[PaulDexler]

I just "hot rodded" my two year old Acer. It had 1G of RAM, a 100 Gb hard drive and ran XP home. Now it has 2G RAM (maxed out,) a 160 Gb hard drive (maxed out) and XP Pro. Bought a new, legal, copy of XP Pro from Fry's Electronics, in the "system builder's" mode. There were some problems at first, but then one of the gurus at Acer's U.S. service dept. told me how to install the proper drivers, and now it runs like a charm. For firewall and anti-spy/malware, I'm running products from Sunbelt Software. Their new "Vipre" technology combines anti spyware and anti-malware into one program, and works like a charm. They also offer licenses for more than three computers at one home address, meaning that my daughter and I have all our toys protected. McAfee and Symantec (Norton) programs work well, but over the years they have just been building on the same architecture they started with in DOS. Therefore, bloat. Sunbelt started from ground zero with Vipre, and it's small and fast. They also have a program called iHateSpam that works in Outlook and Outlook Express that kills spam before Yahoo's engine can even find it.
Just my 2cents worth
Paul