Failing that, here's my thoughts on some stuff to make Windows palatable:

Anti-Virus - AVG Free from GriSoft. Surfen Sie to http://www.free.grisoft.com and install the latest AVG Free version. This is the smoothest, lowest-resource-eating, most efficient anti-virus you can get for the money. It's free, but it's still far nicer than Norton, McAfee (gag), or many others. This is for at-home personal use only, kids, so don't be using this on a business PC. You want to do that, BUY IT. If you like the free version (and you will), but want to buy a "real" version, buy it from GriSoft. It's that simple.

Ok, you're still reading. Maybe you have other forms of malware, apart from virii, like parasites? Been surfing to naughty places, have you? And you are too cheap to go ahead and buy the good stuff from AVG? Want to de-bug yourself without forking over the moola? Yeah, me too. go to http://www.lavasoft.com and look for the FREE Personal edition. Install it, run it, remove the crap it finds. Then stop going to naughty web sites, before I teach your wife how to read Internet Explorer history logs and look at temp files.

Still with me? Maybe you need to get down deeper into the guts of your PC Registry, startup, configuration, etc? Then, my friend, you want to get on over to http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php and download HijackThis. This puppy will allow you to see most relevant info on what's starting up along with Windows, identify crud, and remove them. Please be aware, this tool has a learning curve (a small one), assumes you know what you are doing, and has the capability of rendering your Windows machine to the level of an Etch-A-Sketch. Should that happen, go back to the top of this page and read about Ubuntu again. Merijn has a gob of other tools as well, that are just plain handy. Same advisory statement exists.

Suppose you aren't cleaning up Compu-Ca-Ca, but just want to make life easier/cleaner/better? Ok, some basic choices. If you are running Internet Explorer, you need to stop that. FireFox just works better, and makes you look cooler. It makes you smarter, too. Go to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ and click on the Download Firefox-Free big green button. You will find you are far less open to various 'web exploits while running FireFox versus Internet Exploder.

Are you using AOL? In the name of everything holy, WHY? Take off the training wheels, and ride your bike by yourself. First off, if you are still on dial-up, stop it. Go get some form of high-speed. Cable if possible, DSL if you must. Time-Warner has been good to me. I use Time-Warner's digital phone, and it is Good. I won't go back to analog dial tone. And they are not in danger of being legislated out of existance, for allegedly making free with the intellectual work of others .

On to Email, then. I know, you get Spam, also known as UCE, AKA junk mail. Waah. We all do. But I get a lot less than you probably do. There are ways of blocking a bunch of the crap from getting through to you. Your ISP or email provider ***should*** be doing ***something*** to block it at the server. However, they have probably said, "it would take too long to process the volume of messages we handle daily, blah blah bork bork bork..." puke. In other words, "it would be too hard, we're not smart enough, waah, waah". Idiots. If you *block* the 80% of crap traffic, then your server workload just might go *down* a bit. Aaurgh. Anyways, I do block crap, spam and viruses, right here on this very server. Check out http://mailscanner.info, which is the core of what I use on my servers. Very nice.

Are you one of the majority of sheeple on the planet who receives something vute/shocking/touching/outrageous/funny/etc via email, then blindly forwards it to half a time zone's worth of folks, as if it were Holy Writ? If you are, hold your hand out in front of you, palm up. Look at your hand, stare and your hand. Then slam your hand, hard, into your own face. Repeat until you feel the pain. Then go to http://www.snopes.com and read up on mass quantities of hoaxes, frauds, lies, scams, and other inbox litter that has been going around since Lassie was a puppy. For example, ever hear the one about seeing someone driving with no headlights, and if you flash your lights at them, they'll come back and shoot you, and shoot your house, and impregnate your cat, and eat your dog? I first saw that one about 1992 or so. It's still out there, because somebody needs to slap themselves.