1. Why be concerned with system resources if you have XP (or 2000)? They don't have the resource problem that plaqued 95/98/ME.

System resources problems with NT/2000/XP are practically non existent. I heard a radio show Saturday where a guy was asking where he could find out what his resources were using up. He said it was easy to find on 98SE, but couldn't find it on XP. The answer of course is, don't worry about it. The only problem you may have is if you're running a large number of start up programs that are really not necessary. This could possibly slow your system down. You have to watch these programmers and what they consider necessary.

2. Do the other firewalls really protect as well as ZoneAlarm, which is the only one (unless things have changed recently) that passed ALL the security tests.

As far as passing the test, most do to some degree or another but ZA always seems to be the one to beat. I never had any problems with ZA on any platform and with XP it seems to just roll along doing it's job.