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If you are on vista or windows 7, I think windows live movie maker is the way to go. http://explore.live.com/windows-live-movie-maker?os=other I use it all the time to edit the movies I make with my Kodak ZI8 HD camera. It edits the HD(1080 and 720) videos awesomely.

I personally dont think this is a bad idea as long as the programs were still offered individually. Honestly it makes a lot of sense to say "hey you have ccleaner, recuva, and defraggler. Why not make them have a single interface". However how many times have you seen a suite where they combine programs and then over time the individual products start to suffer. Look at say firewalls and AV programs. The "bloat" often comes into play when you try to do this, instead of what you have now where they are trying to make the best programs in each of their classes. I think thats a lot of the reason many people don't want to see this happen. Also I would argue the programs may not have as much to do with each other as you would think. Why would you want to run ccleaner and recuva at the same time. (unless of course you accidentally deleted something you shouldn't have. )

Are you looking for tips on what to do on your own PCs or when working with other people's computers? I set up my windows 7 pc where if there is ever any problems with it, I can just reinstall everything in about 2 hours(probably less than that). What I did was partition my HD so that all my data is on a different partition than my windows install. Then I used windows 7's image back up feature on an external hard drive. I've gotten to where I don't like messing with file system/driver errors anymore, I can just reformat to a nice clean install in about the same time and then I have a fresh and fast new install. I did the image back up right at the point of a new install so all I have to do is grab the latest installers for any drivers/software I use and I'm good to go. (I only reformatted this pc once when I first got it because of a driver issue, and this worked perfect.) I have all my stuff backed up to external drives anyway so I figured this practice would be super efficient even if my hard drive failed in my pc(same process basically after installing new drive). I used to do what your doing now and keep installers for certain programs, ect. But I always ended up downloading the latest versions and stuff anytime I actually needed to use them(thus it was useless to keep back ups.) I do keep installers for stuff like MS office, but not browsers, media players, or security software. I use windows 7 64bit pro and I haven't noticed any problems with 32bit software not working. I do know that the pro version includes a free version of an xp virtual machine(XP mode) but to be honest I haven't had to fire that up even once in order to get anything working. I'm just using basic stuff though. I do know that windows 7(not sure about vista) keeps a separate program files folder for your x86 software and from my computer at least almost all my stuff installs in there and I've never seen any errors yet.

I just saw this tip here: http://revision3.com/tzdaily/2011-03-01noguiboot You go into msconfig and then boot tab and then check no gui boot. I tried it and it seems to have sped up start up a little. I didn't time it though so it may just be booting with a blank screen instead and I just thought it was faster.

I think puppy is a really cool idea, and I liked it the few times I tried it. The problem I have is that it doesn't really feel(to me anyway) like a robust OS experience like I would get out of windows(or even another linux distro like ubuntu or fedora). I think its a really neat but I couldn't imagine trying to use it as my daily OS. Maybe its the really low feature desktop their using, maybe if they went for gnome or something it would feel more like a full feature OS.

I just installed this on my win 7 64bit system. I have to say that I'm really impressed with it. Its super fast(feels noticably faster than firefox), but its missing two killer features: adblock plus and spell checking. I really like the interface and its blazing fast, but without those its a no go for me. (and I've gotten pretty tired of firefox)

Meaning that you wont be able to update and that windows will treat your copy of the OS as invalid. This could mean fun things like your computer restarting every so often(vista and 7 only I think). Or it may not work at all depending on the hardware differences. (it could just crash on start up) Probably better to just buy a hard drive for that other laptop ($40 or so) and reinstall windows if you have the discs or buy a copy($100) or even use linux(free). Are the keys on that laptop sticking? If so you could try popping them off and cleaning underneath them.

Great program. I actually bought the lifetime license for this about 2 months ago when they were running it for 25% off. I think I paid about $50 or so. Well worth it, they update it constantly.

