Maintain Your PC Without Paying A Premium

Process explorer v11.02
Microsoft has endorsed (but not produced) a program designed to clean up all those bloated little programs that get installed with your intended software. It's called Process Explorer v11.02.

It is basically a powerful task manager. You can view all running prosesses, get info from the internet on them, ban them from your startup sequence, and find the original program using them. It's great for finding out why your computer is running slow and taking out the bloat.

I ran this on my Alienware and found all sorts of intersting, useless crap. When i got rid of it my startup time was at least halved.


Lavasoft Adware
Spyware has only increased in volume over the last few years despite increased regulation and legal action against the much despised perps. All consumers can do though is protect themselves while the Fed sorts things out.

Lavasoft Adware is a free program that has been the mainstay of my anti-spyware campaign. It has a great search algorithm, can scan your entire computer (including memory), and they release monthly updates to keep current with all the devious little deviants out there planning the overthrow of your computing experience.


AVG FREE
AVG Free is a great way to manage the ever enroaching virus problem while still keeping your money in the bank and your computer running fast. It can run as a process like any other anti-virus solution (CPU and memory often take a big hit) or your can schedual scans.

I like the flexibility of this freeware in that it does a great job protecting you, doesn't bog your computer down, is free, and still has a ton of great features like auto-scanning downloaded files.

Any suggestions? Feel encouraged to comment!

Making your PC love your Mac

Lifehacker.com has a great article on making all your home computers work together efficiently. With a minimum of hair pulling.

Most of the article is about networking your differ computers together and getting them to all speak to one another.