I have questions about my new computer

[SmartAleq]

AdBlock Plus has gone to the dark side and has agreements to allow SOME ads through--go with uBlock Origin, it's much closer to the real original thing and allows nothing.

I've never used Avast, I use AVG and it's been quite good at keeping things clean. Wants you to buy stuff but that's easily avoided, stick with the free version. Keeps putting a shortcut on the desktop but that's easily deleted.

If you're going to use the computer to play media files, K-Lite Codec pack Standard gives you Media Player Classic and the ability to play basically every type of video file that exists, and it's free.

If you want to play music, I suggest Foobar 2000, it's free and open source and it's a very low resource music player.

If you don't like the annoying start "menu" that Win10 defaults to, which is those annoying alphabetical icon tiles, there's a fix for that--OpenShell, which lets you tweak the heck out of the Win10 interface but that's a little bit more advanced, if you're interested let me know and I'll walk you through it. I infinitely prefer the classic Start menu with the words and better ability to pin what you want to it and also it allows a one step process to get to the Control Panel, which Win10 doesn't want you to use because it thinks you are stupid and should only be given access to the Settings, which has its nuts cut off. I hate Settings, it's dumb.

[mjmlabs]

Originally Posted by SmartAleq

AdBlock Plus has gone to the dark side and has agreements to allow SOME ads through--go with uBlock Origin, it's much closer to the real original thing and allows nothing.

True; I use uBlock Origin myself ... along with Ghostery, Disconnect, Privacy Badger, real-time (paid) Malwarebytes, and HTTPS Everywhere. Overkill? Maybe. But I sometimes investigate some sketchy side alleys of the Intertubez. (I do keep a less-heavily-armored browser on hand for trusted sites with lots of third-party content, and/or sites that I actually want to support by clicking on a few of their ads; think Daily Beast or Alternet or Digby's Hullabaloo.) But anyway, I digress ... the philosophical choice AdBlock Plus has made, to allow vetted, "non-intrusive" ads through, in order to support content creators and promote the use of non-intrusive ads, isn't an unreasonable one per se, and if all online advertising went away, every site would become paywalled, and nobody wants that. And IIRC, there's a one-click setting in AdBlock's options to go back to blocking everything again, if that's what ya want. But this is a tangent better suited for its own thread, and Jackie should feel free to ignore it.

Originally Posted by SmartAleq

I've never used Avast, I use AVG and it's been quite good at keeping things clean. Wants you to buy stuff but that's easily avoided, stick with the free version. Keeps putting a shortcut on the desktop but that's easily deleted.

ICYDK, Avast bought AVG a little while back (18 months, maybe? I forget [ETA: Jeez, back in 2016, now that I've researched. Time flies!]) and both brand names now use exactly the same AV engine and database under the hood. Avast offers more whistles and bells and utilities and freebie addons than AVG, for their respective free versions, though. So if you [ETA: anyone, not Smartie specifically] like AVG, be advised that it became a rebadged Avast but the Avast version has some other stuff you might find worth switching for. Again, this is a tangent ... and I should really drink more coffee before I do any more typing.

[Rock]

Originally Posted by mjmlabs

True; I use uBlock Origin myself ... along with Ghostery, Disconnect, Privacy Badger, real-time (paid) Malwarebytes, and HTTPS Everywhere. Overkill? Maybe. But I sometimes investigate some sketchy side alleys of the Intertubez. (I do keep a less-heavily-armored browser on hand for trusted sites with lots of third-party content, and/or sites that I actually want to support by clicking on a few of their ads; think Daily Beast or Alternet or Digby's Hullabaloo.) But anyway, I digress ... the philosophical choice AdBlock Plus has made, to allow vetted, "non-intrusive" ads through, in order to support content creators and promote the use of non-intrusive ads, isn't an unreasonable one per se, and if all online advertising went away, every site would become paywalled, and nobody wants that. And IIRC, there's a one-click setting in AdBlock's options to go back to blocking everything again, if that's what ya want. But this is a tangent better suited for its own thread, and Jackie should feel free to ignore it.

...

AdBlock does have the option to block "non-intrusive" ads (WTF? All ads are intrusive) and since I already had it, the easiest option for me was to simply check that box. But yes, uBlock Origin is probably a better option these days.