The Definitive guide to getting the best out of your computing environment.
Managing to get work done in this networked world is getting tougher by the day, more so getting the best out of it. Out of my experience with these systems for the past few years, I wish to share some BKMs (as we at Intel call it 'best known methods') on getting your work done and getting the best out of your computing environment.
ANTIVIRUS: A good antivirus forms the backbone of a secure system. This is a musthave in this list. My recommendation is McAfee Antivirus. It works perfectly in the background, not consuming a lot of memory or processor cycles. The definition file must be updated every week. Norton is good, but if you wish to do anything on your computer other than scanning viruses then don't install this. Norton consumes a lot of RAM and definitely slows down the system by 20%. There is also a good online solution. Panda Antivirus has a online virus scanner. Just connect to http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/, select free scan and your system will be scanned, updated for the latest virus.
FIREWALL: This is a must for online security. If you don't want any hassle of installing and configuring a firewall, then at least enable the default firewall provided by windows. This will block most of the ports. My recommendation is Zone Alarm Pro. A firewall is good only to the extent of the rules you define. In ZoneAlarm, for home, set protection to 'high' and individually grant internet access to programs. Zone Alarm is very easy to use. For Intranet, explicitly give access to systems (either by hostname or IP address) on explicit ports. The most common ports are Remote Access: port 3389; file sharing: port 139. All the other ports and IP addresses should be blocked.
INTERNET SPEED: Install System Mechanic 5. Use this to set the type of connection you have (eg. 56kbps, 128kbps DSL, LAN, etc). This will optimize the internet packet size according to your net connection.
SYSTEM PERFORMANCE: Using System Mechanic, regularly check the registry for errors. Do not compress the registry, as this would slow the system down. Defrag the system using DiskDefragmenter every month. I do not recommend using third party software for doing this (like diskkeeper or system mechanic) as they are likely to crash the system. I do not recommend boot-time defrag, the risk doesn't seem worth it (unless ofcourse you're doing it on a non-system partition with no critical data). Backup your registry (preferably on a separate system/cd) every month. You can do this either using regedit or system mechanic. Enable system restore, at least on your system partition. You do not need to give more than 200MB for this task. Keep a boot CD handy. I highly recommend having Hiren's Boot CD. It boots the system with its own OS, scans viruses at disk level (no interference from windows), recovers deleted files, recovers bad formatting/partition error, creates/restores disk images and much much more. Pay regular visit to www.windowsupdate.com and download all updates. As of this writing, I do not recommend Windows SP2. It still has many issues. But you must get all the updates for SP1.Hope you find all this information useful.
