I first experienced Intuit’s belligerent behavior when I upgraded my Quickbooks Enhanced Payroll last year and found that I would now be charged more to write checks and get to waste a half hour of my life on the phone getting myself off the automatic annual renewal treadmill. Now, with Turbo Tax Deluxe, the very same product I’ve used, and been very pleased with in years past, I find that I can only e-file half of my taxes, as schedules C and D can only be e-filed with an upgrade to Premier.

Media Expressions Platinum possesses just about everything one would need to manage life’s memories…at least those in video/photo form. The interface is easy to use, even for a relative novice. With this software, one has the ability to create and edit photographic and film projects as well as easily organize and share their work. It really is quite nice for those who don’t have the time or desire to learn more advanced software but still wish to be a little more creative with their images.

Quickbooks is one of those products that is a necessary evil in the small business world. Most people (like me) understand the basics and get by with what they need – then send the rest to the account. This is a bit faster than previous versions and handles everything you can through at it. I am actually using this software inside a virtual machine on my Mac because Quickbooks has still refused to create a decent mac version of this software – until then this version is it for me.

In this day and age we all know that anti-virus software is a must for any windows based computer. However most software developers to give you all the protection you need throw in everything in including the kitchen to help you keep protected. The top 3 non shareware products and top of the game have become increasingly bad each new version with how much they slow down your computer (almost as bad as the viruses they are trying to prevent) However, with Trend Micro Internet Security Pro these problems are issues of the past!

In the beginning there were not many choices in computer virus protection, but that changed throughout the years and the market is now flooded to the point where the general consumer does not know what to purchase. Enter McAfee – one of the first virus protections on the market and arguably still the best. To test out McAfee Internet Security 2009. I knowingly infected a test machine with a minor trojan virus.

If you own your own business, QuickBooks is a necessary evil. Luckily through the years, as the need for electronic bookkeeping has grown, so has the software. After two years of unstable releases, QuickBooks 2010 put the software back on track by giving you all of the stability you loved in the last few versions along with a plethora of new features to keep you up-to-date in this electronic age. The only issue I had was when I went to install the software on a virtual machine on a Mac.

Let me set the back story…I have been a PC user since 1982. I have used windows since NT 3.51 and always considered myself a Microsoft guy. That changed this year with the release of Vista and the subsequent release of Leopard. I changed over to Mac and didn’t look back. That being said I felt I needed some familiarity with my computer. I could have just used my windows version of Office with Parrells, but I figured I bought a Mac I should use mac programs….

I have had this for years, it works great, no power sag.

I have had this for years, it works great, no power sag.

I have had this for years, it works great, no power sag.