I used Norton on and off for 10 years now. Lately, I was mostly happy with the program until today. I have a computer that I do not use very often. Today I needed to start it to do something. After 10 minutes I got 2 programs to pop up asking to be updated. Knowing that I blocked these annoying programs from accessing the internet through the Norton firewall, I started the Internet Security to check the settings.

Kaspersky Products were always in the top 3 computer security products that I would buy. I have been running Pure for a while now and I must say that I am somewhat impressed with it. One of the most important things for me in a computer security product is the footprint. If the program slows the machine down to a halt because it hogs resources than what is the point ?

Trend Micro is a well-known name in the computer security business along with Norton and Kaspersky. Most of these manufacturers have different suites that include more or less components. I could never understand why somebody would buy only the Antivirus version of a program instead of buying the full suite that has Antivirus, Firewall and Parental Control. This software is one of lowest packages offered by Trend Micro and it does what was designed for.

I was a Norton Utilities/Internet Security user for 5 years in the 2001-2006 period. Every September when they were updating the suite I would buy the next one. Typically for Norton, in the first months after the release, the software would suck because they were releasing it before it was ready. Through the years, the software got worse and I started looking for alternatives and for a while I went with different packages.

The photo editing capabilities are there, but not very good–certainly not for a professional or an artist. The video, however, is quite easy to use to make ‘business-class’ presentations; we are using this right now to create a video of a meeting we hosted with a country’s prime minister, and feel that it is fine for this purpose.

I just installed McAfee Internet security on my Windows 10 desktop, and what stands out is its minimal impact on system resources. Not much else to report at this point, but so far I am happy with it.

I have a 4 year old PC, not cutting edge even then, and it runs pretty well. My editing needs are light, and for me VideoStudio is easy to learn, easy to use, and works well.

I get video files in all kinds of formats, and can’t stand hunting for an application to play them in. PowerDVD allows me to play just about everything (at least in my library) seemlessly. Easy to install, reliable, great output quality. Haven’t tried it with 4K files so I don’t know how it handles those.

I have recently tried current versions of some common antivirus programs, and 3 had major flaws including buttons which didn’t work and complete crashes of the entire program requiring a restart. AVG is not a great piece of software. Most noticeable is the fact that it slows down the computer a little. But it is the only one I have found which actually works, which is apparently a miracle. I give it 4 stars only relative to how awful everything else is.

I don’t push anti-virus software to its limits. My needs are pretty basic: protect the computer/network (as well as my colleagues to whom I sent emails and documents), and not be intrusive in my work. I use it on one home setup-desktop, netbook, Android phone, and an Android TV server that I built. Installation was easy, updates are seamlessly delivered. I can’ stand anti-virus software that shows itself off whenever possible, bragging about how well protected I am.