I'm 'evaluating' the latest Beta of Windows 7 Ultimate but found my existing A/V Suite (Outpost/Pro) causes BSOD. Rumor has it that AVG or Kaspersky have compatible products. Any input on this?
As far as the firewall is concerned, I'd stick it out with the built in one. You shouldn't be running a beta OS as your main system anyway, its for evaluation. I imagine the built in one is at least as good as Vista's and it might be more robust. Even in Vista you can make it block outgoing stuff just like a 3rd party firewall, its just tucked away in a hard to find spot.
Thanks for the info. Yep, Win/7 is in Beta on my Laptop. I just didn't want to have it connected to the web without some protection and the Win Firewall has historically been viewed as pretty lame. Perhaps the version in Win/7 is more robust? I might run LeakTest on it to see how it does. In the meantime, I snagged AVG8 which appears to be compatible (so far).