snowcrash

I find it interesting that though the topic of conversation is making one's computer secure for internet use, not one person bothered to mention firefox, IMO more important than anything listed so far.

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Yep, FF is cool

 

Though without a firewall u can get infected by a worm in less than 10secs. That is the most essetial thing needed.

What you have on your pc in terms of security should be related to your surfing/downloading habits and how much you value your setup & data. The more risky u are, the more you should invest in the right s/w.Though as a must, having a firewall is critical (even if it is the xp one). And an anti-virus is needed these days. In terms of progs that I've used:anti-virus: nod32firewall: Look n Stop (seriously lean but not easy to configure, though the best for preventing any trojans from connecting to the internet). Also use a wireless connection which has a built in h/w router & NAT/SPI f/w. This means that the s/w f/w is hardly impacted in from the outside, and uses even less resourcesTDS-3: the best anti-trojanRegistry cleaner: Regsupreme ProDisk defragmenter: Perfect Disk (superb)Anti-spyware: spybot & Ad-Aware; PrevX Home (free)Cleanup: Crapcleaner (free)As u can see, I'm a bit paranoid If you set most s/w as scan on demand (but not your AV), then you don't use too much system resources.sc

...  SMF is often considered as a "professional or buisness support forum".

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Hi, could you please elaborate what you mean by that. Are you saying SMF is appropriate for business websites who want customer feedback/forums etc? Or would it be just as good for general discussion forums, like phpbb is supposed to be.

 

I've been using phpbb on a free forum for a while, while it seems to be stable and does the job, it is limited in terms of admin features. Though the Olympus release - if it ever does happen - is really needed.

 

But I do like the look & features of SMF. Up until now, the relative small user-base (compared with phpbb) was putting me off, but not anymore

 

snowcrash

The standard phpbb 2.x does not have file attachment.Although, there is a mod available which allows files to be uploaded. Some "free" phpbb forums have done this too, and give you limited upload space for your board. Whether they let you upload music/vid files I'm not sure The new phpbb 3.0 (Olympus) will have file attachment as standard - though you'll have to wait for it to be released regardssnowcrash

This isn't an ideal partitioning scheme but this is what I've used for years with a good amount of success (as in against data loss, os crash etc.)  with windows.

 

Of 120 GB,

Windows --> 10-20GB (max. 20) - make this NTFS for better performance of the OS

Rest of the Space, create one big extended partition spanning the whole free space and then split up into 15-20GB logical drives - as many as you want. Peferably partition type here is FAT32 - for easier data recovery/backup in case of OS crash. But dont keep any of them larger than 20Gigs. That causes considerable slowing down of read/write. ...

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Hi I'm in a similar position and about to format a new drive.

 

In terms of formatting the second partition as FAT32, wouldn't it be better to also use NTFS, as it is supposed to be more secure and less prone to errors?

 

Also, I thought partition size >20g wouldn't affect reading/writing speed, as this would be more to do with fragmentation of data on the drive. So even if it were a larger patition, it would be ok as long as there wasn't heavy fragmentation?

 

thanks

snowcrash

I agree that Avast! is a good AV, and whenever possible it's great to use something that's free.

Although, when it comes to computer security and depending on your surfing/downloading habits (or of others who use your machine), I actually came to the conclusion that paying for an AV is worth it - esp because of the issue of frequency of updates

The leanest in terms of resources/scan speed & probably one of (if not) the best is Nod32 http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

For something more resource heavy, also check out Kaspersky (which is very good for detecting trojans too) http://usa.kaspersky.com/

hth
snowcrash