Any recommendations for a new setup?

They don't have to support it.

For system wide settings they have to Opt In or Out or whatever. But if you're forcing with EMET.dll (on Vista/7) all mitigations should be active no matter whether the program opts out or doesn't support them or whatever.

I usually just have people force Opera/Firefox, Adobe Reader/Flash, and Java, which will all benefit.

 

Nice advice. Another reason I'm also looking at various security practices is because I will be doing some security classes next semester and I'm going to assume that I'll be working with various methods that can expose me to security risk, so I need to do the proper research. I have also heard of system hardening, which I think a few have already mentioned before. Is this a very good method for security? I have never put my faith in stock security software, but I want to hear what experiences others may have had with a hardened setup.