1. AdGuard.  I can’t live without it. Get a lifetime licence.  So much better than Adblock+ublock. And you get a licence for your Android phone too.  Phone ads are even more annoying and much more nefarious!  Look at this quick example of before and after. (roll over image)

2. Get accounts with ALL of these cloud providers: You never know when you will need some cloud space: Google Drive – Dropbox – OneDrive – Mega for clouding critical files. If you don’t have a gmail email or gmail hosted email, I don’t respect you. I know employers who will immediately throw away any resumes with netzero/yahoo/hotmail/msn/aol accounts.

3. Chrome.

I love the cloudable settings. I sign into Chrome and all my extensions, bookmarks, and passwords come back. )

4. Greenshot. I take screenshots all the time, so helpful.

Other non-work Software I have installed that you probably don’t need:

Comodo Firewall – Best firewall / Sandbox, PotPlayer – Best Video Player(VLC doesn’t use hardware acceleration), Winamp, XnView, Picasa, Filezilla, VMWare, Calibra Ebook manager, Google Earth Pro, PowerISO, Unified Remote. Control your computer’s media (including turning it on and off via WOL, and dozens of other things, like mouse) via your smartphone.

Notice I don’t have anti-virus. Talking with a security expert who manages the tech security of high level government politicians, says

“Anti-virus is holy water and all sucks  Patch your computer. Use AdGuard. Don’t install flash or java if you can avoid it. Use chrome or firefox with adblock of some sort. Don’t install pirated software these days.  Don’t crick on shady shit or install shady shit. There you go your are safe from everyone but ware are likely nation states.

You could install Mcafee, Kasphersky, or AVG. Those seem to get good scores. The truth is though unless it is old malware it isn’t going to find it and even then it is much less than 100%.  The serious crimeware they have now changes itself every couple of days. It is better to block the paths they use to get on. Which are you being dumb and installing it, malicious adds, infected website’s, and emails with malicious attachments. The cyber criminals are always targeting patched vulnerabilities (at least 99.999% of time). The quickest turnaround I have seen is a week. A patch comes out and they were exploiting it in mass a week later. If you shit is patched you are good, or you could use linux since less targeted.

This is they type of program we run to look for malware. It more looks at the profile of stuff running on your computer. What it is talking to what it is doing etc. http://www.crowdstrike.com/crowdinspect/  Of course all our computers have antivirus, it protects us from dumbasses who plug thumbdrive they find in the ground in that are infested with old crimeware, but other than that it is a waste.

You should use two factor authentication on you financial accounts and your primary email account.”

Gold advice.

 

Troubleshooting Software:

Computer acting funny? Google your problem.

Test the RAM with MemTest86

See if Event Manager gives you any clues.

Benchmarking software:

1. Stopwatch.

2. Eyes.

If you can’t see/tell a difference or tell a difference in the real world, your synthetic benchmarks (like 3DMark score) doesn’t matter (to me).

3. Userbenchmark is handy to see if you are within line with others.