The deals that include 5 or 10 computers (or devices) are a much cheaper and wiser buy. Norton’s policy for when you buy a multi-device product is that the subscription time for all devices–whether you installed or activated it in another device or not–begins to count on the day the first one is activated. So time runs out on all available subscriptions at the same time and not by the date on which you install it on another device.

I have had years of good experience with Norton and continue to do so (knock on wood!) I got this 5 device download even though I only had two devices I needed it for. The time (the yearly subscription to the service) begins to count when you initialize the first item. If, a few months later, you add another item, that item’s subscription is based on the first item you initialized, not on when you installed it.

Norton has gotten more thorough and un-intrussive as time goes on. It stays more in the background, seems to draw less computing power, and is less domineering than it used to be. It has always been a good anti-virus program, but it used to cause as many conflicts as it prevented (there used to be the .dll file that was a source of annoyance through several versions!); and didn’t interact well with other programs and/or make its presence felt in many annoying ways.

i got this for my son who wanted software for learning Spanish. I speak spanish fluently as well as English. This software is crapware… if you want something to help you learn Spanish, look elsewhere. My son, after checking it out, has never used it further and I don’t blame him.

The 2014 version started out with quite a few bugs in it. Now that they’ve finished the patching, I think there is still a little bugginess left. I understand that the 2015 version is also buggy so I’ll probably just continue to suffer along with this version for another year or two. I have to stay with Quicken because I have 25 years of complete financial history on it and wouldn’t want to lose that.

I’ve been using Quicken since 1992 when I got a free copy as a promotion when I bought some other software product. At some point I started keeping our full financial records in it, including cash transactions. I’m glad I did. I now have a nice historical record of our living costs over the years. I can tell you for example, that in 2009 I spent $9500.59 for groceries and $3470.

This is a dumbed down version of the Corel Draw Suite. I didn’t know that when I purchased it. They should be up front and honest about that. Avoid this and purchase the education edition if you want Corel Draw X7

I’ve been using Quicken to manage my finances for about 20 years. Quicken is a great aide and worth the time it takes to input income and expenses. I upgrade almost every year. The 2013 version, even though they’ve had updates to it since it was released, seems quite buggy. If you’re a Quicken user I suggest skipping the upgrade this year and waiting for the 2014 version to come out before upgrading.

Norton has almost always been my favorite security program. I began using it in 1990 when it was Norton Commander - a menu system for DOS - and stuck with it through almost all its incarnations. At some point, maybe seven or eight years ago, it became bloated and I began using free products, which worked fine without slowing the computer to a crawl - but I missed the full scans and features in Norton that I always found so trustworthy.

Installation of Norton Security on my Mac was very easy; in fact the only difficulty I had was getting the free version of Avast! uninstalled. From there, I ran a quick scan effortlessly. However, once I had Firefox open, a Norton plug-in kept crashing. This didn’t stop anything - there’s a button to refresh or to send a report. Either one fixed the problem and uncrashed Norton. Still, it was annoying.