We were impressed with the Kensington Personal Firewall's bundled configuration tool, which organizes the adapter's plentiful features into a few clear-cut screens. The detailed electronic user guide walks you through each feature, though the device does not ship with even a brief guide to its hardware components. You can use the configuration tool to block or permit specific URLs, activate port scanning and tracking, determine necessary levels of inbound and outbound packet filtering, allow certain applications to send info to the Net, and save different security profiles for the home, the office, and the remote hot spot you access most. True, the built-in Windows Firewall within XP Service Pack 2 also offers some of these features, such as inbound packet filtering, but its lack of outbound filtering and its dubious performance in certain areas may make you feel more comfortable with the Kensington device in place.
In our informal tests, the Kensington Personal Firewall lived up to its data-protection claims. Whenever we plugged it in while connected to various wireless networks, it immediately began notifying us (via small status pop-ups from the system tray) that it was blocking foreign packets that were being sent to our computer. And when we changed the adapter's default yellow-light setting, which allows some traffic, to red, we received no traffic at all (and weren't able to send any ourselves).
Kensington offers a standard one-year warranty and toll-free phone support with the Personal Firewall. However, the phone lines are open only Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. PT. The FAQ section of the company's support Web site returned just a few loosely related hits when we conducted a search on the Personal Firewall. Your only other support option is to submit an e-mail message via the site.
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