ywlke

Norton is good, but slow and eats resources.(And you have to set something up in order to make it quarantine when it can't repair, otherwise it just keeps asking....) McAfee doesn't have logging and it's HTML (I think) based. I use both, and am satisfied with both.

WinAmp has a cleaner interface, and it chews less resources, but WMP plays more formats and it has a WMP taskbar, which means I can Play/Stop, etc. without having to bring up the full window.

I use ad-aware. I've heard Spybot is good too. In addition to spyware removing software, you should have anti-virus software, and preferably a firewall (although your router might do this already). The only problem I have with ad-aware is what was mentioned above about having no "check all" button. One thing to take note of: there are fakes out there; don't get caught; use reputable download sources. I would post the company's website, but I don't remember it and I'm just too lazy to look them up

The last time I checked, all the messengers have ads in one form or another. I think for many of these, there are programs out there that can "patch" to get rid of ads. My personal preference is "Gaim". It's an open-source multi-protocol/network multi-platform ad-free IM client.

Don't forget to check the maximum memory that your motherboard can support. In general, the new processors use 168(I think)-pin DIMMs, but there are different speeds and categories, so you'll need to check with Toshiba. Especially with laptops; they sometimes use different types from vendor to vendor. I would expect that it probably uses RAMBUS ram, but it could also use DDR SDRAM.

I'd have to say that [new] Dell's are overall best. They are quite stable and also easy to maintain (going inside, it's almost as if the drives were made to be swappable). I've only gotten one problem with them, and I think it had to do with hardware conflicts. Largely, I think they have a good support, but the best support is yourself because you know how everything is configured. At least you should. Custom-built machines are good, but you get the downside of possibly having to deal with twenty different vendors if you get hardware problems and want to claim warranty. Compaqs are "meh"; I don't have that much experience with them. IBMs aren't that bad, but the laptop from them that I use (ThinkPad T20) shipped with a bad re-image CD, and had some stability problems before we upgrade to WinXP. Their support is cooperative, though (we got a good image CD after calling), although not shipping a modem driver with it while expecting you to download it isn't that smart....

80 GB, and it's good enough for me

You shouldn't expect this to be too easy to find. The movie industry doesn't want people defeating the region system; however, free speech is awesome! So far as I've heard, you can take it to a manufacturer or servicer/retailer to have it changed, but to change it yourself, google is your best bet. For the DVD Player I have(Panasonic S35), I heard that panasonic made a proprietary retailer's remote that does this. If you want to change regions on a computer, the *conventional* way is just to play along with the system, which limits you to 4 or so changes.

I have an average of 3Mb(400KB) downstream, but have gotten up to ~6Mb(750KB) before. Don't do major uploading, so not sure about upstream speed.

Just for clarification, do you mean Mozilla, or Mozilla Firefox? They are VERY different....

AUTOEXEC.BAT is a remnant of DOS. If it exists on your XP machine, it is probably because you upgraded from an older version of Windows. With Windows 9x (ME included) and older, excluding NT versions (4, 2000, and XP), DOS was the lowest level OS. NT versions directly access the system, which is why command prompts run slowly (they run on top of Windows). The best way to do this in my opinion is to either use the Startup folder (user level) or use the Registry method (system level) mentioned above. But if you mess up your registry, you are doomed to a long and painful death....well, not really, but you get the point.

By the way, for all you Mac OS X lovers, there is something you need to know. It is UNIX based. For all you novices out there, Linux is basically descended from UNIX.

You really can't say Windows is better until you've used Linux (that is, a fully installed version). Linux is more versatile and can be adapted to a person's needs. Plus, Gnome and KDE actually make it possible to used 99% of the OS' features without using the command line (while I still prefer this because it is faster for me). And just because an OS has more programs written for it doesn't make it better. If that's your argument, WINE for Linux is the solution.

You can't remove IE, not safely at least. The best you can do (requires SP1) is to remove access to it through "Set Program Access and Defaults" thingamajig.As far as I've experienced, the flash plugins for the different browsers are installed in totally different places, so there shouldn't be any conflicts. Make sure you have the newest firefox and newest plugin versions.

Just so you know, you really only need about half a CD. Ever heard of net install? Install a barebones debian distro and then use the internet to download any/only packages you need. This is documented on the debian website. And if apt is too difficult, there is always aptitude.