Zxian

Yeah, I've tried Mandrake on my desktop. I didn't really notice anything special on it that I couldn't find with Windows. The setup is straightforward enough. It guides you through everything. Although, as brian said, there's a lot of googling in the beginning. Be sure to give yourself a good while to learn.

It's a simple explorer.exe hack done with reshacker. There are guides all over the net on how to do this. Next time that you want to post a screenshot, upload it to a host like ImageShack and link to it instead of putting the picture directly in the thread.

Symantec makes a decent product. I used to feel the same way when I made the switch from Norton Internet Security 2004 to NOD32 and Sygate. I've gotta say, that after giving NIS2005 a try on my desktop, it's not necessarily a bad product, it's just not as fast or efficient as other security products. You hate Microsoft? When it comes to an operating system that the general public can use, they've got one of the best. Ever tried to go about your day with Linux? It takes a lot more knowledge to have things set up the way you want and to be able to use it as a general workstation. The big problem with Windows nowadays is that people don't understand the concept of computer maintenance. The big reason why viruses and spyware run rampant is because people buy a computer, connect it to the internet, and never clean it out (or schedule a cleaning program). I will agree with you on the fact that Norton products are not the best. They are probably the most well known though, since you can find their products on the shelves of any store that sells software.

I'd pick Longhorn over OSX if I had to go with just the basics. I still say that there's no replacement for AveDesk... the showcase function is just phenomenal! (See march desktops)

I'd also vote for the hardware firewall option. A simple router with built in firewall capabilities should fit the needs of most home users. I would recommend Linksys over other brand names, since I've never had a bad router, and the tech support is decent compared to other companies. If you want to be paranoid, you can also throw Zonealarm on there. It's a bit more work to get the computers talking to each other, but in the end, each will be even more secure than with the hardware firewall alone. Even better... use Sygate Personal Firewall. It's a much better firewall that takes up less system resources than ZA.

I think I'll be a third person to say nLite your XP install and throw it on there. Once you get the XP system up and running, you'll never look at ME again.

I'd like to consider myself a "power" user, since I make use of my laptop for several hours a day and I know most of the ins and outs of Windows... but I don't rely on standalones to do most of my stuff. Most programs that are standalone are more specifically tailored to a specific task than their full-registry/everything counterparts. For example, there are many alternative e-mail programs out there to replace Outlook, but none of them support calendars, notes, and tasks like Outlook does, or allows you to sync that information with your PDA. Also, for most "work" based applications, you can't find a reasonable standalone version to replace them. If you can find a good small standalone replacement for Mathematica, please tell me... And as for the Office replacement software that's out there, they may do the trick for the common user, but when you start using all the useful tools within Word and Excel, the formatting turns to garbage when you try to open the files in OpenOffice (for example).

Lots and lots of electronica (Trance, Techno, D&B, chill-out). Throw in a bit of rock, alternative, and some pop, and you've got my collection. Oh, and throw in those un-categorize-able artists like Delirium and Enigma.

Dude! That thing should be in the next Fast and Furious movie! They could have someone screaming down a highway in a modded car and have another person hack into the CIA with that computer! Then... they'd both his the NOS at the same time!!! It would be insane!!!!

Oh Wow! That's just insane... I would hope that people who have the money to spend on expensive video cards would know better than that... although there are some pretty stupid people in this world...

That's just rediculous... what a scam for money...

It all depends on what AV/Firewall programs you have running. Add on top of that any background apps that you might have (for themes and such). If you want to look into your services (the things that use svchost.exe) have a look at www.blackviper.com. There's some good info on what services you need and which ones you don't. At boot, I've got 18 on my laptop, and 17 on my desktop, but I use some apps that I don't really need (WindowBlinds, AveDesk, etc). If you wanted to go absolute bare-bones, I think you can get that number down to 11 or 12. But then you'd be at absolute minimum Windows: no AV or firewall. Your choice. Long story short, 30 isn't bad (don't listen to the people who tell you otherwise, they're just crazy about nLite...). If it doesn't bother you that much, then leave it as is.

You can find the WindowBlinds theme on WinCustomize. It's called Cyrix. As for the wallpaper, I can't remember where I found it, but I can upload it if you want.

Wow... I'm one of the "small" people here. I've got an 80GB drive in my laptop, a 40GB backup drive that I'll probably end up putting in my desktop, and a 40GB system drive in my desktop. Current working total is 120GB. I'm probably gonna get two 80GB drives for my desktop system (in RAID) and a 200GB drive for storage this coming summer. The 200GB drive will be for backing up all of my stuff, including my system drive on my laptop. And yes, I'll agree with un4given1, the amount of space that some people have is sickening... Edit: Oh... and add a 256MB flash drive and a 40GB external drive as well... so maybe it should read 160GB. I'm probably gonna get me a Neuros MP3 player this summer as well, 40GB should do me well for a few years (I've already got 15GB of music, all perfectly legal).

