Kick-Starting Your Computer

[Lord Krunk]

As you might have assumed from the title, I, Lord Krunk, have come into acquisition of a sweet new PC as of yesterday (my first computer in 5 years, so it's a pretty big thing for me). But with this silver lining comes a cloud, a dilemma that I would like to turn to you, The Escapist, to help me with.

How would you kick-start your computer? What programs would you install first? Any tips for a newcomer to the PC scene?

Another question I would like to ask is that of free Antivirus/Spyware programs. Which do you recommend?

Discuss, and thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Hellion25]

For the Anti-virus, I'd say AVG Free is a decent enough one for the most part. As for the rest, the world is your oyster

 

[chromewarriorXIII]

I would go for AVG Free for Antivirus and Spyware. It does scans at least twice a week but will stay out of your way and doesn't slow down your computer too much.

As for programs, that's really up to you. What kind of programs do you want?

 

[MorsePacific]

Firefox, Thunderbird, Trillian and Skype are always good places to start when you're installing new programs. As for anti-virus software, Avast Anti-virus is free and hasn't let me down yet.

 

[The Maddest March Hare]

First things I went for on my new Laptop: AVG free, Spy-bot search and destroy, Ad-Aware, Google Chrome, MSN and MSN+, MediaMonkey (a good free media player).

 

[Zombie_Fish]

Windows Live Messenger or Pidgin or whatever you use, any good anti-virus you have and Mozilla Firefox.

 

[razer17]

AVG as has been said many times, Spybot search and destroy, a great free anti spyware. then go ahead and get media monkey, especially if you have an ipod, then you dont need to use that crap itunes.
then go for FireFox. get your music onto your hard drive.
and open office. it has a great word processor, plus excel, publisher and powerpoint programs which are free, and very similar to Office.

 

[Hellion25]

ephPod is also quite good if you're looking to avoid iTunes, but I haven't used Media Monkey so can't give a comparison as to which is superior.

 

[RagnorakTres]

Well...depends what you're going to be using it for. Programming, gaming, web browsing, hacking, all of these uses require different types of things in the PC. I'm going to assume that you will be gaming and browsing the web mostly, so: Windows. Windows is probably the best system out there at the moment. I am a loyal Linux penguin-warrior, but Windows has better games, requires less knowledge from the user and is easier to use (probably as a result of the second reason).

If you're going to be gaming, first thing you're going to want to do is install the most technologically advanced game you own. Most games come pre-packaged with all the stuff you will need to install them (Direct-X, mostly). By installing the most technologically advanced game you own, you are guaranteeing that you have the latest version of Direct-X and all the other generally accepted requirements.

For web-browsing, you need a good virus-protection program. Now. Even if your computer isn't connected to the 'Net yet. My father likes Spybot: Search and Destroy, but that's pretty expensive. I don't actually have any virus protection on my 'puter itself, but I am behind three separate firewalls and running Linux, so I'm pretty much set XD For a good balance of protection and cost, Norton is about as good as you're gonna get. But, take my advice, split with the cash for Spybot. It's effective and you can program it to run checks every day at a certain time.

That's all I got at the moment. If you need more specifically oriented advice, let me know.

 

[Lord Krunk]

What kind of programs do you want?

More in the case of programs that I will find useful (utilities and such, like Anivirus programs, Browsers and the like), awesome or fun.

Okay, so what I'm getting thus far is this:

Antivirus:
AVG Free
Avast!

Antispyware:
Spybot Search & Destroy

Other:
MSN Messenger
Firefox
Google Chrome
Microsoft Works
Winamp

Thank you very much for your help guys; please keep 'em coming!

 

[Lord Krunk]

Well...depends what you're going to be using it for. Programming, gaming, web browsing, hacking, all of these uses require different types of things in the PC. I'm going to assume that you will be gaming and browsing the web mostly, so: Windows. Windows is probably the best system out there at the moment. I am a loyal Linux penguin-warrior, but Windows has better games, requires less knowledge from the user and is easier to use (probably as a result of the second reason).

If you're going to be gaming, first thing you're going to want to do is install the most technologically advanced game you own. Most games come pre-packaged with all the stuff you will need to install them (Direct-X, mostly). By installing the most technologically advanced game you own, you are guaranteeing that you have the latest version of Direct-X and all the other generally accepted requirements.

For web-browsing, you need a good virus-protection program. Now. Even if your computer isn't connected to the 'Net yet. My father likes Spybot: Search and Destroy, but that's pretty expensive. I don't actually have any virus protection on my 'puter itself, but I am behind three separate firewalls and running Linux, so I'm pretty much set XD For a good balance of protection and cost, Norton is about as good as you're gonna get. But, take my advice, split with the cash for Spybot. It's effective and you can program it to run checks every day at a certain time.

