to VPN or not?

Hello All-

I purchased a Lenovo u260 running windows 7 that will be my office regardless of where I go in the Americas, Europe or Caribbean.

While you cant anticipate every eventuality, I am trying to think through what I should put on this machine to ensure that I relax when I use it regardless of where I am.

I would my primary concern is connectivity and my questions are the following:

1. Are there major differences between VPN ‘s that charges a fee and the recommended free VPN’s on Gizmo’s freeware?
   
2. If a VPN is the route to go, should it be one of the programs in the start up folder?
   
3. Should I consider installing UBUNTU, just in case? I have no real reason to use it, although I read often that it helps people out of a lurch when they are having problems with windows.
   
4. Is there a laptop setup process targeted towards, "Road warriers" that I should review?
   
5. I have a 320gb hard drive.I'm not a gamer and have minimal interest in the social networks. I do however enjoy reading the blogs. If I am partitioning this drive how many partitions should I make and what size should they be?
7. I would like to use true crypt on one of the partitions, has anyone had experience encrypting a single partition?
9. My plan is to use comodo as the firewall, avast as the anti mal-ware.
   
10. Should I load and configure Skype now?

Thanks for any help.

 

if it is your only machine, you don't need VPN.

forget about ubuntu, W7 is everything you need.

forget about partitioning, default setup is good enough.

forget about true crypt, encrypted file system is good enough or else you need complete disk encryption and not just single partition anyway.

forget about comondo, W7 has good enough firewall.

forget about avast, Microsoft Security Essential is again just as capable.

can't tell about Skype as not sure what you want out of it.

 

I'll just stick to some of the 'security questions';

On AV: Free Avast, Avira, MSE and Panda are pretty much equal.
I'd go for MSE or Avast in your case.
About Comodo/CIS, what features are you looking for?
It offers a FW, a HIPS, a (semi)sandbox an AV and soon also a behavioural blocker.
Make sure it fits your needs and you know how to use it well.

About partitioning, I use it to separate my OS+progs from my data (music, docs, movies etc). That way, if I have to reinstall/put back an image, I don't have to copy all data again to the HDD.
Perhaps you can make an extra partition at the end of the HDD, make an image of your OS+progs partition and put that image on the extra partition at the end.
If your OS goes kaput while on the road, you only need an USB stick or CD with the imaging program (like free Paragon), to get your notebook back into a working state in 15 minutes. With all the programs and updates as when you made the image.

About Ubuntu/dual booting, it can be useful but perhaps it's easier to take along an USB/CD with a live version so you can always run it without touching/changing anything on the HDD.

 

I'll try to keep it very simple.
LEt's see what we could do here -

1. 
   
   Forget about VPN, i doubt it'd be ever required.
   
   
   NAH..W7 shall keep the user happy
   
   
   I wouldn't know about it. But again, does the purpose of this software help you in any case? if it does, then you should.
   
   
   I'd always recommend you to have a partitions, atleast two. One for the OS and the other for your data. and just incase make another small partition for the OS recovery image
   
   
   Why?
   
   
   Not sure about comodo, but i have always used avast free edition and would suggest you same also plus "malwarebytes" to be on the safer side.
   
   
   Skype is the best online video chatting stuff..i'd have it always

 

There's not much info on NBR about VPNs so it's not the best place to look but doesn't mean nobody is knowledgeable about them.

Why are you interested in a VPN? Are you trying to access websites that are only accessible from within your home country? A paid subscription would seem like a waste just for hulu or bbc videos. If you're looking for a VPN from the privacy perspective, then that's an entirely new dimension to the question.

I suggest reading at the Wilders security forums for learning about VPN services & software. Free VPNs are definitely one of those categories where the 'you get what you pay for' saying rings true. Some are known to install all kinds of extra junk on your computer.
http://www.wilderssecurity.com

 

Here is my point of view:

I would my primary concern is connectivity and my questions are the following:

Most likely the free ones won't be as fast as the purchased ones. Maybe the free ones also keep log files (which won't matter for you aslong as you don't start hacking via your VPN).

What ever you prefer. Most providers use OpenVPN which has a windows client.

No.. if you have a real problem with windows you can still use a linux live cd to boot.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ndows-7-clevo-sager-malibal-based-p170hm.html

Let windows handle that.. so don't do any partitioning

Not on full partitions but you maybe want to check truecryp/axcrypt

Not a bad setup. I would recommend the whole (and free) comodo internet security suite. Different security product can cause conflicts and are harder to configure. Seems like you need some easy one? ;P CIS + Mbam Pro (if you want to pay 10€ for a lifetime license).

 

just a point i thought would be worth discussing zakazak, when you say let windows handle that does it mean having partition or not? cos i wouldn't let windows decide my HDD partition for me..i shall always keep a good 50gb around space for c drive and settle rest for other drives to keep my data.safe and secured. incase if my os gets corrupted, a virus deadly enough to make me force n clean reinstall my OS ..my data would be happy and safe.. that should be the point of having a partition i suppose.

please ignore my grammar, English is not my first language.

 

Well normally windows makes a 100mb parition (which you can't use) and the rest goes into one big partition.

I say: Go for one big partition.

These days virus can write themself also on other paritions/harddrives. I never had windows crashing.. when smth crashed it was the HDD in which case a 2nd big partition won't help anyway.

I use 2 hdd's (well ssd + hdd) in all my laptops so I won't have to worry about data loss when my windows crashes/ssd/hdd crashes. Besides:
If you have windows + data on one big parition and some virus/whatever crashes it, then you can simply connect that hdd on some other computer and open it like an external harddrive to copy/backup all your data

 

Sure, lots of viruses can write themselves anywhere and some trojans like TDL3/4 will even create their own little nice and cosy partition/logical volume.
But except for a HDD failure, a separate OS+progs partition is ideal if you want to be able to restore a notebook in 15/20 minutes using an OS+progs image.

 

well, been thinking about the SSD + BIG nice HDD for my next machine myself faster boot n safe like heaven..aint it and thats a nice trick to taking out HDD n using like an external .. but having a workin OS loaded hdd wont create trouble as an external?? just curious on this.

That's what i always thought and follow safe and secure.. but shellin out some extra buck for the ssd trick is the deal for sure

 

This is the boot sector ..or bootsomething. It's not accessible or usable but can be seen in Windows' disk partitioning program. If you mess with it, bad things will happen so that doesn't really count. It's actually surprising Windows even lets you view its existence considering how much it shelters users from messing with system files and other potentially dangerous things.

There you go. Install windows, then use its disk partitioner to slice off the amount of space you want for your data. It'll become your D :\ drive.

 

If you have a partition for your OS and a partition for your files the virus will almost certainly install in your OS partition if it cares about sticking around.

Partitioning does nothing to protect you with NTFS - rights are inherited virtually the same exact way unless you mess with them on your own.