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I like FREE. I have used AVG and AVAST in the past as well as many versions of Norton, McAfee, and others. I have way to many computers and will try them all. I’m a mostly retired computer support person and I recommend the free MS Security Essentials primarily because it seems to work well and never gives a message about upgrading to the paid version as AVG does occasionally. I also use Norton when I can get it for free or low cost. I just bought a 3 user version of NIS 2010 for zero dollars after rebate. I also have a free copy made available via my ISP (Comcast). who used to offer McAfee for free. I’ve never had a virus problem using any of the AV programs, just be sure to keep them updated. In my experience fixing customer computers the biggest threat to your computer is YOU. Almost always someone has clicked on something that they knew they shouldn’t have or couldn’t resist opening an email attachment with an interesting name.

I’ve used Nirsoft utilites for a long time, especially when fixing a computer for customers. Many Av programs often flag different nirsoft utilities. They don’t like them because the programs are telling you things about your computer that the AV programs think you should know since you are the owner of the computer and of course you never forget a password. LOL. On my home systems I exclude the whole folder I have of troubleshooting tools. I have never had a problem with any Nirsoft tools or other utilities that I have downloaded on the recommendation of the Secrets newsletter. You must remember that when you start playing with stuff like this that you have to think and act like a system administrator. If you can’t do that or it causes you to much worry then you should stay away from this stuff and get someone with experience to do it for you. But this is also how you learn if that is your goal.

Just to add some additional info. I have add corrupted OSes, bad hard drives, user error and many other issues both personally and professionally. Even though I have separated my data and OS on different partitions, I also back up daily to one of two external hard drives. I use two because I keep one in my car and I swap the drives every Sunday. I have been keeping the extra one in my car ever since a good friend had their house hit by lightning and effectively burn to the ground losing everything.. (And I have not had any problems with environmental issues) There is a lot more that could be talked about relative to backing up and using external hard drives, but I don’t want to hijack this thread which has had some good discussion.

Just my observation on this. I have switched all of the major computers in my house (4, including putting my wife on X64) to Win 7 with only one problem and that was that there is no Palm Pilot USB driver for Win7, especially x64. I now connect and sync my Palm to an old XP box.

Many many years ago I also decided I did not want my documents in the default MS locations. I created my own data folder on a different drive or partition (depending on the system at the time) and changed all the default data locations for the programs I used such as MS Office and Eudora email. Having everything I could find or think of in my own chosen location made it much easier to backup just my data and gave me less of a problem when I had to reinstall windows and it would wipe out the old Documents and Settings folder. In that respect, at least the new user data locations are good since they do not get wiped out when reinstalling. At least that has been my experience, and as a mostly retired computer support person, I have fixed, rebuilt, and recovered a lot of systems for a variety of users.

Currently using Eudora (long time user) and have been trying Thunderbird and Outlook. Too many issues going on for me to stick with one. I always stayed with Eudora because I could specify the message location and I kept those on a shared network drive. That way I could read my email from any of the computers at home by pointing them all to the shared folder. Now because of email on my new Blackberry I have switched from pop to imap. At least that lets me see my messages from multiple venues. but I keep going back to Eudora to send things and also to forward messages. One of the Items I like in Eudora is the ability to remove quote levels. If I could fix that and easily share my address book across different computers I would probably stay with Thunderbird. I maintain all my phone contacts in Outlook so I can have them backed up and it is easier to maintain them using a full size keyboard. Since I have Outlook in use for the contact maintenance I configure the email and have been trying it.

This has been an interesting thread and I enjoyed reading it.

A) How did you install Eudora to get it to integrate with the registry? Could it be that I didn’t use the default installation path? Every time I open Eudora it says it was unable to update the registry, and thus unable to change my default email program.

B) Eudora isn’t available in my default programs list, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to add to it.

Could this be another reason to upgrade to the Professional version?

A) I just ran the install and let it take all the defaults. Why are you changing the install path? I would never change any install path for any program unless I was running out of space on the boot drive and if I was having space problems that means it is time to reinstall everything to a bigger disk or at least a bigger partition. That being said, I do have my messages stored on a different drive, but that is because I use Eudora on multiple computers and can access the message store from all of them. I learned long time ago that it is best to install ALL programs using the default locations since that is where all troubleshooters and and other programs will look for the program if and when you have a problem,

B) This is not a reason to upgrade to Professional unless you are looking for a reason. To me Professional is primarily needed when you have a domain controller server in your network and you want to log on using domain services.

I don’t understand your comment on completely integrate??? I am running Eudora on Win7 64bit with no problems whatever. So is my wife on her machine and believe me if she had any issue I would have heard about it big time. I don’t have any problem with Eudora being the default email. Have you gone to start and clicked on default programs?