Vidi

If you're willing to pay, grab a copy of Kaspersky. I got an OEM copy (1 year lisence, 1 pc) for about £12. Very easy to use, doesn't hog resources and has an excellent detection rate. Although if you aren't willing to pay, Microsoft Security Essentials is also a very good anti virus. It's the one I recommend to anyone who wants a free AV.

Just put a password on your user account and press the Windows key and L (Win+L) and it'll put you back to the user selection screen where you'll need the account password to log back in. It's the easiest way.

Only really needed if you need the high performance. The Intel 6 core CPU is just.. Well, if you get that you must have a lot of 0's in your bank balance. Otherwise for a high performance PC you should grab the AMD 6 core or a Intel i7 quad core.

How can it be confusing to use? I agree about it not being great for music, but neither is the Microsoft Crashware that we call Windows Media Player; use Songbird instead. VLC doesn't use a fancy UI, it doesn't list your music, playlists etc. And I disagree about WMP being bad for music. It has a easy to use UI, easy to make up playlists etc etc. It does what a music player should and it doesn't do anything stupid. Oh and I've been using WMP for about 5 years and I could count the amount of times it's crashed on me on one hand. That's pretty good if you ask me.

I agree with sbrideau, getting a router is the best way to go. A decent one won't cost you much.

On the topic of PSU's, don't cheap out on it. I'm not saying you should spend hundreds on one, but aim for a brand like Antec or Cosair. The PSU is the most important part of your PC, if you cheap out on it and install a graphics card it could end badly.

...How do you think all these people who get thousands and thousands of views started out? Hell, I remember watching a guy on YouTube who plays MW2 and recorded videos and did commentaries. He started from nothing, and now he has his dream job working for Machinima.com. Not everyone will end up hugely successful, but that's not always the point.

The 9500GT isn't a gaming card, i'd go with OldJoe's recommendation.

Try and convince her that the "expert" will cost you a fortune. Cause it will. It is not hard to replace a graphics card, just google "how to install a graphics card" and you're good to go.

I'm not following you, DX11 is for Vista as well. I've probably misunderstood you. No no my bad. DX11 is Vista and Win7. Thought they were gonna do it like DX10. My bad sorry.

As you're still using Vista, DX11 isn't that useful as it's Win7 only. So I'd recommend trying to get a 4870 or 4890. Both are good value and offer good performance. If you do plan on upgrading to Win7 in the future, the 5750 is fine, so is the 5770. However, the 4890 is faster than both, and the 4870 is on par with the 5770 at the moment. That said, as always with upgrading your graphics card, make sure your computer's PSU (power supply) can support the new card. Specifically, make sure it has a PCI-E 6pin adapter, as that's what most medium-high end graphics cards need, I know the 5750 and 5770 need one. The 5750 doesn't use that much power so anything around 400-500W would be fine running it, for the 4870 and 4890 I'd think about upgrading your PSU if your PSU is rated lower than 500W. To find out what your PSU is rated at just take the side panel off and look on the side of the PSU, there should be a sticker with some info on it.

VLC isn't that good for music IMO. It can be quite confusing to use as well. I personally use it for films, but I use WMP for music.

How'd you get that? He said the old case opened from the right and everything was fixed to the right. And that the new case opens from the left and everything fixes to the right. Unless he really did have some stupidly absurd case originally he's clearly made a typo but we can't just assume which bit is typoed. Because I know Guy and know he's not the most techy person out there (no offense) and I have seen Dell cases. I'm not saying I'm right but I think that's his problem.

What I got from the original post was that the case opens on the right (if facing the front case) and the mobo is mounted on the left, with access to everything through the right side. If this is the case, that'd mean the graphics card has been specifically made to fit this Dell case, or it has been flipped over. Or, the graphics card has been fitted/made specifically for this case and won't work in any other case. Pictures would make this a lot easier.

If it's five years old and using a Pentium 4, all the graphics power in the world wouldn't help you much. A 2ghz Pentium 4 would be a massive bottleneck, as TF2 depends more on the CPU than graphics.