light firewall with decent outbound?

I am a solo gamer, tinkerer, overclocker and thus frequent rebooter. My reboot time is 65 seconds, apps load in less than one second, and would like to maintain that. I have XP sp2, behind a NAT router with SPI.

Basically, I want decent outbound protection with no performance hit, not fort knox with decreased performance and asking me if I really want to open a file I just clicked on. I would just like the extra protection of something that stops some malicious program primarily from phoning home (with my info) before I see it. I am tech savy, dont mind popups at first.

I have tried new versions of comodo, ZApro, Jetico all were unacceptable because they all slowed down reboot time about 30 seconds, and they all make opening programs less snappy (ZAPro ridiculously so).

I tried Look n stop, loved the 0 performance hit. But it excels in inbound, lacking in outbound. I need the opposite, otherwise I would have that.

I bought Privatefirewall 5, again 0 performance hit, decent outbound, thought I had my program. But after paying for it 3 weeks ago, I reinstalled my OS (after trying a zillion programs, wanted fresh install). Discovered the registration key I bought was only good for one install. I have emailed them twice and no reply. Whether I just paid for 3 weeks of a firewall or not remains to be seen. But I have no patience for that crap.

So back to the drawing board. If look n stop improves there outbound, I am there. But until then, any tips on minimal performance hit, decent outbound programs for me to try would be appreciated.

 

You can try Online Armor v2 and if thats doesnt satisfy you then all I can think is to use a firewall or router for inbound protection and then a separate program for outbound protection.

This thread mentions some apps you can use for outbound protection.

 

Jetico v1 should load very quickly even in slow computers

 

Sorry if this is a bit out topic, but when you talk about look n stop's excellent inbound protection, does that mean some firewalls have a better inbound protections than others ? (I thought they all 'do' the same things, cover the same inbound attacks, and 'act' the same way). This is what I've been asking on many threads in here, yet the only answer I've found was, 'windows firewall is enough for inbound protection' which I doubt !

Anyways, as a suggestion, I can only advise you to give Sygate / Online Armor / ProSecurity / & maybe Comodo v3 a try

 

See these posts made by Stem:
#35
#38

 

thx !