Ahh the joys of C++... I've taken two courses in C++ and one course in C so far. Once you've learned how programming works in general, most of the skills are transferrable to other languages. All you need to learn is the syntax. I was able to pick up on Fortran77 easily enough with my knowledge of C++... man is Fortran horrible (in comparison). But to get back on topic, I also think a Malware section would be benficial to members. It would help get some of the posts away from the WindowsXP thread and let people know a little more specifically what they're going to help out with.

I just got my desktop hooked up to the internet again... Here's what I was able to throw together in about 15 mins... So pretty... EDIT: w00t! Post #300!

Ultimately, your WindowsXP CD is your own. What you do with it (nLite, silent installers, etc) is up to you. I've tried out nLite, but I ran into some troubles with my video drivers (of all things) for my laptop, so on my laptop, I run a full XP with all the bells and whistles. On my desktop, however, I've got an nLited CD that I was able to cut down to about 250MB while still keeping all the networking and printing support that I needed. Like I said before, it's all what you want to do.

Yes, A slipstreamed disk will work. It's probably better in the end to use the slipstreamed disk, since it will have the updated files available. If you aren't hurting on space, I wouldn't clear out this folder just yet. I'd save that step as a last resort. Another great tool that you can use is CleanIt. It will empty out your TEMP folders on startup and then close. I've used this on some systems and recovered a stupidly large amount of space. I agree with the general comments about System Restore being somewhat weak. If you don't have the money to spend on a proper backup program, then use it. Just limit the size allocated to System Restore to a minimum (400 MB should be more than enough). I agree that Acronis True Image is probably one of the best out there. Many many programs write to the system drive. Any application data is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\[uSERNAME]\Application Data\. Don't delete anything in this directory. You'll just end up screwing up your programs. The way that I have my system set up is: System: 10GB Music: 20GB Stuff: 20GB School: 1.5GB Installers: 6GB VMWare: 12GB My Documents: 1GB Acronis Backup: 4.5GB I've got the My Documents partition set up so that the "My Documents" folder points to this partition. That way, in case of a screwup, the stuff that's in My Documents from programs and such isn't lost. I'll agree with Seapagan on the point about rediculously small system drives. I've got my 10GB system drive, and I'm only using 5.3GB of that, including a 1.25GB hibernation file (it's a laptop) and a 1GB pagefile. That includes all of Windows, Office 2003, Acrobat, MathCad, and all the other programs that I use.

If you've tried using Partition Magic to create the partition, you need to make sure that the partition is a Primary partition, or that you have free space that isn't in the Extended partition (where logical partitions lie). Try going back to PM and find out if this is the case.

Do you mean the balloons that pop up for wireless connections n stuff?

Check the entire post for the Command propt desklet. There should be alternate mirrors there.

Nope, you should be able to do this. All you should need is a VGA port on your laptop (they're the blue ones with 15 pins) and you should be set. Plug in the monitor and press the hotkey to activate the external monitor (it's usually a Fn+[something] combination on your keyboard). Then, through the standard Windows display settings you should be able to set up the monitor to use as an extended desktop (it's an option in the display settings). Then you can just drag any window over to the other screen and place it there. When you maximize it, it'll maximize to that screen. Hope this helps!

Yes, as Jeremy said, everyone has their preferences... I think that's what makes this a good place to come to to ask questions about software. There are a lot of people who can help out. When I decided to give Opera a try, there were a couple of very small things that I wanted to know about, and several people helped me out. I've been using Opera 8 beta for a while now, and it's my favorite so far. I showed Maxthon (what I was using before I switched to Opera) to my parents, and they absolutely loved it. Nothing radically different, and a few nice features added. When I showed them Opera, they looked at me in disgust (well, not really, but you get what I mean). I think I'll give Firefox another try on my desktop next weekend when I get it hooked up to the internet. We'll see how things go...

What program are you using for the sidebar? is it Sidebar? I haven't touched that program in a while, so I'm not sure what improvements they've made.

I'm just wondering if anyone has previously heard of or is using Bullguard. I was referred to it as a "great" suite, but when I installed the trial version on my VMWare machine, and headed over to Shields Up... 1 port open, 3 stealthed, the rest closed. When I looked in the configuration menu, there was no notion of an AV or firewall... just an update engine... :S