No offense taken. I never recommend realtime applications other than a single AV. Without this limitation a user could inundate there system with applications running in the background which would demand resources and possibly conflict with one another. For all the postive service they could provide the potential negativity is there too. A user has to accept some responsibility for awareness, and protection such as frequent scheduled scans. Just two schools of thought. DA

Linux used to be for geeks only. The vast majority of people don't realize how easy and efficient Linux has become. My mother who is 80 years old had her hard drive crash last year and she had many valuable photos and financial records on it that would have been hard to replace. She took her computer to the "Geek Squad" at Best Buy and tried to have them transfer all the information from her old hard drive to a new one. After keeping her computer awhile they informed her that there was nothing they could do and since she did not have a backup of anything (computers no longer ship with a backup copy of Windows) they could only replace her old drive and charge her a hundred and something dollars for a brand new copy of Windows 7 on top of labor costs and parts. To make a long story short I went down to the store and asked them why they just didn't pop a copy of Linux in since I had done that earlier and read everything on her old drive. They told me that "corporate" would not allow them to do that because of the Gnu license. I took the computer back, bought a hard drive adaptor for around 30 dollars and did it myself. The freedom one has with linux is refreshing. Spend a $150 for Microsoft Office? I use Open Office free and can do anything with it Microsoft Office does. Computer crashes and need a new one? I can buy any old computer for very little money and put Linux on it free and it will run trouble free without slowing down or crashing like a new system with Windows X inevitably will and I will not have to constantly check for viruses or trojans. The bottom line is Linux is superior to windows in many ways. I suggest anyone wanting to try it start with Linux Mint and simply run it off the CD without installing it.

in most cases slow pc means pc full of spyware and adware infections, possible other nasty infections as well. Do you have on your pc, that you run at least once a week good anti spyware programs and antivirus programs that are fully updated? You should go do one of the free online virus scans to see if it finds anything and if you do not have superantispyware program on your pc I would suggest adding it, updating it and running a scan. http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ I urge major caution before using any registry cleaners. Here is a link that might be useful: superantispyware program

Mikie...You're a genius! And...beyond that...never let it be said that any of us supposed techie geeks know everything about everything all of the time. :-) I'm living proof...it t'ain't true. Case in point. Recently, I had to have a new modem installed by my cable ISP. The young man that did it was charming and very helpful but I fear he tried to clean up a couple of apps that he thought might be slowing my system. After he left....I checked to make sure everything was running and then shut my system down. 24 hours later...I was tearing my hair out wondering why the loading speed of my system hadn't improved. To the contrary...it had gotten worse. Well...I did all the usual checks...checking wiring/plugs [theirs and mine]...checked apps...defrag...invasive programs, yada...yada...yada...and still couldn't find the problem....UNTIL I happened by here this morning and read this thread. HALLELUJAH !!! As soon as I read your post...I went looking and apparently my young ISP serviceman wasn't aware that Java was a system requirement...and he uninstalled it. Thanks to your incite...I reloaded it and my system is now delightedly skipping along at its original fast pace. THANK YOU...THANK YOU...THANK YOU !!! Anne