nCircle's Tyler Reguly says "As a personal choice, I won't use third-party firewall software. I find them to be too resource-intensive and too much of a pain. So, I would love it if the Windows Firewall was more powerful."

I should note, though, that perhaps there is a correlation between "more powerful" and "resource-intensive". Perhaps the reason third-party personal firewalls eat up more resources is related to the more comprehensive protection they provide.

This may be an area where Microsoft simply needs to strike the right balance between security and performance.

2. Hidden File Extensions. Microsoft continues to hide known file extensions by default. In other words, rather than displaying a full file name like 'pcworld.docx', Windows will only display 'pcworld'.

The idea is to make things more simple or user-friendly. We don't want to confuse the end-user with frivolous details like 'docx', or 'xls', or 'mp3'.