Essential apps for Win 7?

I've been out of the Windows loop for YEARS now, and only do the occasional fix here and there for family or friends whom own Windows machines. Just the other day though, a friend of mine bought a new Toshiba laptop which is running Win7.

She already bought MS Office and I've set up Thunderbird for her, as well as recommended Chrome and FF vs. IE. But aside from these very basic things, I thought it would be nice to brief her on how to keep a tidy and safe machine which would last her the course of her HD.

Of course I'll be talking to her about the logical things one should and shouldn't do on and off line, but I'll also need to back some things up with apps that compliment this logic. That said, I'm asking the Windows users here (I know that a lot of the senior OS X users still have to use Windows at or for work) what they think are the most up to date, useful products that a simpleton would be able to understand. Would like them to be easy on resources as well.

First and foremost, security. I'm thinking MS Security Essentials should be good enough since she's not going to be browsing any warez sites and such.

Are things like Adaware and Spybot still relevant and useful?

What else should I suggest that she use for general computer usage? All I can remember back from my Win days is having to run stupid spyware and adware software all the time, as well as running defrag tools or registry cleaners... Uuuccch.

Any good free defrag programs ? I used to use Diskeeper and liked it well enough. Wow, thinking back on all the time wasted with that stuff, it's amazing !

Doug

MSE is good, as well as Malwarebytes for any Malware.
CCleaner is a very good defrag program.
Maybe HWMonitor to monitor temperatures (just in case).

This might help a bit

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (the free version) is good as a *reactive* anti-spyware solution. For proactive anti-malware, I recommend MSE as you said. It's not as comprehensive as some suites, but then, it's also not nearly as intrusive, nor is it a resource hog.

Adaware is basically useless and I only use Spybot as a secondary scan for malware. MWB is very comprehensive and is about the only product that can remove the most complex malware (it's major specialty is the rogue "anti-virus" extortionware).

Windows 7 actually handles defrag chores on its own for the most part, you shouldn't need to run a manual defrag (providing that you keep plenty of free space, much like with OS X).

When I setup a new machine, I typically install FoxIt PDF Reader as a lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader.

I also manually set VM size to 1.5 x physical memory and make the min and max the same, so that you don't get constant resizing of the swap file (which introduces fragmentation).

And finally, I like to install CCleaner for clearing caches and registry cleaning. That's about it off the top of my head.

Great. I really appreciate the updates fellas. I only wish I was able to set up her VM/Paging file in person. Guess we could do it via Skype though.

Thanks!

Doug

Doug b said:

Great. I really appreciate the updates fellas. I only wish I was able to set up her VM/Paging file in person. Guess we could do it via Skype though.

Thanks!

Doug

Click to expand...

Check out Logmein.com if you're going to be doing remote support. The free version works great and you can just add her machine to your library and easily get into it whenever you need to.

Doug b said:

Great. I really appreciate the updates fellas. I only wish I was able to set up her VM/Paging file in person. Guess we could do it via Skype though.

Thanks!

Doug

Click to expand...

Or with Teamviewer, but Skype is probably easier.