[mragjr]

My (married) daughter talked me into buying her a laptop for the holidays. I also just spent 10 hours or so having some one walk me through removing some malware from my own XP desktop. I'm now looking for some ideas as to what to load (and in what sequence) on this new Acer laptop with Vista. Perhaps I could even pre load a thumb drive or burn a cd with some programs before Santa delivers. My initial thoughts were to get Avast, Threat Fire and SpywareBlaster. I suspect I'll also have to update Adobe Reader (9) and Java (v6_11). I'd also like to somehow efficiently* remove most if not all of the "free 60 day trial" stuff (Microsoft Office, MacAfee, etc). (Dumb side story-Years ago, I bought an XP eMachine and had their "Support Staff" remove a Norton trial. Last year I tried to ugrade AVG from 7.5 to v8, but could NOT because I already had an AV installed-yep, some remnant of Norton was still there, but only AVG and Belarc Advisor could still see it-and that's why I use Avast today.)

I hope I'm in the right place-did do a search. Thank you.

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See the recommended software for malware removal and other related guides listed in another section of this forum.

Edited by Major Payne, 08 December 2008 - 10:23 PM.

[Major Payne]

See the recommended software for malware removal and other related guides listed in another section of this forum.

Edited by Major Payne, 08 December 2008 - 10:23 PM.

[123Runner]

The link to our guides is where you should go.

But just as a FYI for futhur info.
There is Norton removal tool that will kill it all.
AVG 8.0 is a little more bloated than the 7.5 version (on some computers)
Norton and McAfee are resource heavy.

MS Office is a nice program, but you can also use Openoffice. Open office is free.

[mragjr]

Thanks for the response. I will go look again at the guides although I could not find a "single" solution for getting rid of crap/un neccessary software. My past experience now has been never, ever activate or touch Norton. Frankly it was more annoying and damaging than any virus or trojan I've had (and that includes screwing MS auto updates and Norton's "removal tool" not removing. I suspect maybe I will do the same with MS Office (I'm using Open Office now and quite happy with it-although since I'm retired my demands for some sophisticated calculations are much less than when I was Excel driven).

My reason for this post was to try and identify a single article on hey, you get a new pc, it comes with all this stuff, but here is what you should probably start with and do with it. Clear this junk, add this stuff, etc. (One thing I will do is check the sound card-last two eMachines I bought, the mic and headphone jacks did not work). Really appreciate the feedback. Thanks again.