewall, but rather a reason to perhaps consider a change to another of all the available chat program (Miranda, Trillian etc.).
Jason
