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yeah, lets break that sentence down and see where they went wrong, shall we?

The Alexa Toolbar (yeah, because we all know that nerds just love to have a load of stupid toolbars. I send my more clueless friends to ninite just to make sure they do NOT get"toolbar"ed), an application produced by Alexa Internet (don't care, don't use, uninstall on every box that crosses my path and every new build), is a Browser Helper Object (Spyware! Oh HELL no!) for Internet Explorer (BWA HA HA HA! Yeah, like nerds are gonna use THAT POS!) on Microsoft Windows (Uhhhh...how many Linux and OSX nerds we got here? Hell of a lot more than average)

So I think we have logically proven that going by Alexa stats on THIS site is about as accurate as pulling the numbers out of my hairy southern butt. While I have no doubt we have plenty of overseas users, just the fact that something as totally pointless as Alexa says 47% USA would make me believe that the number is closer to 70%+, simply because nerds avoid IE, don't like or allow BHOs, Run FF/Chrome/Opera/Safari, and a hell of a lot of guys here use Linux and/or OSX. So yeah, I'm thinking the USA is the most populous user of our little site. While Alexa might be good to see who uses the Food Network, for a geek site? Not so much. The 47% is probably those poor bastards trapped on IE6 at work. Poor souls.

Let me guess, you're the type that lets them loose with an unpatched Windows with no AV? No I do not put trialware, or crapware, or warez, or any of that other crap. a good 90% of mine is set up to use plain old Windows Task Scheduler to run the app at the appropriate time. But you really have to set up a lot of stuff for the clueless or you might as well just install the malware yourself and save them the effort, because they WILL get pwned otherwise.

Every machine that leaves my shop, whether they pay for optimization or not, has a fully patched Windows installed, along with AV and Firefox. Anything less is just setting up the customer to fail. if they pay for optimization they get the registry and temp files set to clean every three days, the hard drives set to defrag weekly at a schedule they choose, all of the codecs and apps necessary to have what is considered a "normal" browsing experience, Flash, Java, Silverlight, etc. And finally I finish up with Go Open Office (with Quickstarter disabled) and GNUCash, so that every task the average Joe uses their PC for is ready to go.

Oh and I use Ninite to give them all the basics with NO toolbars. I have never let a machine leave my shop with a single toolbar. But in the age of zero day exploits most folks simply don't have the skills needed to keep themselves safe, and as I said my customers talk like I can walk on water so I must be doing something right. Their PCs are malware free, take care of themselves, and most importantly let them do what THEY bought a PC to do, instead of spending all their time trying to figure things out. If you call making a PC easier for the common man/woman a "crap setup" BitZtream, then I guess I'm guilty as charged. But it sures makes my customers happy, and that is what counts in my book.

That is why I always install AV LAST. I know it sounds backwards, but since XP if you have the Windows firewall running and are only doing updates you really have no worries as Windows Firewall by default doesn't respond to incoming pings and port scans. Then Once Windows is fully updated I install AV, head by Ninite and get the usual programs like FF, Flash, Java, etc, if it is a customer's box add OO.o on Ninite (I have Office 2K which works great in Win7) and finally wrap it up with K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (which covers just about any A/V format I'm liable to run into) and all is golden. Working PC repair you have run into most "gotchas" at least once so you know what to avoid. Fool me once, ehh?

Now that you have your PC stable I would recommend Comodo over AVG. With my customers I had quite a few that managed to infect themselves while running AVG and so far ZERO with Comodo! And if you have family or friends you have to do the occasional "tech support" for (what geek doesn't, huh?) I would recommend bookmarking Ninite. They have all the most common programs, along with excellent tools like ImgBurn, just have them pick what they want and run the combined installer. Oh, and NO TOOLBARS! That's right, ninite strips out the toolbars on apps like CCleaner and Java so you don't have to tell them "uncheck the third box on the second page" or whatever.

And if you like Dependency Walker you should search around the net and try to find a copy of "Computer Repair Utility Toolkit V2". Unfortuantely some FOSSies had a fit and maid them take down the main links, but nothing disappears on the net, right? It has dozens of tools to troubleshoot and repair a PC, fits on a 1Gb flash easily, and it is trivial to add your own tools. Working on house calls it has saved my ass more than once, and is a worthy tool of having in your toolbox. Just add WinFix and Ultimate Windows Tweaker from this page (bar on lower right has the download links) and with the Computer Repair Toolkit you can fix a good 85-90% of the Windows problems you run into. I hope this helps!

It sounds like what you are wanting is App Booster. It has easy to set profiles, turns on/off unwanted services at the click of a button, has include/exclude lists. Really easy to set it up to boost a particular program and get a little more oomph out of that older box.

That said what I give my customers is Tuneup Utilities. This is a link to the free 2008 version but I of course sell them the latest version. Both will automatically defrag, cleans and defrags the registry (and unlike many tools out there it doesn't go nuts and clean out useful keys), removes broken shortcuts, etc. A really great tool for "set it and forget it" computing. The 2010 version really rocks for Windows 7 as well as XP. I never have to clean or defrag, it has one push "turbo mode" which turns off background crap for gaming, really nice.

With this along with some of the free apps they offer at Ninite it makes it beyond simple to set up a new PC for a customer. Just install the OS, run autopatcher, run Ninite, and install the latest Tuneup Utilities, and they are pretty much good to go. Maybe an hour's worth of setting users and tasks and it is pretty much a toaster. Just start the PC and no thinking required. That is why my customers are happy little campers, no needing a CS degree to take care of their PC, just run and go. Once I let a computer loose in the wild pretty much the only time I see it again is when they want to add new hardware. It makes them happy, makes my job easier, its a win/win!

If you are using Windows you want to use Ninite. Lets you install everything from Chrome to Java, all automated, and NO TOOLBARS! You can also suggest more programs that you would like to have added to the Ninite installer setup.

All my favs are already there-Firefox, Foxit, CCleaner and Defraggler, Irfanview, etc, but if anybody else here has a program that gives you an irritating toolbar and it isn't on the list please suggest it to the owners of Ninite. It sure does making installing the latest and greatest butt simple.

I think what you and the others that hate toolbars want is a nice little thing called Ninite. Dozens of programs including Foxit to choose from (and you can suggest more) and NO TOOLBARS. I just installed the latest Foxit in both WinXP and Win7, zero toolbars. it also makes it butt simple when you are building or repairing a PC which of the major programs you want installed without having to play "installer monkey".

Just pick the programs you want from the list, download the installer, and away you go. Has all the biggies like Chrome, Songbird, Aimp, Foxit, OO.o, Pidgen, Irfanview, etc. Really easy peasy and nice, so enjoy!