XYplorer Beta Club

Hello, people.

I'd like to receive some personal inputs from you as I need to replace Sygate Personal Firewall.

Pre-requisites:

-intercept outgoing connections, asking to allow or block connection;
-win 7 compatible (the only reason why I'm abandoning Sygate);
-portable (or as less intrusive as possible);
-free.

SterJo stands for "JOke on STERoids" backwards.

Thanks in advance.

I tried many portable firewall (included SterJo), none satisfy me.
Sadly, but Windows Firewall seems to be the only decent option (with Windows Firewall Control plugin)

Have you take a look at Sphinx-Soft Windows 8 Firewall Control:
http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/

It satisfies all those conditions that you require. Small and portable, blocks outgoing and incoming, Win7+ compatible.
I recommend staying with the free version though since the Pro version is a bit too... heavy in terms of features. It's still lightweight and all but there are just TOO many features as well as TOO MANY built in rules that might end up confusing you. Good stuff though.

The topic title is even wrong, it should be "packet filters", not "firewalls".

For the time being I ended up using Sphinx soft. Thanks for suggesting it, Enternal. After (not thorughly! Too little time, so many reads...) reading some reviews all around plus your highlight, it seems the best choice I could do. Although I must read Matousec's tests as well as a "Matousec Proactive Security Challenge Analyzed" for a more informed decision...

As they offer portable solutions I'm considering the use of a plus version - the free version limits control of system-folder hosted files.

On a side note the company is very, very responsive and seems to care about customers as I not even threw the money and got comprehensive answers until my doubts were fully satisfied.