That's all I got at the moment. If you need more specifically oriented advice, let me know.

Wow, this is really helpful. I'll also be doing image/video editing, so what do you recommend there?

 

[GamerPhate]

As you might have assumed from the title, I, Lord Krunk, have come into acquisition of a sweet new PC as of yesterday (my first computer in 5 years, so it's a pretty big thing for me). But with this silver lining comes a cloud, a dilemma that I would like to turn to you, The Escapist, to help me with.

LOL I thought you meant like when you hard drive won't come on, you kick the pc to get it to start spinning again, lol. Although I have 2 stories on that topic.

One was the 386 I had YEARS ago, did have a hard drive that was going out, think it was like a 40 MB (woohoo heh) however, all the data was fine. It was just like the drive would not spin up on its own to full speed. So I would reset the computer and keep hitting reset and the drive would spin faster with each consecutive reset. And after doing this, the PC would then finally boot up, and it worked like that for a LONG time till we upgraded heh.

The other story was the I SWEAR that the PCs can hear you sometimes. One time my PC was locked up for literally 45 minutes, and I didn't want to reset it due to the stuff I had opened. So I let it sit for a while, and then at one point out loud had said "Okay fine I guess I will have to reset you" or something like that. I pushed the power button in, and it unlocked and windows was fine, however it was the old springy AT case styles, so I had to hold my finger in the button while I tried to shut the PC down.. but it somehow knew I was going to reboot it, and just unlocked. Perhaps pushing the power button did something to it, but its an analog switch, I really still to this day don't understand it. (lol and lastly non pc related I found this like toy electric guitar at goodwill that was REALLY old.. and it didn't have batteries in it... yet somehow .. it still plays notes... oddly sounding ones but it works.. and is obviously WAY WAY old heh. Guess thats all I got for now.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Other then that I don't really know. Quark and Game Maker 7.0 for making games for maps for current games.

I've had some good fun with Game Maker 5, so I'll give 7 a go. By the way, what's Quark?

 

[RagnorakTres]

Well...depends what you're going to be using it for. Programming, gaming, web browsing, hacking, all of these uses require different types of things in the PC. I'm going to assume that you will be gaming and browsing the web mostly, so: Windows. Windows is probably the best system out there at the moment. I am a loyal Linux penguin-warrior, but Windows has better games, requires less knowledge from the user and is easier to use (probably as a result of the second reason).

If you're going to be gaming, first thing you're going to want to do is install the most technologically advanced game you own. Most games come pre-packaged with all the stuff you will need to install them (Direct-X, mostly). By installing the most technologically advanced game you own, you are guaranteeing that you have the latest version of Direct-X and all the other generally accepted requirements.

For web-browsing, you need a good virus-protection program. Now. Even if your computer isn't connected to the 'Net yet. My father likes Spybot: Search and Destroy, but that's pretty expensive. I don't actually have any virus protection on my 'puter itself, but I am behind three separate firewalls and running Linux, so I'm pretty much set XD For a good balance of protection and cost, Norton is about as good as you're gonna get. But, take my advice, split with the cash for Spybot. It's effective and you can program it to run checks every day at a certain time.

That's all I got at the moment. If you need more specifically oriented advice, let me know.

Wow, this is really helpful. I'll also be doing image/video editing, so what do you recommend there?

Adobe products. All of them. If my computer wasn't so crappy (it'd probably crash from hardware overload if I tried playing Morrowind on it) and I wasn't so broke, I would have bought the CS4 Master Collection ages ago. For more info on them (which ones you would want for your particular uses) go to www.adobe.com and check out the products they have. Seriously, they are the best in the business as far as publishing software goes.

 

[RagnorakTres]

Wups! I forgot to mention my browser pick! Mozilla. And use Gmail for your email. Firefox is easily customizable and easily understandable for most people. You can download skins and it constantly checks for updates to your add-ons. There are all kinds of reasons to use Gmail, not least of which being the more than 7000 megs of storage space (Great way to back up your hard drive's contents: email them to yourself using Gmail. It's Google's servers, unless civilization as we know it goes down, your data's safe.). I'm just mentioning these since it is possible, even probable that you are already using these services.

 

[akmarksman]

How much RAM does your system have? If you can upgrade that first before you do video editing..

Are there 64-bit versions of the video editor that you use? If you are running a dual or quad core computer,then find the 64-bit versions,you'll notice a definite increase in speed.

AVG,Avast,Firefox,Ad-Aware,Spybot S&D.

When you have a good burner(I use a Pioneer DVD+R DL burner) and you find which media it likes the best..Memorex,TDK,Sony..then stay with that brand. My burner prefers TDK media over Memorex.
A good burning program I use is imgburn.