Welcome everyone to a new and very exciting part of PC Pitstop. Roughly a year ago, as part of the incredibly popular OverDrive test, we began collecting user input about PC satisfaction. We began asking the following three questions:

• * How satisfied are you with this PC?
• * Is this PC running slow?
• * Is this PC hanging or requiring frequent reboots?

Microsoft has released their pricing for Windows 7. For most users in the US, this breaks down to three important levels; retail, preorder promotion, and recent purchase upgrade.

The recent purchase upgrade is no real deal for consumers because without it, desktop and laptop sales would grind to a halt. It's not a consumer gift, it's a demand by systems manufacturers to insure survival.

Welcome to the official second edition of the PC Pitstop Free Software Report. I want to thank everyone for the tons of comments both positive and negative. We are listening. More importantly, many of our readers learned more from the comments than our Top Software List! In fact, I even learned a few things.

The sleuths over at Engadget have apparently uncovered an internal memo from Best Buy outlining plans for Windows 7 upgrades beginning in late June. This goes along with information from Microsoft describing the Technology Guarantee or Windows 7 Upgrade program, as it has been called lately.

Question
1. Agnes S. asks: what is Bing?

Answer
(A). The begining of the end for Google.
(B). An old dead Crosby
(C). A powerful search engine.
(D). Another "gotcha" from Mircosoft.
(E). All of the above.

With these links all you need is a little time and your new Windows 7 operating system will be up and running. You supply the hardware and these links will supply everything else.

W7 Download Straight form the mother ship, you can use this free download until the actual product hits the shelves, then use the Windows Easy Transfer to move everything to the retail installation. There's no rush.

This confirms it!. It's time to jump the Vista ship and get on board with Windows 7. No need to cling to that precious version of Windows XP either. Skip vista and hop into the latest and greatest. You know you want to.

Welcome to the Top Free Software Report. There are two problems with free software. First off, there is a lot of free software and it is hard to know what free software is the best. Secondly, because it is free, free software makers can't spend money on advertising to get the word out on their cool creations. We hope that this new feature in TechTalk will solve both of these problems.

After some pretty exhaustive research I was surprised at the lack of real tweaks and suggestions for Windows 7, so here's your chance. Put your proven and personal tweaks in the comments section and I will add them to the article as a part of our Windows 7 Tweak Guide. Keep in mind that there are many suggestions on the WWW that are completely bogus.

Are your bank accounts and passwords safe? Are your browser settings where they should be? Is your computer slow because it's busy sending your personal information to Russia?

Don't become the fly in the ointment by thinking that your Firewall, Antivirus, or ISP is going to protect your data. Use encryption all the way to the file level. Have you altered or lowered your browser setting recently? Set them back where they belong. Your protection is only as good as you allow it to be. Protect yourself.