Software: Requests and Suggestions

[SeijiSensei]

Have you run a disk optimizer lately?

How about memory? If your machine is starved for memory, it will spend a lot of time swapping to the hard drive. If you're running XP, the minimum you should have is 512 MB for reasonable performance. I've heard that Vista won't run well in less than 2 GB, but I've never used it. Win7 looks like it's been optimised for a smaller memory footprint. I'm running the release candidate in a 512 MB virtual machine with good results.

If you're running a recemt Linux distribution (Fedora 8+; Ubuntu 7+), I'd say 512 is also a good minimum. I have no performance problems running the graphics-intensive KDE 4.2 (Kubuntu 9.04 alpha) on a 1 GB machine even having half its memory allocated to that Win7 VM.

[marksky]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Have you run a disk optimizer lately?

How about memory? If your machine is starved for memory, it will spend a lot of time swapping to the hard drive. If you're running XP, the minimum you should have is 512 MB for reasonable performance. I've heard that Vista won't run well in less than 2 GB, but I've never used it. Win7 looks like it's been optimised for a smaller memory footprint. I'm running the release candidate in a 512 MB virtual machine with good results.

If you're running a recemt Linux distribution (Fedora 8+; Ubuntu 7+), I'd say 512 is also a good minimum. I have no performance problems running the graphics-intensive KDE 4.2 (Kubuntu 9.04 alpha) on a 1 GB machine even having half its memory allocated to that Win7 VM.

I'm using a laptop w/ XP as my OS.. My friend told me that maybe it's because of a spyware..
Is it alright to get Spybot - Search & Destroy while having a McAfee?

[sa547]

Originally Posted by marksky

I'm using a laptop w/ XP as my OS.. My friend told me that maybe it's because of a spyware..
Is it alright to get Spybot - Search & Destroy while having a McAfee?

That setup's okay -- one antivirus utility and one spyware utility -- as long as they're being used and updated on a regular basis.

[WanderingKnight]

I'm using a laptop w/ XP as my OS.. My friend told me that maybe it's because of a spyware..
Is it alright to get Spybot - Search & Destroy while having a McAfee?

Fire up the Task Manager and check up on both your memory usage and CPU time while idle. CPU activity should be as low as possible while idle (close to 0%). Also I'd suggest, as SeijiSensei said, checking up on your disk usage. If you're running close to 90% full, you'll see a lot of problems with fragmentation.

[marksky]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Fire up the Task Manager and check up on both your memory usage and CPU time while idle. CPU activity should be as low as possible while idle (close to 0%). Also I'd suggest, as SeijiSensei said, checking up on your disk usage. If you're running close to 90% full, you'll see a lot of problems with fragmentation.

Oh thanks.. I'll check up on that..
Any recommendations on what anti-spyware to use? And also is it okay to delete all tracking cookies? Everybody said that's it's not harmful for the comp.

[sa547]

Because I tend to have much experience and use manual methods of excising pests off my computer, apart from a competent antivirus utility, my other tools for anti-spyware defense are HijackThis and Noscript installed in Firefox (to defuse rouge scripts)... and some considerable caution when visiting potentially harmful websites.

[marksky]

Originally Posted by sa547

Because I tend to have much experience and use manual methods of excising pests off my computer, apart from a competent antivirus utility, my other tools for anti-spyware defense are HijackThis and Noscript installed in Firefox (to defuse rouge scripts)... and some considerable caution when visiting potentially harmful websites.

HijackThis? The one from trend micro?

[demonix]

Originally Posted by marksky

HijackThis? The one from trend micro?

Well that is the only one available (plus trend micro bought HijackThis a while ago)

[sa547]

Originally Posted by marksky

HijackThis? The one from trend micro?

Yes. I use it for really surgical malware removal in case antiviruses overlook some pests they don't have in their databases.

Some antivirus utilities now come with spyware detection and removal, and perhaps I think the other viable option is Ad-Aware Free (I once used this years ago to remove a nasty piece of malware, which took down the entire network).

[jigoku shoujo]

I use O&O defrag (Complete/Access method) every month, about spyware removal, the new version of Avira 9.0 have adware/spyware scan included, its free so if you don't want spend money and stay secure...

[IRJustman]

Curious, anyone using any alternate shells nowadays? I remember LiteStep used to be fashionable, but I dunno whether that's the case anymore.

I'm just curious because I'd love to know if there are any decent alternate shells out there, especially for Vista and the forthcoming 7. Ideally, I would love to have something like IBM's Workplace Shell that was the default shell for OS/2, but was also available for Windows briefly. I also liked the launchpad that came with OS/2 Warp when it first came out. If nothing like WPS is available, something like its launchpad by itself would be great.

If worst comes to worse, at least I can beat Vista into operating the way I like it with stock software, but I can't entirely say the same for 7. That's why I'm asking about alternate launchpads and even full shells.

--Ian.

[felix]

Yes I have been curious for a while about the same subject. Do you know of any usable one for windows xp?

*Cats can not stand Vista*

[WanderingKnight]

mingw? It's a bash port for Windows.

[felix]

No no, nothign like that. I do not need a command prompt lol.

Maybe something like: http://www.cairoshell.com/ (which is currently Vista & win7 only) etc

[WanderingKnight]

Uh, you're talking about window managers then? I thought you were talking about, you know, CLI shells.

According to Wikpedia, it seems it's a valid way to refer to window managers and the like, if rather prone to confusion, so I apologize for the misinterpretation.

[felix]

No need to apologise, IMO your distinction is technically more accurate.

[chikorita157]

Originally Posted by sa547

Yes. I use it for really surgical malware removal in case antiviruses overlook some pests they don't have in their databases.

Some antivirus utilities now come with spyware detection and removal, and perhaps I think the other viable option is Ad-Aware Free (I once used this years ago to remove a nasty piece of malware, which took down the entire network).

I use Ad-Aware Free, but it doesn't seem to remove all the spyware and malware.

On my Mom's computer, it got infected with popups with AntiViruscan 2009. I use SuperAntiSpyware (which is free, but also have a professional version and removes hard to remove spyware and trojan horses). I rarely get into any spyware problems since I mainly use Mac OS X most of the time and I also run Vista without any protection programs (which I don't advise anyone doing unless you know what you are doing and not running with full administrative privileges), but I use safe security practices and I leave UAC on (which also helps).

[IRJustman]

Originally Posted by Cats

No need to apologise, IMO your distinction is technically more accurate.

Actually, that's more specific, notably a text-only shell.

It bears noting that not all shells are text-only. I'm talking about graphical shells, like OS/2's Workplace Shell. The one Windows uses is called Explorer.

--Ian.

[marksky]

Need help in this..

As i was installing SpybotSD, there's an error saying:

"This application has failed to start because sqlite3.dl was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem"

I tried to install it again but it's still the same.. ~_~
Anyone knows how to fix this?

[Vexx]

did you redownload the package? I'm going to guess you got an old install package. sqlite3.dl is deprecated (removed, no longer part of the OS).

Head to the official Spybot site to download the latest package.