Your post is certainly informative. Will take all into consideration. As for Patch Tuesday - had never heard of it. Must check among my more literate PC friends to see what they do.
I have MalWareBytes, CCleaner, SuperAntiSpyware, and Advanced SystemsCare Pro from Obit - all are protection programs or cleaners etc., and of course ESET for antivirus. Will think about another Firewall and remember yours. As a novice it gets difficult when one persons says one thing about a program while another recommends yet another program.
I guess in the end it is a person's personal choice and experiences as to what they recommend. So I tread slowly and carefully.
Right now am about to experience SP3 again. Had many problems when I used it before but guess bugs might be out of it by now. So when work load lightens so I can be sure my PC is functioning well, will give SP3 another whirl.
My work dictates that in order to access the big school PC and download what I need, I have to install IE7. Had that and did not care for it at all so went back to IE6. So to avoid IE7, I went to school, downloaded the program I needed to my school address, then forwarded that to my PC at home to work on it. It all worked out but is a big job to have to do every month to report stats to the school computer. So may be forced to IE7 in the future just for convenience sake.
Thanks for all your informative suggestions. Appreciate your time and efforts.