i am looking for a firewall other than windows ... for now it is going to be software ....
i want to run some tests to see how my firewall holds up ...

my firewall of choice at the moment is comodo 2.0 .... is that still one of the better ones out there?

and after a lot of reading on this site,mainly augie (i believe it was...and some others) i have found ....

Auditmypc , DSLreports GRC's shields

are these still some of the best/safe sites to test my firewall on?

ALSO i was curious about anonymous surfing ... i saw it on auditmypc's website ... is that a good idea to get something like that to help hide my identity as much as possible?

I think anonymous surfing stuff is only for those who are really paranoid about their identity. Going through a proxy to mask your IP address will slow down your connection, and I prefer to get the speed I'm paying for. Online anonymizers are OK but they disable things like flash and javascript so imho they're just annoying and only useful for getting around dumb school/work filters.

When I use a software firewall, I still use Comodo too. But as far as those tests, all they do is check to see if your ports are open. If you have a router with any type of security, you'll probably pass regardless of whether you have a software firewall or not. If you're behind a router, I kinda think the only thing a software firewall will do is prevent you from active attacks. It'll also notify you of programs accessing the internet which can prevent an attack but if you know what you're running it could just be an annoyance.

ah ok i see ...

but do you still think its worth having? ...over Msofts firewall?

a software firewall is definitely worth having as it also protects your privacy..e.g protects you from leaking data to the net not to mention allowing you to control which application can access the net or your computers registry. so if your using a software firewall just make sure you keep it regularly updated, also Microsoft's built in firewall is a load of garbage. By the way i just checks and there's a version 3 of comodo available (for the free version not sure about the paid for version)
Here's a review of the latest version http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2236657,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05079TX1K0000992 and it scored editors choice

I found Comodo to be very annoying with all the popups but definitely effective. I uninstalled it because I was too annoyed. The only firewall I ever really liked was Zone Alarm but now it started slowing down my web browsers too much so now I just use Windows firewall and I'm fine with that.

Mark

haha ya comodo can be very annoying at the beginnning while its learning all your programs and everything i will give you that. i was very annoyed by it haha. now it seems to be pretty good after i let it know what to do with everything.