What a difference a year's worth of promos makes

[jelson]

All I can say is WOW!

I finally kept my promise to myself and restored my system partition to an image made back in Nov 2009 (that's just before I installed a Returnil promo... and my machine was always a little flaky after that even after an uninstall with Revo.. Bad Returnil )

I feel a little bit naked now and notice just how many installed promo programs I've accumulated in 16 months.

See that's what happens when you regularly visit a forum like this one. "

"Oh, look! gotta get a license for THAT!"

I don't remember all the details, but before I did the restore, I had about 60-70 processes running under XP SP3 all the time with a baseline of 500-600 MB RAM in use.

Last night, with only Notepad and Task Manager running -- no AV installed -- TM reported this:

Handles 7,895
Threads 402
Processes 37

Commit Charge 241,912

Kernel 59,012
Paged 46,012
Nonpaged 12,9884

PF Usage 236 MB

Now I get to determine which programs I actually will reinstall. I think I'll just ask myself as I go down the list of asking just how often I actually used such and such app.

And in case you're wondering why no AV was installed on that image, whenever I'm about to install a new AV I always completely uninstall what I was using before and then make a system image... just in case. Makes life much easier.

[iPrism]

Just install and use only the apps you really want, having more can actually cause some conflicts and not to mention registry entries,junk files, el at...
Less is always better.

[Grr]

Jelson, firstly congrats on ur 100th post.

Good to revert to a fresh image. XP-sp3 would by default have more processes compared to XP-sp2...so u could disable some of them.

Next install basic required appl such as Mozilla, Revo, firewall, AV, SAS/MBAM....that's what I have on top of mind to suggest you..

[jelson]

Just install and use only the apps you really want, having more can actually cause some conflicts and not to mention registry entries,junk files, el at...
Less is always better.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

---------- Post added at 03:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:24 PM ----------

Jelson, firstly congrats on ur 100th post.

Thanks, man. Nice to hit that mark!

Good to revert to a fresh image. XP-sp3 would by default have more processes compared to XP-sp2...so u could disable some of them.

Next install basic required appl such as Mozilla, Revo, firewall, AV, SAS/MBAM....that's what I have on top of mind to suggest you..

Well, it's not quite fresh... Last night I uninstalled almost 10 apps... as well as Shockwave (why did I ever install that?)

1st thing I did install was Revo Pro Right now, it says "92 installations" - lots of Microsoft stuff and driver level stuff (Nvidia, USB 3 card, Lightscribe, etc) ...

One thing I'm definitely doing is avoiding installing multiple apps that do the same thing. (Again, sooooo many promos to try....)

For instance, NitroPDF Pro is going bye-bye Actually bought ver 5 and later got a promo license for ver 6. Decent PDF editor, but horrible PDF creator ... s...l...o...w...

Instead, Infix PDF Editor Pro (got a license for posting a thorough reveiw on

You Must Be Registered and Logged On To View "URL" BBCode Contents...

& Softpedia) is definitely being installed. If you're going to edit PDFs then you want Infix (if you're corporate, then you want Adobe Acrobat... who else could justify it's $300 price tag?)

Will have to really look at Infix's creation of PDFs since I've come to love the feature set of NovaPDF Pro 7 (it's just a creator, no editing features, but it's Fast!

And a whole lot of the apps I had installed were utility apps. I've really been leaning hard toward portable apps.

Been thinking about trying out Cameyo and seeing how well it does at visualizing small apps.

And, really good advice about services. I've had a look at this before via WinOptimizer 6 (already installed in this image) but found myself a bit confused since I found it REALLYdifficult to know if they were needed (and by what) or served no useful purpose

You have any reference pages you could point me towards?

Oh, yeah... Adobe Reader is going in the rubbish bin too. Suggestions on a replacement, Sumatra? Foxit? or some other Reader?

[Ashwin]

@Jelson What about PDF Xchange viewer?

You can use the free version or get the lite version for free :

You Must Be Registered and Logged On To View "URL" BBCode Contents...

[jelson]

@Jelson What about PDF Xchange viewer?

You can use the free version or get the lite version for free :

You Must Be Registered and Logged On To View "URL" BBCode Contents...

Wasn't aware of that one. Thanks for the tip!

[Nikhil]

Congrats on your 100th Post Jelson
Adobe Reader is Crap..!!! go with Foxit Reader same features as Adobe Reader

[niroop]

Congrats on your 100th Post Jelson
Adobe Reader is Crap..!!! go with Foxit Reader same features as Adobe Reader

Foxit reader is very good.I have tried it 2 months ago .During installation i unchecked the Ask toolbar installation but after installation i have found ask toolbar installed on my PC .
If they want to install "ASK toolbar" automatically no matter what ,then why they have given us the option to uncheck it during installation.

I am currently using Nitro pdf reader and it is okk.

[Nikhil]

Foxit reader is very good.I have tried it 2 months ago .During installation i unchecked the Ask toolbar installation but after installation i have found ask toolbar installed on my PC .
If they want to install "ASK toolbar" automatically no matter what ,then why they have given us the option to uncheck it during installation.

I am currently using Nitro pdf reader and it is okk.

No issues here

[Ashwin]

Foxit reader is very good.I have tried it 2 months ago .During installation i unchecked the Ask toolbar installation but after installation i have found ask toolbar installed on my PC .
If they want to install "ASK toolbar" automatically no matter what ,then why they have given us the option to uncheck it during installation.

I am currently using Nitro pdf reader and it is okk.

This is exactly why I dumped Foxit.

Haven't tried the latest versions though