I don't know why you're getting that message. You don't need to buy Adobe Acrobat to read a PDF document. You can just download the free Adobe Reader. The versions of Adobe Acrobat that you have to pay for are for those who want to create fancy PDF documents. Also, there are many other free PDF readers available. The one I prefer and use is Foxit Reader, which would works at least as well as Adobe Reader and has a program only about 1/10 the size. Here is a link that might be useful: Foxit

You might look in your control panel, updates, view installed updated and see if one failed & possibly buggered your speed up somehow. fwiw... For some reason after the current batch of updates my graphic card suddenly did an automatic reset and turned brightnes to Full blinding bright... from device manager I ran check for updates and it did do an update to a newer driver, from microsoft. Perhaps check your wifi nice in device mgr for updated driver?? just a stab in the dark maybe. The wifi speed of 54 is what my wifi always shows,, thats normal. I quickly looked at release notes for the updates for known issues and there were none excpt a possible print problem on one. No one seems to be reporting slow downs in ms newsgroups that I've noticed.

I'll answer part of your question by saying that RW DVDs become less reliable over time as you write over them. Since I presume these are important files that you want to save, rather than change all the time, go with regular, name brand, good quality, single use DVDs...they're cheap. One DVD typically holds about 4.7 GB, and I presume that you will be prompted if you need more discs, but I don't know exactly how this works as I backup on an external hard drive. You might wish to consider that option as you can get a good, large hard drive for under $80 and it will do all of this automatically for you.

secunia mostly focuses on security related updates I would not expect it to show you that things like belarc had an update or ccleaner etc. For that adobe update I would just go right to the adobe reader program on the pc open the program and hit the update button in the program and let it look for the update. I personally only use the secunia online scan so I can not tell you what the installed version does. Right now there are about a dozen or so of these update scanners that I have seen pop up, I have no idea if they are good or safe or not. I am always very cautious with programs like that and especially one like you encountered that did a scan on your pc with out express consent from you that is sketchy behavior. Just because the wot scores are good is not necessarily an indicator, if the program is very new the website possibly has not been up long enough to have ratings. Secunia is an antivirus company a security company that has been around a long time, that is why I trust the online scanner there. We use and recommend it on the help forums I am on all the time. It is totally up to you what you want to use. By now I think everyone should know that if there are adobe updates do them asap, if there are java updates so them asap, if there are flash updates do them asap, those should be known since we have said over and over some of the worst infections right now are coming through those so keep them updated. You can also subscribe to one of the many help forums that provide all the info on what updates are being issued on what date. Here is the link to the one at LzD, this is a good way to keep up to date. Software Updates or use the calender of updates Calendar of Updates a fabulous resource