Chess engine recommendations?

I'm thinking about installing an engine and an interface to see if playing against it can improve my play.  I'm running a slightly older Gateway laptop with Windows 7 Premium, Intel Pentium P6100 2.0 GHz CPU, 3 GB RAM.  Some questions:

1)  What would you recommend for a free engine?  I'm considering an older version of Houdini or Stockfish.

2)  Same question for the interface.  I see so many listed and have no clue which might be best for my needs.

3)  Do any of them analyze in-game?  I'm thinking about setting it a little above my rating (1300-ish) and playing against it so I don't get crushed every game but was curious as to whether it's possible to get suggestions mid-game, as opposed to playing the entire game and doing postgame analysis.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

If you don't mind spending $50, Fritz sounds like what you need.  Lots of free stuff out there, but I'm not aware of any that let you ask for "hints" or "suggestions" like Fritz does.  In training mode you can set the engine up to be as smart (or dumb) as you like with settings for how aggressive you want it to be, how eager it is to trade pieces and some other stuff I forget.  The old Chessmaster was great for having a bevy of artificial opponents but the $10 closeouts seem to have vanished and Ubisoft seems to have killed it.  Fritz can be loaded up with all kinds of free engines as well.  You also get an OK database.  Buy it from the USCF store to make sure you get support.  Steve Lopez (Lopes ?) has lots of youtube videos on how it works and is the USCF sales computer software guru as well.  They recommend a modern multiprocessor to run Fritz but your configuration is way above the minimum setup.  My usual 2 cents.

I use Chessmaster for all my low level games and Lucas chess with free Houdini 1.5 added to it for stronger competition. Both Houdini and Stockfish are 3000 rated, enough to smash anything a human can play. Download some pgn files and you have enough information to last for years.

I don't think chess master is an engine.

more like a swiss army knife of chess tools which you can use to learn chess.

For the engine I recommend stockfish 4 I am not sure about the UI yet.

Isn't Houdini free, and top rated above all

I'm not sure how much playing against an engine will improve your play - Maybe a little, but I'd think you'd improve a lot faster if you went the traditional route of books, trainers, or mentors. I play against engines some, but it's really just for fun.

Anyway, yeah, if you don't mind spending a little money, either Chessmaster 10 or Fritz is a decent choice. The commercial packages have a slicker look with more bells and whistles. CM can't import UCI engines though, and my only swipe at Fritz is their proprietary engine and file formats. (Last I tried, it's difficult to import Winboard engines into Fritz, except for the few special "Fritz-friendly" compiles that Chessbase makes for some Winboard engines. And you can work with pgn files in Fritz, but of course they'd prefer that you use their Chessbase file format.)

If you decide to try the free route, good choices for GUIs are Scid vs. PC ver 4.10, Winboard 4.7.2, or Arena 3.0. There are others, but those are the big three. Winboard can give you hints during the game, although it doesn't have cute hint graphics. I don't think the other GUIs can directly give hints, but I think you could just leave the analysis window open if it's not a rated game. (Frankly, I think hints are overrated.) (EDIT - Oops, I just realized that if you're playing with a weak engine, the hints might not be of much value. I don't know how the Winboard hint feature works - whether it uses the same engine for hints as playing. My guess is probably so.) Whichever GUI you pick, expect to have to spend time configuring it and getting used to it.

Engines to use? If you're going to play against them, that automatically eliminates many engines, as not all of them can play at weak levels. The free Houdini versions get tossed out. Versions of Stockfish from 2.1.1 or later can play at weak levels. Other possibilities that I like are Ufim 8.02, Crafty versions 22.10 and later compiled with full features, Phalanx Reborn XXII JA, Pupsi2 0.08, Rybka 2.2 or 2.32 (plays a bit strong for the settings), and Hamsters 0.7.1. Crafty and Phalanx are Winboard engines and are a bit harder to install. Ufim, Rybka, and Hamsters are the only ones I mentioned that use elo settings. Oh yeah, don't expect extreme accuracy with the elo settings.

I think he needs an engine to analyse his games.

If you are willing to pay money then chass master 10k(I am pretty sure it's 10000 and not 10) is amazing though it isn't the best.Fritz plays at a higher level but there just aren't that many features.

The best rated engine is houdini with top class analysis.

stockfish is the best free engine.(I don't know about komodo but I don't think it's free)

chessx and SCID vs PC are good UIs I heard a lot about.

Why is this still a topic do a bloody forum search, best free engine is Houdini 1.5.

Well if you want to be picky about it, it's actually Chessmaster 10th Edition.

"Best" has many meanings. I guess you didn't really read the OP's post, did you?

The stockfish engine run in houdini 4?