Thanks Hills - I'll have a look.

C'mon skinny! You can get a better wallpaper than that surely??? ;o) [I know, don't call me Shirley!]

Gis a chance!

The Win 8 picture above is fine, except there is no Start button and the program menus are very different.

Haystack, I was sceptical, but it doesn't take much effort to get it to look 'comfortable'

From the screen above the windows key & 'C' bring up this.

I use it every day and it still irritates me. I have used a touch screen and it is just what it is intended for. The closing of 'apps' is also a pain unless you use Alt F4.

There you go Harry.

Oooooh lovely. A scantily clad nymph on the foredeck of the boat there and a fast car on the jetty and all would be complete! ;o)

Haystack.
Apologies.
The remove facility has been added long after I installed it.
It did not have it originally.
I'm now on Avast(free) and Private Firewall(free)

skinny
Where is the picture of?

Its Mevagissey.

Agree harry, I have used both avg and avast, avast seems to update quietly in the background whereas avg brings comp to a stop almost whilst updating.

Does anyone run a 3rd monitor via USB?

Mega, I use Avast free at home, on my mobile phone, and run paid-for avast at work, and am perfectly happy. There doesn't seem to be any difference in performance between the free and paid versions. Avast is very good at spotting the occasional dodgy website and warning you!

Avast for my mobile (GalaxyS2) works well with no noticeable effect.

Further to post 10113.

Any views on the pros/cons of running a 3rd/4th monitor by either a 2nd graphics card or a USB to VGA/DVI connector such as this or similar?

You're not having much luck with this one skinny. None of us have turned our living room into a fully functional trading room yet!

Harry - I've had 2 monitors for years and as I bought a new 22" with my recent PC purchase, I thought I might as well utilise the 3rd screen.

Skinners,

I've no experience of multi-displays via USB. Instead, I use the older Matrox Quad cards that have been around for a while now. I bought a few of them second hand off eBay some years ago, and keep one spare in case one card goes wrong.

There are certainly faster cards nowadays, but I'm not so sure I'd be able to notice any discernible difference.

I don't think for what most of us do day to day, we need one of the high performance cards which seem aimed squarely at gamers.

My old PC had a dual head Radeon 9700(128mb), which (Ithink) cost me @£120, 10 years ago.

It ran my 2 screens very ably.

It seems that some mid range cards now come with a 3 output and (I think), as long as 1 is DisplayPort' will run 3 monitors.

I have a 1GB Radeon 7570 with 2 outputs - again it seems more than upto the job of running graphically, typical software - CMC,IG,HL etc.

Both options in post 10115 seem to be about the same cost wise, either using a USB to VGA/DVI/HDMI lead and software or a run of the mill card such as this.

Hils, I know that you have been a Matrox Quad fan for years - which one do you use? as there seem to be some on ebay for a similar price to the Invidia above.

Skinny, I'm just about to install an NVidia 285 quadro twin screen card (with VGA or DVI cables) on my Win7 machine. Think I paid no more than £20 on ebay for it. I'll let you know how it goes.