Hi All - In light of a few comments received subsequent to the review of Threatfire (in the latest edition of Dave's News Letter) I believe a short clarification is in order. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard the comment...."I just installed such and such and my computer slowed down to a crawl so I uninstalled it and now all is well again". The inference is that the product in question was to blame for the sudden loss of speed, in many cases that is a totally incorrect assumption.
A lot of machines are being run with RAM usage close to the edge, i.e. running processes from existing software are already using a fair amount of available physical RAM. Any additional install is often enough to tip RAM usage over the edge and we all know what that means.....virtual RAM and extreme speed loss. So, it is more often than not the combination of all software installed (running background processes) which is to blame, rather than just that one new product. On many occasions the newly installed program may actually be using a lot less RAM than some of the existing software, it's just that the last install is the straw which breaks the camel's back.
If you install a new application and experience slow downs do not automatically blame that product.....it ain't necessarily so! What is required under these circumstances is a review of [i:2re41d4p]all[/i:2re41d4p] programs installed which have processes running in the background, locate the ones with the highest numbers (RAM usage) and look for suitable replacement programs which are lighter on resources. Alternatively, decide which programs are most important to you and uninstall those which you can best do without or are deemed superfluous. Of course, the ultimate fix is to increase the amount of physical RAM.

cheers all......JIM