I don't disagree with that, you can make anything crash if you put the effort in.
I still reckon it will take some load off the CPU of the client machine.
I understand where Mike is coming from.
Personally all the black box firewalls I dealt with were black and had cisco stamped on them and cost a bit more than 40 quid. And I still remember RBS using some bloody port for its online banking and the amount of arguments that caused with the users.