I spoke too soon; 'Free PPTPVPN' and 'Free Canada VPN' both require rather detailed manual set-up.

-bit (January 13, 2014, 01:31 PM)

Um, it takes literally ~1 minute to set up a PPTP VPN, after that it's just three clicks to connect.

eg. Windows 8:
 (see attachment in previous post)
Windows 7 is similar, (the connection list opens above the network tray icon).

Addendum: Attached is a RAS phonebook containing entries for PPTPVPN:
a) Extract
b) Double-click PPTPVPN.pbk
c) Choose US or UK, then hit Connect
d) Enter User/Password, (from web page), then hit Connect.

To disconnect:
a) Double-click PPTPVPN.pbk
b) Choose the connection and hit Hangup.

-4wd (January 13, 2014, 10:06 PM)

Tnx, I'll check this out.
One of the supreme virtues of TOR Vidalia is that once you set it up, it doesn't pull unexpected switcharoos from encrypted to unencrypted mode; in fact it bundles its own version of Firefox that -in a word- is tailor-made to be paranoid in the extreme by passionate security-conscious zealots.

Compared to that, the way some VPNs jump in and out of protected mode, with just a little bitty color-coded icon in your bottom tray to warn you, it's inviting accidental exposure that can take way too  long to become aware of before you realize your mistake.

That's about like the woman who always did base jumps with a shoulder-pull rip cord, and one day she tried a pack with a waist pull-cord instead, stepped off a cliff, reached for her shoulder cord, remembered it was on her waist, started to reach down instead, and hit the rocks.
True story; her b/f or husband co-base jumper was quite grieved by her death.

IOW, you take care of your habits, and don't switch around too much, and they will take care of you.

For .vob conversion, I hate to sound sloppy, but I just click on one file in the folder [an entire folder full of sub-files for one single vid], and it converts the entire folder bundle into a neat single mp4 file.
And cuts the size from 4GB to 1GB.

^Gee, that's a way cool offer.
But I'd hate to impose on your generosity because it's a lot more data than I first mentioned.
There are two lecture sets, one is 12 vids and one is 14 vids, about 1.5 to 2 hours per lecture.
After conversion, each would probably be about 1GB, which takes 2 or 3 hours to convert to mp4, and only one's been converted yet.
Let me see what I can do first, please, and tnx very much.

edit-correction:
Hotspot Shield loads on boot, and sometimes it does not self-activate but waits to be manually started...
--and then again, the last time I booted, it self-activated, jumped online, and begged me to suggest it to 10 friends...
--after which, I got it to uninstall very cleanly leaving no noticeable tracks or left-over folders like so many other programs seem to do.

However, just prior to uninstall, I ran CCleaner, which ran about 1.5 minutes longer than usual to clean a bunch of extra temp files with a total of only 47MB (MB not GB).
So Hotspot was creating a ton of small temp files somewhere, which CCleaner took an unusually long time to hunt down and erase.
So Hotspot gets a 'qualified' approval for being so easy to install, and uninstalling so cleanly, but I really did not like it self-activating and popping online like that.

The 1st and 3rd of the other three VPNs mentioned above seem well worth checking out, so tnx very much.
I spoke too soon; 'Free PPTPVPN' and 'Free Canada VPN' both require rather detailed manual set-up.

Whereas Hotspot is practically one-click installation, and may be worth another try, if I can get it to settle down and stop self-activating and jumping online by itself like that.

^agree with every posted criticism of Google & Youtube, don't use Google or G-mail anymore (use Startpage instead), and don't visit Youtube nearly as much as I used to and absolutely never post anything to it anymore.