Firewall choice for novice pc user and its proper LAN configuration?

A good firewall choice for a novice pc user is ZoneAlarm. It basically does everything itself. I have it and it seems to work great! You just have to make sure that the Windows firewall is turned OFF. It's not good for the computer to have two firewalls running together - it causes a lot of errors. Good luck! Oh, and by the way, the Windows firewall that comes pre-installed on all computers running Windows pretty much sucks. You can download ZoneAlarm at www.filehippo.com.