The firewall is awful. It cannot be turned off without also turning off virus protection. Not an intelligent design move. There are many reasons why you may want to turn off your firewall temporarily but retain anti-virus protection. Setting up port forwarding on the firewall is a pain.

  Performance takes a major hit from the firewall. I've turned it off.

  Anti-virus seems to be okay, though how is one really to tell?

  Program updates at odd times, which is an irritant if, for example, you're installing software or burning a CD or DVD and want all your CPU resources available for that task.

  Not as awful as Nortun is said to have become, but not outstanding either.

Jerry
The firewall is awful. It cannot be turned off without also turning off virus protection. Not an intelligent design move. There are many reasons why you may want to turn off your firewall temporarily but retain anti-virus protection. Setting up port forwarding on the firewall is a pain. Performance takes a major hit from the firewall. I've turned it off. Anti-virus seems to be okay, though how is one really to tell? Program updates at odd times, which is an irritant if, for example, you're installing software or burning a CD or DVD and want all your CPU resources available for that task. Not as awful as Nortun is said to have become, but not outstanding either. Jerry