[Otto]

Yeah, I neglected to mention that McAfee and Norton can be processor hogs, especially when they're running full-time in the background. We use McAfee at work, and many people disable it in an effort to regain their processing power. Lots of times, I forget about anti-spyware and anti-viral software until I start having problems. Then I download whatever trials and free stuff I can find, and go on the attack. Sometimes it's too late, and I end up with doing a reinstall. I've been pretty fortunate this year, though, and our PCs are running nicely.

Oh, I almost made this point above, but I kinda got sidetracked -- If you have other users on your machines that aren't PC savvy (wives, kids, pets, etc.) try to educate them NOT to click on the pop-up boxes that appear from various websites. A lot of times, these look like they have a "yes" button and a "no" button, but it's really all just one BIG button that takes you to the same place, regardless of what you click. That place can install adware, spyware, and all that kind of junk. When those things come up, I usually do an alt-F4 to close the window. Second best is hitting the X in the top right corner of the pop-up to close it, but sometimes that's also part of the BIG button that does what they want. I taught this to my wife, and things have been better.

Good luck.