Most people know that Sage 50 in its various incarnations is the evolution of the old Peachtree. For a very long time, either Peachtree or QuickBooks was the choice for small business, and that’s still the case. I’m assuming that most people already using software of this type are likely very capable of deciding on accounting software features, so I’m going to position this review as general advice for you folks who’ve been running your business out of a checkbook and a spreadsheet and not much else.

Once again the H&R Block tax package made my job easy. Our taxes are fairly complicated, with a home office, a business, capital gains, itemized deductions, depreciation, mileage, and other tax details that can keep you on your toes. Once our figures were compiled and in a spreadsheet, using this software had the taxes complete and ready to mail inside of two hours. Once upon a time I used to spend all day long, on the floor surrounded by piles of papers, with a calculator, extra copies of the tax forms, and a pencil.

I got a new notebook recently that had this on it. I almost returned the machine because EVERYTHING on it was so slow. I mean everything … apps … web page response, Settings. It was ridiculous. Then I had a wild idea … what if the AV was the problem. I uninstalled McAfee and the machine started to fly. So I put one of my AVG licenses on it. There was very little performance degradation with AVG.

I needed this to upgrade an older iMac. The installation worked without a hitch. The installation was easy and went smoothly. However, be careful if using this for an upgrade. It did a clean install that wiped out all the existing apps, but not data. That was OK for my need, but it could be a serious problem for someone else.

Once again, this years version of the software made my life exceptionally easy. I used to spend two days with spreadsheets and a calculator. I stil l have the spreadsheet to total up income and deductions. After that entering everything into this program and coming up with the final taxes doesn’t take long, and I have a complicated set of taxes to resolve. This year, don’t forget to fill out the section for Health Insurance you pay for.

Microsoft Office is the leader in pro office suites. However, the licensing for 2013 was horrible, and for the most part, you can do all the important things with Google apps for absolutely free.

I’ve been in the Adobe Premiere elements world for a long time, mainly because I am used to it and for me, it has been stable. But I’ve tried Corel VideoStudio Ultimate for a few years now and it keeps getting better and it becomes a compelling option for my main video editing suite. The one thing I like best about VideoStudio is the options and add on’s, especially the creative options.

I’ve been using the last several versions of Corel VideoStudio along side my (still) favorite, Adobe Premiere Elements. The two things I found about VideoStudio was that it was easier to use but also slow. I am happy to say that in X7, speed is much improved. The one thing I can say about VideoStudio X7 is that it makes everything easy for the newbie. If there was one video editing suite I would recommend to newcomers, it would be this.

In this day and age where we have just about every kind of mapping program available to us via the web or even on Smartphone’s, why would we need a standalone software map program? That was my mindset when getting into Microsoft Streets & Trips. While I still find many of its features on par with the free web mapping options, it’s trip planner option makes it worth the investment.

For an out of the box experience with animation, this isn’t a bad program. I’ve used animation programs off and on since the says of the Amiga (Disney Animation Studio rocked!). This program is easy for those to get started with right away but I will say, it crashed a lot. I have a clean system and I still couldn’t keep it stable.