Wine, wine, wine......................... . I really don't know much at all about computers compared to many of the people here, but I've been learning slowly, surely, and as hard as possible on myself over the last 5 years. Most of my knowledge has come from either posts made on this site, or links that I got off of it.
That incident with the hammer and the sound card still makes me laugh:D It worked, for a couple of weeks at least.
I found
this site tonight from a link in another thread here. It helped quite a bit with security information and settings.
This is the site that I got the link to it from. Lots of good information there too. I spent about 2 1/2 hours reading and changing settings tonight, resulting in a completely secure port rating from the probes that Shields Up performs, not to mention a boost in my connection times.
I use Firefox and Thunderbird exclusively, except for the AH scorepages, which I really don't check anymore. The security issues with MS turned me off about a year ago after fighting spy/adware everyday, over and over again. A user friendly alternative operating system that eliminated many of the issues that MS has would get my money.
And thanks to everyone for all the tips, pointers, links and info over the years. I've almost figured out how to turn this damn thing on and off:p