Do not use internet explorer?
What a load of shit. Next you will be telling us not to use Windows!! And yes, Linux has viruses galore, I know, I work with it every day, as does OSX now.
I have used IE as my primary browser, since time began, and guess what, never had an issue with it. Only time in the last few years I have had a virus or malware, was as a result of me purposely downloading it.
Fookin hate Firefox fanbois, they moan about IE and it's failings, and them SPAM every fookin forum telling people to use it.
Fyi, Opera is the best browser on the Windows platform, bar none, not even Safari for Windows can compare, so why limit the choice to Firefox?
Why would anyone want to delete their cookies, unless they were desperately worried about security, cookies are extremely useful to have and to keep, telling people to delete them is nothing short of stupidity.
NTFS does not suffer fragmentation issues as FAT16/32 used to, so defragmentation should only be carried out one every 12 - 24 months at most - the performance gain of >1% does not warrant your PC being wanked for several hours at a time.
Never heard of "The Cleaner" on any techy forums, and if it is scanning for trojans's, it is not needed so long as you have a GOOD antivirus (ie. Kaspersky or NOD, nothing else comes close).
Why turn JS off? Plenty of sites still use JS even though its dying out and there is nothing wrong with using it; there are many exploits, but there you really should not have a net connection if you are worried about exploits online.
Gmail Vs Hotmail... errr, Gmail spam filters are OK, and so are hotmail. Neither are particuarly impressive, and both ban subnets rather than domains and isolated IP's or hostnames. Not the most advanced way of doing things, there is much better out there. Please stop trying to slate Microsoft and their services at every opportunity. I find this amusing, people expect others to change their email account etc every time something "rumored" to be better comes along, most people don't want to.
If you want to avoid spam, a few things... DONT GIVE YOUR PRIMARY EMAIL ADDRESS OUT TO ANYONE OTHER THAN COMPANIES AND PEOPLE YOU TRUST. DON'T POST IT ANYWHERE ONLINE.
Also, get a second email account and use it as a spam email account, anything you suspect may lead to spam, refer it to that email address instead. Within Hotmail/Windows Live Mail, you can link multiple accounts, so you could have 2 or 3 accounts if you wanted and use one for your important stuff, and the other two for less important stuff/companies you are not sure of. Always look for tickboxes that remove you from 3rd party mailing lists etc, also read them carefully as some of them will be for you to opt-in rather than out.
And whatever you do, don't ever click a link to unsubscribe or reply to any email that you do not know the sender is safe, and don't bother with autoresponders, turn them off.
Using a spam-filter, regardless of how good it is, is a fix not a cure; get to the root of the problem by avoiding and preventing spam altogether.
As much as I defend MS, don't ever use any of their add-on security tools - Microsoft are not a security company.
I have not used Avast, so won't comment on that, have heard it is okay for a freebie though, but AVG.. don't be funny, it is utter wank, even the likes of Norton are ahead of it nowadays. It was the defacto freebie to use, but that was about 5 years ago, nowadays its about as much use as a chocolate firguard against all but the most basic and known of viruses.
The key to online security (and keeping your PC clean, therefore leading to optimum performance) is vigilance, and remembering that your computer is a tool, just like a chainsaw, use it in a safe, controlled and correct manner, and it will serve you well, if you are reckless with it and expect it to look after you, then prepare to lose fingers.
Half of what you have posted is good, half is bullshit to be honest, go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate it, and then post a refined and corrected (and preferably not an anti-IE brigrade) version.
People, PLEASE DO NOT take the above information as gospel... it is far from it. No amount of defragging will improve overall performance, as someone who understands how filesystems work and the difference between muyltiple systems, NTFS is extremely resiliant to fragmentation, and it does not offer anything for security. Defragging every two weeks, to be quite frank, is the funniest thing I have heard all year. Even someone like myself, who uses their system constantly, and it is constantly full, would gain little from doing so.
I wonder why I have clients with Windows 2003 servers that see more I/O load in a day than your PC would see in a year, whose systems get defragged maybe once or twice a year?? I am also still wondering why my laptop runs as new, why it never has any non-self inflicted issues or viruses on it, and why it has not screwed up, because I am running IE 95% of the time, with Opera, Safari and Firefox 5% of the time. Btw, Firefox is actually quite a resource hog once you have a few tabs open, its get "very" heavy with regards its memory footprint, and it was, until the most recent update, for many months, starting funny on the odd-occasion and running slow, requiring a closedown and restart of it before it would work correctly. Never had this problem in Opera or IE.
IE's biggest advanatage, is it displays 99.9% of websites as the coder intended. Firefox's biggest problem, is it more W3C (though not totally - look to Opera for that) compliant and will not always display websites correctly if the coder has been a bit messy or lazy. Upto you, but personally id rather see the websites as they are supposed to be seen rather than how a bunch of self-righteous morons at the web consortium say I am allowed to view it. The internet is about freedom and expression, not about restrictions and regulations. If the web consortium had their own way, the internet would simply be a boring, black and white walled garden.
Also, I won't run IE8 for the reason, it is heavier than IE7, it basically bloatware and itself is moving towards W3C compliance, which is wrecking the viewing of websites - it does have the compatibility mode for websites not displaying correctly, but that does not always work perfectly. It is also known to have a few bugs.
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