| Essential System Safety: |
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If you're the kind of person who likes to download some of the freebies we mentioned above (from other sites!) then you'll want to make sure that
your system is protected. Thankfully, it need not be an expensive undertaking. Here are some totally free and 100% effective solutions for
ensuring that your computer system doesn't fall victim to a virus, or become bogged down by Adware or worse...
Spybot Search and Destroy
There are many products similarly named and many websites that appear to host this great spyware protector / remover. Be careful about
where you get this software as sometimes you may not be getting what you think...
Lavasoft Ad-Aware
This performs some of the same functions of Spybot (above) but we have found that Ad-Aware will find things that Spybot does not. This goes both ways
so its recommended that you have both of these free utilities on your system...
Avast Anti Virus
A great free anti virus solution. We use this on two of our laptops. If you have multiple systems its advisable to have more than one solution for your
anti virus needs. This will give you a better chance of spotting something that might slip through one or more of the others. Its not likely, but we've
had experience of this and hence we run different anti virus solutions on all our systems. Incidentally, we use Dr. Web
to protect our main system as we've found that this offered the most up to date solution for new viruses. It does also give a few false alarms, so its
best to have some idea what you are doing if you decide to choose this solution.
Zonelabs Zone Alarm
We've been using this for a long time on most of our systems as I prefer the flexibility and control it offers when compared to the built in Windows
firewall. Additionally, we are still running Windows 9x on some systems for backwards compatibility checks and these older operating systems did not
come with a built in firewall as standard.
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| Fun Websites (No Downloads Needed): |
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YouTube
This is a great website for music, entertainment, movie trailers and other video clips of all kinds. We've even found complete TV shows here that
could be watched. The quality is not exactly up to DVD standard ;) but its great for what it is. Its an extremely popular website and millions of people
contribute video clips from all over the world. Note that this should be kept in mind when surfing this site as it is possible to stumble across
obscene and offensive video clips. Also, its possible to comment on the videoclips and we've noted that occasionally this comment area is used for
some sad individuals to exchange foul language and catcalls. Still one of the best sites on the net today if you surf it carefully...
1FM.com - Absolutely fantastic internet radio with requests and many great categories.
This has got to be my mother in laws favourite website. Its got many different genres of live music that can be listened to at 128 bps high quality.
I listen to this myself a lot (Chillout channel mostly) when burning the midnight oil. There is a lot of advertising and some pop ups that can be a little
bit annoying, but the music is great and its possible to request a track. My mother in law does this regularly with 100% success! Give it a try...
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