Well my first impression is I'm surprised you say you have a college degree. You didn't mention if it's a BA, or BFA, but either degree requires the ability to spell and use grammar correctly. This isn't a school room, but for a college grad to post their thoughts on a public forum that is at a high school level is (if you are a college grad), a sad commentary on our educational system.

As for Microsoft being garbage, I do agree. It started out great and Gates encouraged employees to think outside the box, try EVERYTHING and give the product's organization feedback, which made the company number 1 with office software. But, starting with Steve telling employees it's a "terminable" offense to have a Rim phone, makes no sense. But that's the philosophy now, under no circumstances Challenge our products. Don't give us feedback on our app's, just tell us they are better than anyone else's! I remember when MSN pushed Microsoft employees to go to their internal site that has MSN on one side of the UI and Google.com on the other side. The purpose was to CHALLENGE MSN. Try both together then forward your thoughts. The intent was 1. Let Microsoft know where MSN lacks so that 2. They could make it GREAT. Unfortunately, many versions later MSN didn't figure out how to make an awesome search engine and Google is still the King, but that's how Microsoft became great, Challenging their products. Now they're really losing credibility and the public is pivoting to Apple and Open Source.

Apple is much better but Microsoft has the majority of software. There is no other OS (operating system) to run Windows based software. That is the only reason that I use Microsoft Windows.

Right there with you. Microsoft tried every way it can to make you use their products and they suck.

Trend Micro is what I have installed on my PC, good to hear you liked it so maybe I will renew it later this year. I don't understand why we can't do the long URL reviews either.

I used the free online scan, no need to purchase or subscribe to anything. I used to use AVG free for my desktop A/v solution for years, but have switched to Avast free, following some comment around the web about AVG not being as successful as it used to be. I can't comment on that, but Avast seems to catch things just fine and is pretty comprehensive. I am not so keen on the Comodo free solution as it seems to slow the machine down a bit, but it's an old machine anyway. I don't know of any reason to actually pay for any of these solutions, in any case, unless you're in a corporate environment and can really justify doing so. Firewalls and constant monitoring are often free now and included as part of the packages, making them ideal for home use. I'd suggest looking at free options before you subscribe again, frankly, and maybe try some out. I've run Avast alongside another system and not had any conflicts, that may be worth a look.

By the way, the main problem I had was that I'd forgotten I'd reinstalled Windows a while back, and when I'd done that, I'd also forgotten to disable System Restore - a feature I've always regarded as one of the most dangerous "benefits" of XP. Usually I disable it right away, but this time I'd forgotten. So of course XP was kindly restoring all the bugs I'd just taken out, every time I restarted.

Absolutely the MOST useful thing that the "removal tool" could and should have done, would have been simply to remind me to disable System Restore and then reboot. When SR is manually disabled, all the existing restore point files are automatically deleted, taking with them all the viruses and Trojans that are lurking there just waiting to come back again. The trouble is, MS touts System Restore as a big advantage, so they can't really advise you to turn it off without looking foolish. Not that they're entirely unused to looking foolish, just not intentionally.