I have been to some pretty shady sites, and have no problems what-so-ever with visiting them, with my security measures in place.

2011 is coming up fast what are your security recommendations, have they changed?

For new rpg-exploiter readers this post might lead them to search for all your security topics and then to other off topic things like the great two part series on blackjack!

Maybe you should do a retrospective of your best posts of 2010?

As for a list of need to have software… idk. It really depends on your usage and what you plan to do with the software, or what your overall goal is for your computer is.

One of the sites I visit everyday is http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ Most of the time, the software is crap, but once in a while, you get a real gem. I got Revo Uninstaller from there, and it’s something I use everyday.

I use OpenOffice for dox/spreadsheets, Paint.NET for image editing, and Digsby for messaging. I don’t actually use Chrome very often, but I have all the major browsers installed, including Safari, so i can see how my sites display.

I use uTorrent (beta version) for torrents, VLC for movies, Winamp for music, and Skype for secure chatting. I have a ton of software and FF plugins I use for various things, but to really list them all, doesn’t make sense. It would be better to ask others what they use for a given task, and go from there.

I plan to get a new pc in 2011 (if I can stand to wait that long) With my just replaced power supply, and video card and two year old replaced harddrive the four year old might make it till then, and I might have cleared up my debts enough to afford it by then:) Plus I did just get a new monitor (might have to return it though an abnormal amount of discolored pixels when viewing text) so that is already bought:)

For the new pc I was thinking of not moving much more than my favorites and loading clean the games etc

BUT I wasn’t going to buy word, or an image editor or security

the security we have talked about, the programs we havent

from: http://cnettv.cnet.com/8301-13415_53-10387643-11.html?tag=mncol;txt

I am getting ideas

Gimp for photos http://www.gimp.org/ or even the online imagemajik from my webtv days

firefox
chrome

openoffice http://www.openoffice.org/

VLC media player http://download.cnet.com/VLC-Media-Player/3000-13632_4-10267151.html

By then guess I’ll be forced to take whatever version of windows 7 is out there (sighs wish xp could last forever:)

I list all I use including Cnet links………

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASQ8gh1ja9JSZGc3ODlqOTRfMzNoYnpwbjRjbg&hl=en

I use avast, spybot is bugged for me now but it was my first utility, i have about 12 things but all are shut down only the firewall and avast run full time.. then I run 2 or 3 at a time of my stand alones

I keep my start menu prunned at one time had 63 apps/processes running at once as all the defense stuff wanted to run full time as they “improved: so stripped that down to 29 and the old pc is frisky again on its fourth birthday….