Lee16

Looking back i noticed it says "safer" then mine rather then faster, i sware it said faster..... Indeed they are I find the exact same with avast. Not in my case If you mean its low spyware/adware detections, its meant to be rthis way, they even stat that there a virus scanner not a Spyware scanner. They mainly find virus/worms/trojans, although they do find some of the more common spyware/adware infections. Not cocky at all, this is a good thing Nice little program Fair enough , i disagree with a few of your points aswell, but thats computers for ya Well i tried the free scanner, found no infections, although it did feel kind enough to tell me SweetIM was spyware, which ofcourse its not, see here: http://www.softpedia.com/progClean/SweetIM-Clean-25441.html Also it reported weatherbug as spyware, which again, isn't true. Although im not sure how it got on my system in the first place, (not the only person to use this PC), maybe it was part of that firefox weather extension i had a while ago. --lee

Both Don't remember saying my pc is faster then yours in the first place BTW what would you say is a good AV? (please don't say something like norton or AVG) Avast is the best out there We will have to agree to disagree on that one Same as above, although i feel i must make it clear that i was referring to free firewalls rather then paid/pro ones, yes i have seen ZA Pro in action and it does preform pretty well, however ZA Free is a joke of a firewall, blocks ALL file sharing , doesn't really protect IM programs very well (imo), and doesn't pass tooleaky etc. Agreed I should hope so , most hardware firewalls will due to there superiority. Well thats fine for you maybe, but what about people like my mum or nan, they arn't going to understand what processes are good and what ones are bad. Also saying that is all well and good, but what if it gets infected without your knowledge and sends off some info like a password etc? I understand that you could properly protect your PC your self, but what is a little bro or something uses it and visits a "bad" site? We will have to agree to disagree again From that post i seem to get the idea that you seem i don't know what im talking about Well thats ok i guess, your alowed your own opinon, don't worry about hurting my feelings........... --lee

I should hope so to, if i thought it was similar to ZA i would of reformated my PC by now. Also ZA likes to block all network sharing automatically, and keep it blocked, so not for me. Well yea i did mention the configuation was unique, so it is a little confusing at first, nothing a few mins of playing around can't sure. Although i feel i must say, i love this way of configering allications, it an automatic and fast way to create "advanced rules" without the user needing any knowledge of how to create them manually. Also that way it stops parrentless and invisable applications from accessing the inet without the users knowledge (so it passes tooleaky, leaktest, firehole etc), iv not seen another free firewall that can do that, and most PAID firewalls can't either. Well i havn't tried uninstalling it yet, so can't comment on it, ill take your word for it though, lets hope they fix it soon, its still a very new firewall remember, only been out a couple of months. Iv got both, and well configerd, i feel preaty safe Me 2 Welcome to the good side You poor guy (prays for rridgely's pc) --lee

Yep i fully agree, you can certainly see a different, i have seen high def and non high def running side by side before, once you see that, you will never look at normal TV shows/DVDs (nrmal def) in the same way again. Its just like you would never look at a video in the same way after you saw DVD quality for the first time. --lee

lol, i only told them about that like a day ago by email, they react fast --lee

If you was to look carfully, you would see that the background quality of HD-quality is quite a bit better then DVD quality, but closer images/objects will be almost the same. However, if they make these discs uncopyable, people simply won't use em. Well only untill a way around it is found ofcourse, there always it, if it was disigned by humans, it can easyly be broken by humans. --lee

Hardware firewall in my Linksys Wired router & Use a software firewall called Comodo Personal Firewall --lee

Avast Home (the best imo) --lee

I would LOVE to see an option to "Clean automatically on every shutdown", i know there is a "clean on startup" option, but i really don't like it, i would much rather it to clean on shutdown, so maybe be best to have both options? Thanks --lee

Nah sygate wasn't a bad firewall most of the time, although if one of its few bugs did hit you, then you knew about it. However since they discontinued, i have been using Comodo Personal firewall, and i must say its one of the best iv seen, passes all SOS and GRC tests, and even passes the grc leaktest, tooleaky and firehole. Easy enough to configer, although it does have unique GUI and settings, compleatly free, but you need to renew your licence once every year, which ofcourse is free aswell. Also good tech support via email. Only problems is they test it fully thereselfs, no beta testing (although i havn't really came accross any bugs yet), but still seems a little weird to me. Also there site could be a little more informative, for example it doesn't mention on there site that it only works with win 2000/XP SP2 (not win9x/ME), you don't find that out until installinfg the firewall. Other then that its fine, plus they have said there going to improve there firewall part of the site soon, so its more informative. You can see what i mean here: http://www.personalfirewall.trustix.com/ --lee

Very strange indeed, not heard of this happening with Avast before, maybe you could report this bug on the avast forums, there could be others with your problem, from what iv used of the avast forum, there usually quite quick and good at fixed problems. --lee

Visual Studio 2005, Photoshop, Skale Tracker use alot of memory, i suggest 512 DDR RAM minimun, but if possible go for 1 GiG of RAM i would say, not sure how well Sempron will run it, may need a higher CPU power, also i would suggest a good graphics card, at least 256 MB memory PCI express one, as your on a low budget, you probably won't be able to get a 512 MB graphics card. Ofcourse, this is all jsut my opinon, not fact. But hope it helps --lee

Hi, Your Built in Intel graphics card Audio Modem Riser (AMR) is intels specification slots on the motherboard to accommodate low cost sound cards. There not used alot, and arn't likley to anytime soon either as you can get better quality sound from a codec chip on a riser card or even a normal sound card fitted into a PCI slot. Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI slots) is a high-speed connection for devices including SCSI cards, video (graphics) cards, sound cards, modems, video capture cards, network cards etc. People used to put video cards into the Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) slots for better graphics, however latley alot of graphics cards etc have come out that are PCI Express which is way better then AGP, so everyone is once again putting there graphics cards into the PCI slots. Hope this helps --lee

I got no icons on my Desktop, however i do have a custom toolbar for my most used programs. (see attached) Yep i recently uninstalled Objectdock from my system, uses way to much emory/processer then i liked. --lee

Avast by far, updated more frequently, removes malware better, and way betteruser support. I have a Win98 machine downstairs, resident shield works fine there, prehapes you had previously had an Anti-Virus software on there that was conflicting with it? (iv seen people try to run 2 AVs on the same machine before, same thing happened) For software based firewall, Sygate and Zonealarm are the top contenders, however the free version of Zonealarm is very bad with networks, and i find overall Sygate has the better security because of its application based system (using HTTP/localhost connections), although it doesn't work well with other proxy programs. (not a problem for most users) Plus its intrusion detection system is very good and it doesn't block ALL access to the network like the free Zonealarm does, so you can still share you files/printer on your local network if wanted/needed. Hope this helps --lee