Well, I have temporarily solved all my computer problems

[pscot]

by buying a new 17 inch XPS laptop from Dell. It's very nice. B-)

[hobbit709]

1. Get rid of all the trial offers and other crap.

If it has Norton, remove as quickly as possible. download Malwarebytes Antimalware, Microsoft Security Essentials and either Mozilla Firefox or SeaMonkey as your browser.

[pscot]

2. Clearing away the bloatware

was #1. It has McAfee which is a little less awful than Norton.

[pscot]

3. delete dupe

[Old and In the Way]

4. Nothing quite like a new computer coming out of the box.

Uncompromised, full of potential, and ready for your tweaking. Just went through my last 'new' box cycle a few months back with the Win& OS. It's like a fresh start. Everything's faster and the diskspace is roomier. Here's a few of the free things I always add, along with the usual commercial software-

Fences - A neat organizing tool for the Desktop
File Maker - Customizing folder options
Spybot Search and Destroy - anti-malware
Dropbox - Cloud Storage - file sharing between computers
Belarc - Computer audit/adviser
Secunia PSI - Software Revision manager
Teamviewer - remote control software (I can work on business stuff from the living room on my laptop, rather than the office box)
CCleaner - disk space manager and registry cleaner
Auslogics Disk Cleaner - much better than the Win7/XP disk defragmenter
Google Earth
VLC Player - video media player
Quintessential media Player - music player
Fbackup4 - a simple automated file backup utility


On my last machine, I finally smartened up and used the auto-installer at www.ninite.com that allows you to select pretty much any of the above and many other options into a single download package and installer...cuts down a lot of time doing individual downloads and installs.