Afew questions

From reading some of the posts you all look like you know what your talking about so...

I've just had to wipe my hd and reinstall windows so would like your opinions on.

1. Which pc apps could you not live without and why
2. Other qwerky apps you like to have and why
3. Which is the best antivirus/firewall together or seperate
4. How are you all on this fine day

thank you very much

 

1. Which pc apps could you not live without and why.

Buzof Annoying Windows Eliminator
Why? Buzof enables the user to automatically answer, close or minimize just about any recurring window including messages, prompts, and dialog boxes. It works with almost any program (Windows related or not) and makes life much easier whether using programs or the internet. Anytime a program error or window or internet window like the annoying "Would you like Windows to Automatically Save the Form Entries?" and such - I just ZAP it with the aptly named "Buzof" once and I never see it again!

ePrompter
Why? It checks up to 16 e-mail accounts and allows you to read/save/reply to/deletes them in text format (w/o pictures) with almost ZERO chance of getting a virus from opening them - as long as you don't click on the links, that is. Also while ePrompter does not 'eliminate' spam it is quicker to get rid of it en masse with a few clicks.

YKill (similar but superior to the PC Mag Utility ENDITALL2)
Why? It places a small Y icon in the Win taskbar and allows the user to easily "Close and Kill" windows and applications that stopped responding almost always without having to reboot Windows.

2. Other quirky apps you like to have and why.

101 Clips
Why? I have it running minimized and it captures everything you copied from other programs and saves the last 30 clips. One of the features is that you can paste any screen or graphic directly into the body of an Outlook Express email. With most other programs, you have to save graphics as JPEGs and then attach them.

AutoEject is a small utility to eject removable (CD/DVD) disks at Windows shutdown. It also displays an icon in the Windows taskbar that can also be double-clicked to eject the disk immediately. Great tool in that I never have to worry about losing track of CD's/DVD's or starting the computer the next day with an install CD running.

PureText - After running PureText.exe, you will see a "PT" tray icon appear near your clock. Web text, outside borders etc. can take a TON of space KB etc... Pure Text copies the web page (or from any other source) to whatever size font you have set on the WORD page - without any formatting at all!

3. Which is the best antivirus/firewall together or separate?

Together? No good for me; and generally not a very good idea in my opinion. Why? If you have a trouble with a ‘single’ antivirus and/or firewall you invariably have a problem running BOTH the AV and/or your firewall; (neither of which you should view a single webpage without - trusted or otherwise). Besides that; I rarely see any "objective review" of such bundled "suites" applications which have both an antivirus as well as a firewall that anyone raves about because the fact of the matter is that most suites tend to favor one app over the other; I mean one usually works great and the other is just fair or poor.

Separate? Avast and ZoneAlarm Pro. Most folks are satisfied w/ the ZoneAlarm Free (witch works well, BTW) however I’m always testing ‘unknown’ applications and the Pro version is far more vigilant in this case; regarding the various somewhat ‘tricky’ ways that some programs and utilities try to phone home.

4. How are you all on this fine day? Oh just dandy, thank you!

Good Luck!

 

more info much better
most of them are free but the good thing you can get an idea

PC starter KIT:

Security
http://www.download.com/PC-Starter-Kit/2001-12350_4-0.html?tag=dir

Tools
http://www.download.com/1200-12350_4-5158816.html

Fun
http://www.download.com/1200-12350_4-5158818.html

You can check also this thread for more
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=93482&highlight=programs+you+cant+live