There are some clunkers on that list but overall its not too bad. Is anyone really using Zone Alarm or anything by comodo/iobit anymore? There are a few programs that I use everyday that aren't on this list too. Microsoft live programs(mail, movie maker, ect.) along with Zune and Ashampoo burner. These programs are much better than the ones they are recommending. (to me anyway. )

I tried to use opera 10 but I switched back to firefox. I liked it overall really well, but it does something weird with flash videos. They don't start playing correctly and when I looked on their forum its some kind of patent issue since its not open source. I watch lots of podcasts from my browser and thus cant be bothered using something that stutters with flash. (there was a work around that some people claimed to work, but I didn't bother)

I just installed this as well. I liked that during the install it came up with a different screen that acknowledged it was an upgrade and it didn't just install over the old one. I would never usually install a new version of an AV software without uninstalling the old one(too many problems in the past) but I figured MS would do this right since they would be putting this out through MS update and I wasn't disappointed. I like that it also asks if it can enable the windows firewall(which should be enabled already on most machines by now) but its a good check. I know the old one would make sure auto updates was on(no prompt but it installs Microsoft update on my Win7 machine so I assume its doing it on xp and vista too).

It has a lot more features than those programs. One good feature adobe has is that you can add comments to files and share them with others, along with highlighting text, and taking image snapshots. The sticky note feature is quite cool and was actually really useful when I had to use some pdf scans of books for a paper. You may not need these features, but they are quite useful if you do. Not to mention like I said before, if you don't want to have tons of windows open(I don't) adobe seems to be the only one that works in my browser all the time. Sometimes I couldn't even get certain files because there was no download link without having adobe reader open the file in the browser first(stupid design for the site, but I needed those files). I used to hate adobe reader a few years ago, but they have done a lot to improve it and it actually is quite good now. Sure its bigger than other programs but sometimes its worth it.(to me anyway)

Adobe reader has come a long way recently. I switched to it because foxit would just not open files in my browser(firefox) on some of my school websites no matter what I did. Adobe opens just as fast as any other program now(at least on my pc). Hard drives are so big now it seems a little funny to be worried about 150mb.

I'm a huge proponent for having a nice desktop and a decent yet inexpensive laptop, but thats whats worked out for me. When I'm at home I would rather have a fast desktop with a big screen and a nice desk setup instead of a small laptop with a cramped keyboard. You didn't mention price, but if your looking at laptops in the $1000 range I would seriously consider spending about half of that on a nice desktop(even better if you build it yourself) and then get a decent dual core laptop for $400 or so. I recently bought a pretty nice dell with a pentium t4500 and 2gig ram for $350 at bestbuy. Its probably faster than what most people have for their main computer, but I only use it for office work and videos. I have my quad core desktop with killer graphics for everything else. Just mentioning this because you said you werent sure if you would even use it unplugged all that often. I would never want to sit at home on my laptop instead of a desktop.

Why are you fed up with windows? Some may disagree with this(they are lying to themselves), but linux is 100 times more frustrating than windows to do some of the most basic tasks. Try getting flash to be functional and not a blurry mess on linux, its a huge pain. Not to mention getting all of your hardware to actually work up to its full potential(especially wifi and graphics cards). You mentioned you wanted something user friendly, 99% of the time linux would be a step down in this department compared to ANY version of windows. You will find a lot of linux fans on the internet praising it as the best thing ever, but theres a reason windows has 90+% market share and linux doesn't. On the plus side for linux though its free and you can give it a shot with little to no risk. I've always thought linux mint was the best version there is: http://www.linuxmint.com/ Macs would require a new computer and they are pretty expensive. The hardware is overpriced compared to a comparable pc and the software choices can be somewhat limited compared to whats on windows(if your ok with having everything apple, than go for it). Have you tried windows 7? I have been using it since it came out and couldn't be happier with it. You can get it off newegg for less than 100 and would be your cheapest uprgrade(apart from linux, but I think most will find that its not a real option for everyday use)

0ffice 07 and later as well as openoffice both export to pdf.

Been playing with opera for a little while today. I think I got it to look exactly how I want it. I think this is how Firefox and IE9/Chrome should have done their "minimalistic" interfaces. Everything is still functional without having to digg through menus or having extra toolbars:

I just installed the latest opera(haven't tried it in a few versions) and surprisingly I really like it. Its fast and the minimalistic interface is awesome(much more functional than chrome and IE 9). I really like the bookmark drop down button that you can drag to your toolbar. Still access my bookmarks without enabling the menu bar or that annoying sidebar. Thats how customizing should be. It seems to do everything I like in a browser(block ads, fast, spell check). the adblock and element hider options from fanboy seem to work great: http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ I didn't know they added spell check to this version, no browser should be without it.

