A Question For You Experts

I have no computer training, trial and error mainly, error most of the time. I built my own computer. This was not that hard it is just following direction )). I have Windows XP and the newest office on it. My questions is what other programs should I put on it?? I have nortons but I have not installed it yet. What pop up and/or Addware programs?? Anything else?? I know there are a few threads on similar topics but I would like to have a list of every program every computer should have installed and why. The other reason was that I did not alway understand everything people were saying. One more thing will loading all these on my computer slow it down??

Thanks in advance
Randy

Computer info:

P4 2.8
intel motherboard
1gig RAM

Do not know if any other info would be important.

Hi Ray

My dad (whose name was also Ray) used to always say that, "an expert is just an ordinary guy a long way from home." Bear that in mind as I give the following 2 cents.

If you have high speed access you will want a firewall of some sort and by all means get your anti virus installed immediately if not sooner.

Yes, every program that you install will affect your performance but you will probably not notice the difference unless you have them up and running at the same time.

Background type programs do tend to eat your resources (slow things down) like weather in your tool bar, atomic clock update etc, anti virus....

Do not, I repeat do not under any circumstances install Norton Crash Guard if it is and option in your program.

Beyond this I think what you install depends on what you intend to do with your PC.

Peace

Mikel

For Security connecting to the Internet:

1. Turn your firewall on in XP
2. Install Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy
3. Get a spam blocker for your email reader
4. Turn off HTML in your email reader
5. Do not open attachments in email unless you absolutely know what it is.

Security software will not affect your computer's performance, but getting viruses and spyware will.

If you insist on running XP (instead of Linux) let me make a couple of suggestions.

1. Be sure and follow the advice given by Raven and dfilpus concerning firewalls and virus software.

2. Check out OpenOffice (openoffice.org) instead of Microsoft Office. It's free, open source and gives you an office suite far superior to MS Works. Did I mention it's free?

3. Check out the GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) for a Photoshop replacement. It's free, too.

4. For a ton of free software, check out sourceforge.net and freshmeat.net. Please keep in mind, though, that many of these programs are under development, and may be beta or even alpha software. Use caution.

5. Check out completelyfreesoftware.com. The site costs $15.00 a year to join, but gives you access to hundreds of freeware programs. The software available costs nothing to download, nothing to buy, and includes games, utilities, graphics, office suites and much more. The site simply charges a fee to pay its overhead, and at $15 a year, it's a bargain IMO.

6. Don't forget sites like download.com and tucows.com. You can find a ton of software there also.

And when you get tired of fighting virii and pop-ups, switch to Linux. Check out distrowatch.com

Almost forgot. For a free firewall, in addition to the one built into XP, check out ZoneAlarm at zonelabs.com. Did I mention it's free?

And for an alternative to Internet Explorer (Internet Exploder) check out the Mozilla suite which includes a browser, e-mail and HTML editor. Or just download Firefox (which is what I'm using now). All can be found at mozilla.org.

What I have loaded on my system:

Google tool bar, helps to keep all popups from happening.
Zone Alarm Pro for my firewall.
AVG anti-virus, small program and they keep it up to date so this one rocks. It also takes up very few system resources to run. www.grisoft.com and it is free.
Adaware is advised for protection.

I really do not like Nortons because it is a resource pig and it will slow your system down.

Just my thoughts.

player: winamp
email: mozilla (it has the most filter option)
mp3/ogg encoding: cdex

For Windows machines,

A decent virus scanner (see above)
Zone alarm
Ad-aware
a mail client other than MS Outlook
a web browser other than IE

Mozilla works wonders on the bottom two, and manages Pop-ups well too. Full suite isn't the fastest thing in the world, but FireFix and Thunderbird would take care of that for you =)

but I'd perfer the "full" mozilla
becoz I use both of them all the time

That's what I use, but I'm having some issues with it. It doesn't like to let me view /home/lunatic in a file {open/save} dialog, and it didn't want to DL the 500+ E-mails I had accumulated (at least 99% spam) over the last couple days while I had been working on getting back online. Thinking about moving to another browser actually...

Thanks for the great info I will have to start loading all this stuff into my computer.

I was intrigued by AVG anti-virus so I checked it out. If you are running a network at home you shouldn't use it. The license specifies not to run it in ANY networked environment.

Just my $.02