TCP connection leak?

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Hi. I have a new Inspiron 1545 laptop (will replace my desktop soon!), with Vista x64 SP2, 4 GB RAM, and a marvel 88e8040 fast PCIe NIC. I also have ZAPRO 8.0.298.000. For antivirus I use ESET NOD32 (x64 version). Now I have noticed a weird slowdown problem, especially after I've used networking for some time (1 day+). I've noticed that TCP-Z (TCP-Z, Best TCP/IP Patch: TCP-Z Center) shows me that my established TCP connections keep on increasing and almost never seem to go down as time go by and I keep on accessing the Internet. Now I currently have only 1 IE instance running, and I currently have 303 established connections shown in TCP-Z! Also, I used "netstat -ab" to look at my connections, and I see in the system process a WHOLE SLEW of connections to sites which I had previously browsed but since closed. Moreover, "netstat -ab" confirms that I have a great deal of connections open. I checked with task manager just to make sure there were no runway IE/Firefox processes, and there were none.

It looks like there is a connection leak on my system! Can anyone confirm this with Vista x64 SP2, and ZAPRO running? I don't know where the problem is, but it is a clearly a low level issue of some kind, unless this is normal behaviour on Vista SP2. AFAIK, when a process terminates, its connections terminate with it. On Monday I'll check on XP SP3 just to compare statistics. If anyone has any ideas, please by all means post a reply.

thanks.
Operating System: Windows Vista 64 bit
Software Version: 8.0
Product Name: ZoneAlarm Pro

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Holy ****. After I uninstalled ZA "Pro", the problem went away! I would not recommend this product to anyone running Vista 64, as continuous TCP connection leaks turned my core 2 duo T6400 4 GB into a DOG after 1 day of continuous usage.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to which software firewall I could use instead of ZA?