re: Gotta love Redmond

Actually, the baseline operating system is as secure as other OSs.
What's insecure is:
 - Turn sharing off (Control Panel > System)
 - old Flash Player
 - Adobe's .pdf viewer (use Fox-IT .pdf viewer instead. It loads .pdfs in virtual memory thus isolated from the OS.)
 - old browser versions
 - browser plug-ins enabled (disable the ones you don't use)
 - old Java
 - Computer Administration > Services:  Turn off unnecessary services, especially on Pro versions, i.e. Windows 7 Pro
 - the best a/v out there right now is Avast Pro at www.avast.com  It too has a virtual memory component, formerly known as SafeSpace, which I had my customers using since 2005.

1.  Goto Add>Remove Programs and remove software not being used. Also keep a Windows Explorer window open and remove the folders for those programs.
If multiple versions of Java are listed, remove the older versions.

2.  In addition to Automatic Windoze Updates, goto Windowsupdate.microsoft.com manually and sign up for Microsoft Update, then click on Custom.  There are times that the Windoze Serial Number needs to be verified before retrieving further updates.

3.  Goto FileHippo.com and install their Updater software.  It will detect obsolete software and provide links to update. The links to get the files you want are in the top right corner.

4.  Double-check by installing the Personal Security Inspector at www.secunia.com
After first use, remember to disable from Startups.  The software itself can remain on the hard drive.  The purpose is to find and remove obsolete versions of Java etc even though updates have been installed.

5.  CCleaner and DeFraggler - is all you will ever need to keep a computer running fast.  Download from FileHippo.
Notice that CCleaner has the ability to also clean out invalid registry entries and can disable Startups aka TSR's.
Also notice that Defraggler can do a Defrag at Boot Time, which defrags the pagefile.sys
We run Defraggler on the Surgemail files once a week, usually at 3 AM after doing a Net Stop Surgemail.  If during working hours, just do the files that have more than 50 fragments.  Sort the list by number of fragments.

6. For .doc files, we use OpenOffice.org with macros disabled instead of M$ Office.

BarryZ
1USA