No worries, sydseeds: I keep the URLS on my Mozilla taskbar for quick look-up. Ad Aware: http://www.lavasoft.com/ (go to the section for home users and download the free version only.) Spywareblaster: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html Spybot Search-and-Destroy: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html Also, if you don't want to switch to Thunderbird for mail, give Pegasus a try. It'll join your Outlook seamlessly, and you can gradually leave OL behind as you grow to use (and like) Pegasus better. I haven't used Peg to filter out SPAM yet because my ISP marks and deletes it at the source. I'll have a lookup, see if I can find any filter-settings. RE: the AVG virus-filter, which I've heard both really good and REALLY bad things about. That's one you're going to have to judge on your own. I suggest you go to some of the better, trusted sites and enter "AVG" as a search term. Read what the experts have to say. My own favourites are www.cnet.com and http://www.pcworld.com/. Personally, I use PC-Cillan, and I've absolutely no complaints. Well...maybe one: the blasted thing updated itself every five minutes, no matter what you were doing. It was like having a toddler yank at your arm, demanding "is it safe? huh? Is it safe yet? Huh? huh?" I finally disabled the auto-update and just do it once a day. That took care of it nicely. It's also a primo spyware-filter and firewall, and NOT one of those firewalls that isolate you forever and let NUTHIN' through. It's safe, not paranoid. But that's just my own personal preference (and I truly HATE Macaffee, btw, and think Norton's gotten far too pricey for what it offers.)

Hi Kuduz9, No I did not have a couple of beers, but I probably should have LOL. I'm a friend of bill & bob. I copy and paste a lot to the forum. My typing is so bad not to mention my command over the English language. I struggle with spelling and basic sentence structure. Getting thoughts from keyboard to forum has always been difficult for me. I continue to work at it and have improved.

I've been using Firefox since longer than I can remember, and a beta version has never been pushed to me. Auto-updates to release versions, yes. Beta versions, no (I am not subscribed to the beta channel and have never been forced to it). Regards to browser security, there's a newly discovered vulnerability in the SSLv3 protocol -- POODLE is the acronym. It's a combination of browser and server. SSLv3 was superseded some while ago by TLS, but many servers are still running SSLv3 (along with TLS). A secure browser connection that starts on TLS can be tricked into downgrading to SSL 3.0 (if the connecting server still supports it), and a hacker can intercept bits of the data flow when that happens. The expectation is that SSL 3.0 will not be patched since it's considered outdated. Servers that are running it will (should) soon be reconfigured to no longer support it. Users who are running old browsers that don't support TLS will no longer be able to connect to secure sites such as online banking or shopping after servers no longer support SSLv3. The recommended defense until servers are fixed to to eliminate SSLv3 is for users to set their browser to not allow SSL 3.0 connections (minimum TLSv1). If your old browser of choice (or requirement) doesn't support TLS then you're stuck being susceptible, and will be out-of-luck when SSLv3 is fully redacted. IE6 , for example, supports TLSv1 but the option is not enabled by default, it must be manually turned on. (TLS is currently up to v3, which IE6 does not support past TLSv1.) Test your browser

I don't think a user with normal PC experience (and with neither exposure to nor understanding of the depths and bowels of the project) can knowledgeably assess whether or not to do a software update. Even someone with advanced technical knowledge can often not make sense of details gained from only an over-the-fence peek. My advice - accept all updates. When there are cosmetic or unintended hiccups, they're usually detected and fixed in days. For Windows, have restore points so that problems can be rolled back. For browsers, have two or more onboard and current. If one starts acting silly, use another for awhile. As far as differences between browsers? Eh, not really to my eye. They all do the same things the same ways. Some are smaller, some are larger. As with most software, most people don't need or use the bells and whistles so special features don't much matter.