Hi Speedy!

Personally i really like TinyWall. And NO it’s not chatty at all since it works differently to other firewalls and does not display any popups. For sure i would be using it if i didn’t already have a security suite with in-built fw. The other 2 options you mentioned are very good aswell, only thing i don’t like is the price of the SphinxSoftware product compared to the other 2. I suggest you try them all out and pick the one you feel most comfortable with.

http://tinywall.pados.hu/features.php
http://tinywall.pados.hu/faq.php
Thread on Wilders: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=309739

The no-popup approach

The problem

Most firewalls are based on the same interaction principles. Basically, whenever an application is trying to access the internet, display a popup asking the user what to do. This is not only annoying for the user, but also less than secure. On an average computer, a lot of applications are trying to access the internet but not all of them actually require a network connection. Displaying a popup for each app makes it very probable that unneeded applications will gain access to the network, as it increases the likelyhood of the user granting unnecessary rights to some applications. Also, depending on how a particular firewall works, the user can be asked multiple times for even the same program, which will also lead to the user becoming less and less aware of what he actually allows.

The solution

TinyWall takes a different approach. It does not display popups that “urge users to allow”. In fact, it will not notify you of any blocked action. Instead of showing popups, TinyWall makes it easy to whitelist or unblock applications by different means. For example, you can just initiate whitelisting by a hotkey, then click on a window that you want to allow. Or, you can select an application from the list of running processes. (Of course, the traditional way of selecting an executable also works.) This approach avoids popups but still keeps the firewall very easy to use. It will also limit the list of unblocked programs to those that the user really needs, which is optimal from a security standpoint.

Another one that would deserve an honorable mention is Windows Firewall Notifier but that does not play ball with Windows 8, yet. :wink: http://wokhan.online.fr/progs.php?sec=WFN

Cheers!