New PCs are thick on the ground at this time of year and so are new PC problems. Customer support teams are often deluged with enquiries as people struggle to get to grips with recently acquired machines.

While there are rogue computers, many problems are less about faulty or difficult to use hardware and more about the marketing choices made by PC makers.

For example, laptop makers keen to keep their products below certain key price points have shipped models without enough ram. That’s dumb. Microsoft says Windows 7  (installed on most new machines) requires a minimum of 1GB to run in 32-bit mode or 2GB in 64-bit mode.

Realistically 2GB is the bare minimum and you ought to have 4GB or more. Otherwise your computer experience will be somewhere between sluggish and barely functional.

If you find yourself struggling to squeeze performance out of a new laptop in these circumstances you have two realistic options: buy extra ram or dump Windows and install Windows XP (or if you’re brave, Ubuntu) instead.

Either way you’ll be in for some extra cost and a degree of fiddling around before you have a practical computer – which may not leave you feeling well-disposed towards your laptop maker.

Another problem area is the bundled software loaded by the manufacturer. A lot of it is rubbish. No, scrub that. Almost all of it is rubbish.

You may find programs you’ll never use automatically loading themselves into memory each time you boot. They can slow your computer down or interfere with other programs causing glitches or even crashes.

Alternatively you may find yourself connected to registration sites and badgered for personal information. Some preloaded applications are spyware – secretly reporting your computing activity to people whether you like it or not.

If this worries you – and it should – the best strategy is to start by making sure you have antivirus software and firewall installed and switched on. Then install an anti-spyware program like Microsoft’s Windows Defender (download from www.microsoft.com). Finally using the Add or Remove Programs panel in Windows Control Panel, systematically work through the pre-installed applications deciding what, if anything, is worth keeping and dumping anything else.

An alternative is to use CCleaner a tool to automatically get rid of the crud choking a PC. But however you get the job done, make sure you give your PC a good clean – even if it is brand new.

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I can’t honestly tell you if AVG Free 9.0 offers decent PC security. That’s because the application was so annoying and imposed such an overhead on my home desktop I deleted it before testing finished. There are times when free is too high a price.

AVG Anti-Virus Free 9.0 is still only two weeks old. It arrived about the same time as Windows 7 and is compatible with Microsoft’s new operation system.

I downloaded the file in late October to test on my desktop running Windows 7 release candidate version. The program is available at AVG’s free web site – but as I’ll explain in a moment, I don’t recommend it.

It’s only a small download at 869Kb – it takes seconds with broadband. The first file is actually a down-loader application which fetches and installs the rest of the software.

While process is easy enough, the second screen you see is only the start of what becomes an annoying and shrill sales pitch designed to control your choices and trick you in to paying money. It appears AVG has learnt from the scam artists the software promises to protect you from.

Flakiness abounds

Your first choice is to select either the free basic protection, or a 30-day trial of the company’s comprehensive protection. Notice the way this choice is presented. The implication is that responsible people will choose the second option – which means in 30 days AVG will ask yu to hand over money. Don’t worry – you’ll get plenty more opportunities to pay AVG if you choose not to do so at this point.

I thought I was downloading the free software – that’s what I clicked on at the AVG web site – so that’s what I proceeded with.

During the download AVG asks you to remove existing anti-virus software. This makes sense, anti-virus applications can conflict with each other and anyway, as each program imposes an overhead, the performance drop can multiply.

Annoyingly AVG doesn’t remove the other software. It’s install halts and opens the Windows uninstaller so you manually remove it. Even more annoyingly the AVG installer closes itself at this point – you need to hunt around in your download folder to find it and start all over again – by now many megabytes have been wiped off your download cap.

Click, click, bloody click

There’s a lot of clicking throughout this process – some of it unnecessary. Then it asks if you wish to install the AVG Security Toolbar. It’s recommended. The software has also helpfully pre-selected the option to change your default search engine to Yahoo. This is spam – of a sort. In both cases I choose No. It’s actually tricky – if you click off the first box, the Yahoo box stays ticked but grayed out. This can only be designed to trick you into selecting the search engine choice.

At this point the installer had to close Firefox. Not wanting to be sent all the way back to the start rather like that horrible long snake at the end of a game of Snakes and Ladders, I clicked to close Firefox held my breath. Phew. The install resumes. At this point we are now 40 minutes into the process. Even at minimum wage rate this free anti-virus program has cost me the price of lunch and a clutch of grey hairs.

Finally

Suddenly the process is over. A box appears telling me the install has finished. But wait, what is this? More stuff to click. Do I agree to give anonymous information? Oh alright then. And now would I like to receive spam? (Sorry news and alerts). Please enter your email address. Are you kidding? No.

