I am also using Win 7 Firewall Control and I’m satisfied with it. One correction though, it runs completely independently of the Windows Firewall and handles both incoming and outgoing connections. Even if Windows Firewall allows an incoming attempt, W7FC will still block it until you allow it there as well. Sphinx recommends leaving the Windows Firewall enabled if you are using the free version of W7FC but you can disable it if you have the paid version.

This comes from their forums. VFC is the former name of the program (Vista Firewall Control).

All VFC versions filter the traffic in the both direction (incoming and outgoing), but VFC free can not manage system (located in c:\windows\*) applications, only VFC Plus protects all the applications including system ones. So using VFC Free Windows built-in firewall may be used to protect system applications.

This is not the whole story though, W7FC does manage the system apps in a way but you can not edit or delete the rules it automatically creates for them. This is what the rules look like. The ones that say “enable all(read only)” are system files. You might get alarmed by the enable all part but this is exactly the same thing the built in Firewall does. It automatically creates incoming exceptions for system files that need them and allows all outgoing like it does for everything.