Yes, I would agree that my kids are very tough on CDs and DVD's, one scratch will render a $20 movie useles. For this reason, I copy most of my CD's onto my hard drive, where I can either watch them on my computer, transfer them to my Ipod or burn to a DVDRW disk for a backup (for personal use within my own home, of course.) I found two programs that enable me to do this seemlessly. One is Slysoft, Any DVD, available at at www.slysoft.com. When installed, this pgm runs in the background, and it will "decode" any decription written into most store bought CDs to prevent copyright infringement. The other program is Vault 360, available at www.bambootech.com, which will format all your movies into the correct format to download and play on your ipod, PSP, or PDA device. Of course, be aware that copyright law prohibits the use of such software for any other use but backing up a dvd or cd to protect from wear or accidental damage, etc. --John

Revo is an excellent program I have recommeneded it here and elsewhere for a long time and it usually provides excellent results. Plus it has some other great features other than being an uninstaller, I suggest reading up on the site as to the various uses, it is a great tool for addressing your start up programs. Their site has great tutorials on each aspect if you click on each aspect then click to go to the user guide it is very helpful. " Revo Uninstaller gives you another 8 handy and powerful tools to clean up your system. Here is the list of the tools and utilities included in Revo Uninstaller: Auto Start Manager - Stop programs that start automatically on Windows startup; speed up loading of Windows! Windows Tools Manager - Handy and useful tools bundled with every version of Windows; easily find useful system tools and options! Junk Files Cleaner - Find and remove unnecessary files from your computer; free up disk space and delete files you do not need! Browsers History Cleaner - Erase web browser history, visited pages history and temporary internet files of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Opera web browsers; free up a lot of disk space by deleting temporary internet files like temporary saved videos, temporary flash files, temporary pictures etc! Office History Cleaner - Remove the history of most recently used files in MS Office; remove your tracks by deleting the list of last opened MS Office documents! Windows History Cleaner - Remove the history of recently opened files, delete temporary files, remove usage tracks and other history items that are saved by Windows; remove your tracks saved by Windows for a lot of operations! Unrecoverable Delete Tool - Erase files and folders forever; be sure that nobody could recover your files and folders after deleting! Evidence Remover - Make sure already deleted files, folders and other data are unrecoverable; securely erase your data!"

Here is the direct link from AVG on exactly how to upgrade your AVG. As Owbist says do not remove your current version. direct from the FAQ page on AVG "To install AVG 8.0 Free Edition over the current AVG 7.5 Free Edition please proceed as follows: * Download the latest AVG 8.0 Free Edition installation file from our website. * When you are prompted, please do not open this file directly from the Internet, but click the "Save" button and choose a location, where the installation file should be stored (we recommend saving the file to the Desktop). * Reboot your computer. * Close all running applications, locate the downloaded AVG 8.0 Free Edition installation file (it has a four color square icon and its name starts with AVG_...) and launch the installation. * Follow the installation wizard to install the new AVG 8.0 Free Edition(previous version of AVG will be automatically removed during the installation process). * If a restart is required after the initial configuration, please reboot your computer to finish the installation" Here is a link that might be useful: AVG directions on how to upgrade to AVG8

There are many pieces of good, free software available. I easily have a dozen major software programs that I downloaded for free, and a number of them work better than the paid versions I previously used. And just because you pay for something doesn't mean it's problem-free. It's true that paid software from a reliable company is not going to contain a virus, but it might be the target of a virus because it's popular, or it might come with add-ons that you don't want. Whenever I am contemplating downloading some free software that looks good, I usually do a Google search with the name of the product +"review" or +"problem" or +"scam". If you see that a lot of people seem to be happy with it, or that you don't get significant negative hits, then it's probably safe. Even so, save it first and then give it a virus scan before installing.