How would you like to be able to turn your Windows firewall off when your on the domain and then on when your in public or private networks?  Seems pretty easy, just open up and turn on/off at will, nope, it's easier than that, this can be automated.  Wouldn't it be neat if you could step on program (iTunes maybe) at the office, but allow it access from public and private networks?  Would you like to be able to configure some inbound and outbound firewall rules and you think the home user interface bites???

Wf.msc to the rescue!  This is one snap-inthat makes me think that the Windows Firewall might not be as bad as it looks.  Instead of only have rules on a per interface basis, you can set rules on a per network type basis.  You can have simple stuff like, "when I'm on the domain, turn the firewall off", or you can be trickier and say "when I'm on the domain, deny iTunes access to the network".  You can separately configure inbound and outbound on a per network type basis.

From this snap-in, you can also do exciting things like make rules that specify "only on domain and wireless", "only for this source and that destination address" and "only from this comptuer or user". 

How cool is that??  Needless to say, the Windows Firewall is looking pretty stout to me right now.  I'm still digging around in the firewall snap-in, but I also see a Monitoring node that needs to be explored!