If you install uTorrent, do NOT install uTorrent 3.1.3. It has a memory leak, is bloated with adware bundles and a million extraneous features, etc. It completely jumped the shark from the clean, lightweight, reliable torrent client it once was. Look around for your favourite outdated build and install that, or install another torrent client.
really have to agree with this, utorrent has long since jumped the shark. (meaning of that term is
here. be advised that tvtropes will ruin your life!) it's full of unnecessary crap like that stupid apps feature. i understand that people want to turn torrenting from a means of illegal p2p file transfer into a real internet syndication system, but bombarding people with bs is not the way to do it. the problem with installing older builds is that most private trackers use a client whitelist to ensure that only certain clients can be used (because there are clients that do not seed back and mess with the server statistics, which are all violations of the bittorrent protcol). older builds will often be slashed off the whitelist as newer ones are released. instead, i would recommend deluge as an alternative; the UI is similar and it's a powerful client. it has unix origins but it's got windows ports. vuze is another good choice but it's rather heavy in and of itself. in fact i would be using deluge right now if i knew how to port history and stats from utorrent to deluge, but atm no luck.
Are there any reasons you guys suggest Microsoft Security Essentials over other antivirus programs like Avast and AVG? I ask not because I disagree with any of you but because I wish to become better informed about antivirus software.
i would say there's one really really strong reason: MSE is completely free, where as avast and AVG's free versions will still nag you from time to time. avast is a bit on the old side if you ask me. AVG is fine and i wouldn't say MSE has any huge advantages over it.
Never suggest Norton.
Never
as faint noted, there was a time when norton, and most other all-inclusive "internet security" packages, were very very very resource-intensive and would slow your computer like tar. nowadays i think that problem is lessened and the security they provide is quite sufficient, but i still see a compelling reason to abandon them: they're exceptionally expensive. internet security suites have an upfront cost and usually a subscription fee as well to continue receiving updates. for what? an internet security suite honestly does NOTHING that a selection of free programs can't do just as well. there is an illusion that you're paying for better protection, but you aren't. the security firms that report flaws and leaks in software report them publicly anyway and all the software manufacturers prepare fixes to be pushed to their respective AV clients. what you're really paying for is the simplicity of one huge integrated solution, which has the flaw of being oversized and a bit on the clumsy side. you could do most of it for free which is why i don't ever see the point.
the core antivirus scanning they provide can easily be provided by a standalone AV (eg MSE, as we've been discussing). some of them provide a firewall but we've already discussed free firewalls as well. email/IM scanning is actually handled as part of the protocol in most cases; you can scan it on download anyway if you're concerned and honestly you shouldn't be opening mysterious emails from people you don't know in the first place (internet security 101 and yet so many people don't know it >_>). website protection and blocking of dangerous sites can be handled by extensions like web of trust. parental control programs exist on their own as well, although i frankly don't see the point because they're all beatable. and most importantly of all, norton's most significant downfall is the same as that of any other program: user stupidity. 99% of computer security and safety comes from making intelligent decisions and knowing when to back off, and how to stay in control. no program will stop you from making stupid decisions. why pay for the illusion that it's capable of doing so?
and as for itunes, i'm a passionate hater of apple so i will stand back on that one
EDIT: but i will chip in on FLAC. it's a long long debate about whether or not lossless audio formats are of any use. basically all audio codecs can be categorized as lossy or lossless based on how they compress music. lossy codecs will strategically sacrifice parts of the audio signal to save space; better codecs will do a better job of picking what to sacrifice, but ultimately the more you shrink the more you have to squeeze. lossless codecs, on the other hand, will never dispose of any part of the audio signal. there are strategies for reducing the size of the signal by encoding it or recording it in different ways, but ultimately nothing will ever be given up. most computer archive formats, for example, such as the famous zip, are lossless, because you can't go around cutting up parts of the data being compressed - there's no way to know what's important. AAC and MP3 are both lossy codecs with a long history, but believe it or not, MP3 is patented and requires licensing with a for-profit organization to be used legally. AAC is licensed but i think you need no payments to use it. ogg vorbis, as matthew mentioned, is probably the best, truly public-domain lossy codec. (apologies for my loose use of legalese; i'm not a lawyer and this is a complicated topic.
i am not an expert!)
flac has a long standing of being the best lossless audio codec (it actually stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, iirc). that's not something that many people will argue about. what people DO argue about is whether or not lossless audio has any relevant usefulness. people experiment all the time about whether or not you can actually hear the difference between lossless audio and various bitrates of lossy codecs. there's always the one side that claims that no human ear can tell the difference and you're just wasting space on your music storage media, and the other side that claims that we CAN tell the difference. there'll also be lots of ad hominem mud slinging about philistines who can't appreciate the quality of music and snobs who think their ears are better than everyone else's. i don't take either side because i don't care enough to hold a position, but one thing is for certain: the more times you transcode an audio clip using a lossy codec, the more the quality deteriorates, and the longer the transcode chain, the more magnified this effect will be. this is simple fact. as long as you have a lossless original, you can transcode that losslessly an infinite number of times and still be assured that the signal will never worsen. moreover, if you have a lossless original, you can transcode it directly into any lossy format of your choice and thereby minimize the number of times you have to encode lossy to lossy, which will minimize the... loss. therefore it's good to always have a lossless version for archival, if you have the room to put it somewhere.