While AVG starts its first scan. I reload Firefox. In the meantime I notice the program has installed an icon on my Windows desktop. Did I ask for this? No I damn well did not. AVG asks tons of questions during the install – but doesn’t allow me to choose whether the icon despoils my desktop. At this point I’m starting to get annoyed.

Not responding

Meanwhile Firefox is failing to load. What’s going on here? There was a string of open tabs – none of them are visible. Windows tells me Firefox is “not responding”.

Eventually – more than an hour after the first download, Firefox opens. And what’s this? AVG has installed AVG Safe Search. Is this the toolbar I choose not to install? The name is different, so let’s assume it isn’t the same thing. I wasn’t warned or asked about it, but hey, let’s go with the flow for a moment.  So, Firefox opens at the home page – my tags are all lost.

At this point the AVG software is scanning my computer looking for viruses. I open up the scanner’s display and see what looks like a banner ad for the paid for software at the bottom of the screen.  Fair enough, the software was free and these people have to eat. I can accept a little advertising as the price to pay for free anti-virus.

But it has to go

Before long my computer started crashing, randomly. And things started being very s l o w   l i ke  w a d i n g t h r o u g h m o l a s s e s. There could be only one explanation for this. I removed AVG, reinstalled Microsoft Security Essentials and performance returned to normal.

Of course, you mileage may vary. AVG may rock your boat. But for me it has proved so disastrous I couldn’t even test its efficiency as an anti-virus tool. I give it zero stars out of five.

See: Microsoft’s barely there Security Essentials

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Google Related Links is a tool to help push traffic around a web site.

In theory it does much the same job as Zemanta’s Interesting Articles feature – it allows you to add a list of related stories and Google searches to pages. At the moment there’s a test page at Googlelabs: http://relatedlinks.googlelabs.com/.

At the moment it isn’t as elegant as Zemanta – and it certainly doesn’t integrate well with Wordpress. But it’s results are interesting. I tested the service on my previous post: Windows 7 is great. Its price isn’t.

Here’s what it came back with:

Related Links by Google
Norton’s troubled Internet Security Windows 7 beta at Bill Bennett
Microsoft’s Security Essentials is almost un-noticable at Bill Bennett
Layoffs no panacea | Bill Bennett
Norton Internet Security – the alternatives at Bill Bennett
In memoriam Twitter at Bill Bennett
When Outlook trumps Gmail at Bill Bennett
Go East young man (or woman) | Bill Bennett
Computer security guide – what are the main threats? at Bill Bennett

Related Searches by Google
windows 7
windows 7 download
windows 7 review
isn
isn’t it

As you can see only two of the eight “related links” are directly relevant. Although another might just qualify if we are generous. And only one of the five ‘related searches’ is useful. That’s 3 and a half out of 13 or around a 23 percent success rate. Obviously some work is needed

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I’m impressed with Windows 7. After running the beta for months I’ve discovered it’s everything Windows should be. Sure there are a few niggles – but that would be true of any plausible alternative.

I was so impressed I decided to buy the operating system upgrade. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Dick Smith lists the Windows 7 Ultimate and Professional upgrades at $499 each.

The price is ridiculous. The same Dick Smith has notebook computers with Windows 7 installed starting at $899 – that’s notebook not netbook.

OK. I understand the $899 might not ship with Windows 7 Professional – but that’s not the point. For just $400 more than the cost of a software upgrade I can have a spanking new, faster computer. The cheapest netbook on sale in New Zealand is $425 – just $25 more than the upgrade to Windows 7 Professional.

If I got to Digital Shop I can buy a desktop for just $487.64 with Windows 7 Professional installed.

That’s right. In effect I can pay just $87.64 for a new computer. It’s not that bad either.

So here are my choices:

1. Buy a new PC with Windows 7 Professional. Throw my existing, perfectly serviceable machine into a landfill. Have a better computer experience but stop sleeping at night because I’m destroying the planet.

2. Revert to Vista or XP. This costs nothing – but will give me a slightly more annoying computer experience than at present.

3. Look once again at Linux.

What would you do?

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It’s easy to forget Microsoft Security Essentials is installed on my desktop computer. Unlike many, but not all other security applications, Security Essentials sips system resources so sparingly there’s no noticeable effect on performance.

And yet the free application appears to do a more than adequate job protecting my system from malware and attacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Norton Internet Security has been my main PC protection in recent years. I’ve a few minor criticisms, but for the most part it has done a good job guarding my desktop, laptop and my wife’s laptop. The computers run Windows XP and Vista.

One problem worth mentioning is PC performance drops a few percent while the program is running – which is all the time. A small performance hit really doesn’t matter when I’m surfing the web or using Microsoft Word. It is noticeable when there’s heavy duty video, audio or Photoshop processing. Read the rest of this entry »