Hey Paul, here is my experience with firewalls.

Comodo free firewall is good but it has short term memory, constantly keeps forgetting my preferences.
Did not try the Comodo Antivirus since i already have Norton, so i cant comment on that
I used PC tools firewall for a week just out of curiosity, it seems slightly better than Comodo but since i didnt use it for a long period i dont know it's Pros and Cons
Norton owns PC tools, but it manages its own operations most people dont know this. So it must be pretty good
Zone alarm firewall consumes a whole lot of resources, so stay away from it unless you bought it.
Online armor has been very good (thanks to Avinash, of course). But if you are an online Armor++user, i downloaded it from giveawayoftheday for my other desktop, you need to turn off the mail shield if you dont use a mail client like outlook. And if you have problems with your browsing speed, i would suggest turning off web shield. It has to scan the web page thoroughly and block stuff ,so it would take a long time. Just use the firewall, program guard and Antivirus. They are brilliant

Hope its useful
Bye