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Do the following 1) Buy a "hard-ware" router with built in firewall. This means instead of running an inferrior software-based firewall, you are running a brick & mortar firewall. I use a netgear FR114P...it includes essential things like Packet verification. This means your PC asks the www for info, and your router will watch to make sure what is incoming DATA is actually requested by you....and not a hacker. I would like to say that having you PC on all the time, and more importantly being connected to a high speed internet is the reason you will see more viruses/spam/spyware. so what should you do? 2) Install these free programs. update them every week and run them every week: adaware AVG anti-virus They will keep so PC so sparkly clean you won't beleive you ever surfed the net without it. 3) well, leaving your PC on all the time huh? I leave mine on literally days, wekks at a time....24 hours....I am a bit nervous about it because that means you are using up the life of each part....each hard drive is spinning.....that juice is flowing through your Processor....basically you are leaving it on why? I could see if you are sharing music all night, or downloading movies, etc....but if you are a word processing joe smoe, then I turn it off. Personally, I like to get my $s worth from my ISP, so that baby is always on. But you are leaving yourself up to one major problem. elecrtrical failures. Every summer, we loose power. it will flicker on and off...sometimes gone for two days. I reccomend buying an APC power back-ups. I love mine...and it connects to your PC and can communicate between it via the included software. basically, the 1000 model will give you 30 minutes to shut down your PC or the software can auto configure to shut down once most of its(rechareable) battery life is used up. In a phrase: "I cant live without it." Best of Luck -Ryan
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