I tried IE9 and it was pretty good. I used it for about an hour just surfing around and then I tried to watch some podcast videos. All had pre-roll ads(some lasting 30 seconds!) that I didn't even know about before. No adblock plus makes this a nonstarter in my opinion.

01 Plundered My Soul.mp3 MP3 9.26 MB 03:59 23.04% 320 kbps MPEG 1 Layer III FhG 44100 2 16 Thats what came up. Oh and I did an Amazon song too: 16 - Shine Along.mp3 MP3 8.19 MB 04:33 17.84% 251 kbps MPEG 1 Layer III LAME 3.98b 256 44100 2 16 They use lame but lower bitrate. Some I have from them are 320 though too.(not that big a difference I know)

I'm not sure what they encode the files with. I've got some pretty nice audio equipment though and I cant say I've had any time where I felt they were sub par. Definitely not anything most people would notice considering 90% of people probably use the cheap headphones that come with their ipods. I still keep a lossless library that I ripped with either WMA Lossless or FLAC(depending on how lazy I was the day I ripped it) and while listening on my pc I cant say I will listen to those songs and then the zune stuff and feel like its inferior. I'm all for good audio quality though(as we've chatted about this a ton before) but I honestly dont feel like its a step back. Give it a shot, they have a free 14 day trial. You may be surprised. (even without a zune, its worth it just to get to browse around and listen to whatever you want.) I used to feel like this too. I got over it once I saw stores like amazon offering good quality mp3(usually 320kbs which isn't lossless but its definitely not low quality either)albums at a fraction of the cost of the discs at the store. New releases are usually $8 and they offer tons of stuff for $5 or less. I love good sounding music but the difference wasn't worth the cost of spending $7 to $8 more per album to me. (may be worth it to you though) Not to mention it stops me from adding to the shelves of cds that I ripped and never touch again.

I found that blog post. I'm not really sure what to make of it because I've been using my song credits every month and they download DRM less mp3s. Their is no DRM for them to pull, so I'm not sure whats going on with that guy. I have to wonder if he downloaded the song once with the drm and again with his song credit and then mixed up the files or something. I've been using the zune pass since January and I don't really have a single bad thing to say about it. Its cheap and I always have new stuff to listen to either in my car or while working out. In fact I sometimes have a hard time deciding what to use my credits on because when everything is available at any time, what makes you want to "keep" one thing over the other. I still browse Amazon MP3 every now and then because I get the newsletter for the $5 albums they put up every month, but I rarely buy anything. I used to buy tons of cds every month. Probably $50 or more and that was buying used copies a lot of time. I have the artists catalogs that I feel like I need to have on disc(beatles, zeppelin, ect) but now with zune I'm finding stuff I never would have gotten into and certainly wouldn't have bought the album if I couldn't have listened to it for free. Every tuesday the new releases come out and I press a button and have them on my mp3 players in a few minutes without costing me a cent. (sadly not much new stuff I like, but thats another story) I've had zero problems and even if I did go back to constantly buying discs, I'd still keep zune pass.

I use the zune software primarily now. I love my 8gb zune and my 16gb zune hd, but its the zune pass that really make them shine. If you want applications go for the ipod, but if your a music lover then go with zune. For 15 bucks a month you have unlimited access to just about anything thats out there.(you get to keep 10 songs a month which are awesomely always encoded in 320kbs mp3 and sound great.)

Your setup is similar to mine (same processor) except I have ddr2 ram and an ATI 5770 video card.(aero runs much faster on dedicated graphics, I tried the hd 4200 and its not bad for hd video but not much more). Its unreal how much faster these new computers are (and how relatively cheap they are). I cant stand using old computers anymore after building my newest one. Its just annoying.

I wonder if this is just a coincidence or really caused by Final Fantasy itself. Their are loads of stories about the blu ray drives on the ps3 dying. I dont doubt that this game maybe has the system access data more often than other games but the drives have been known to die, so maybe its just accelerating a problem their already was with the drives in the ps3. I looked on amazon, you can get drives for like 80 or so. Might be worth just getting a new drive if you dont mind doing it yourself.(I haven't taken a ps3 apart but took xbox's and ps2's apart all the time and its not hard). Or maybe see if you can trade it in at a gamestop and use the credit towards a refurb unit, a lot cheaper than $299. (Just back up your data)