Thanks Gail....I use Photofiltre for my editing and it does a great job. Since I don't have an add-on software program I was fortunate to have a friend who had used this little online program and highly recommended it. It is a super little fixer and very simple to use. I can sharpen, soften, enhance the color if necessary....it also will do drop shadow and bordering (framing). Just started experimenting with the bordering myself....very easy to do. Anyone can use this and get good results and not be overwhelmed by the technology....sometimes I find myself simply not knowing how to do lots of things with a new program because some are a bit confusing.I like this program and will continue to use it....and thanks Gail for listing some others I didn't know about....might check out a few of the others, too. ~Kathy~

When you speak of upgrading "my Dell computer", you're not speaking of installing an upgrade over top of XP are you? If so, I misunderstand, so disregard the rest of my post. :) So I'm assuming you intend to purchase a retail version of Windows 7 and do a clean install. In the first line of your post you mention 512 MB of RAM, a date, and then 2.00 GB of RAM. Does that mean it now has 2.00 GB of RAM or maybe 2 1/2 GB of RAM? Either way, I'm no expert but I'd think 512 MB is less than enough, but either 2 or 2 1/2 GB would be fine. I don't know much about Office, but wasn't Office 2003 was the last version that had the old style menu, before the newfangled ribbon came along. According to this, your Office 2002 would not be compatible but according to this, Office 2003 would be. Would your 2002 macros work in 2003? I don't know. Would it be worth the expense of buying a retail version of Windows 7, as well as Office 2003(or at least Word)? To me, probably not, to you, only you can decide. Personally, since it works, I'd probably just continue using it. Continue running a good real-time AV, occasionally scanning with a couple on-demand malware tools(Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware come to mind), use Firefox or Chrome(lie detected), using the WOT add-on(trusting it somewhat less than fully), and being careful what I open(email) and what I install. Just my opinion though. Edit: GrammerGrammar Edit2: Spelling This post was edited by chuggerguy on Thu, Jan 23, 14 at 3:10

Thanks Joe, That's how I do it or did it. I got the Win 7 Public Beta release now with a product key that is good till August 1st, so I'm going to put Win 7 on a secondary HD, since my main HD is a 74GB WD Raptor, which doesn't give me much wiggle room for 2 OS's and long term future use, the good thing is that's it's 10,000 rpm, but for tons of software, that's small. Never tried a triple boot, interesting. grandms, the 128MB on-board graphics will be fine. I did Vista with a 32MB card and really didn't miss out on much, in fact they were selling Vista ready computers with only 32MB. If you're into 3D and gaming graphics performance like the kids, then you'll a need big buck video card, but for desktop performance for Windows Aero, you're good to go. I'm liking Win 7, sure there are preliminary bugs and crashes at times doing some things with different software and reports are sent to MS, but that's why it's beta and testing and why they released the public beta to the first 2.5 million people, to get feedback. There was a big demand and release was delayed 6-8 hours while more servers were set up to handle the traffic so you'd have a good download experience with a little speed.

Agree just leave AVAST for now since you have it on and it is running well you are good there with an active Antivirus program. What I suggest people do with Avast is to set up the scanner in screen saver, go to your screen saver settings area and select Avast screensaver from the list, in Advanced you can select which screen saver to have it use while Avast scans. Save your settings then anytime your pc goes to screen saver it will start scanning, when it is interrupted it stops then starts where it left off the last time etc, works great. As Zep said AVAST is constantly scanning so you really don't have to do scans like you do with others. I would go with the windows firewall it is a decent firewall. But if you want to use zone alarm since you have it that is fine but you do have to turn off the windows one like zep gave directions for. You have the same programs I use, malwarebytes, superantispyware, spywareblaster, update weekly and do scans. That first AVAST scan does take a long time to run and yes windows 7 is a large program so you will have a lot of files to scan. You are applying a very good layered protection on your pc. Just remember to also use the secunia software inspector to keep all programs updated too.