Good Piece of Software - When it's not crashing
592542
Fairly easy to use and has some nice features while developing a project. Once you try to produce a project and upload it to youtube be prepared for frequent crashes and having to reboot your computer several times. This makes is very frustrating and undependable to work with. I would not buy this software unless you are VERY patient.
4134555
Mostly this is a good product.  The interface is good, and it is full-featured without being too complicated.

The problem is the scheduler, which is very unreliable.  This has been noted in other reviews.  It is also a frequent topic of discussion in Acronis forums.  You can set up a schedule to have your backups done automatically at a certain time, and it may happen or it may not.  When the backup doesn't kick off at the scheduled time, there is no error message--it just doesn't happen.  That means that you have to check for results manually.  I'm a former database administrator (retired), so I'm used to checking backup results daily, but if you want to "set it and forget it" you probably won't be satisfied with the Acronis product.
2182946
When it works, this is a decent low-end product -- flimsy and slow, of course, but that's expected for the price.

I would have rated this much higher until my computer died, and I needed to reinstall the software. Windows 8 installation isn't working at all, and web search tells me I'm not alone in this problem. Windows 7 installation on my laptop sort of worked, but the software is insisting I run as Administrator for it to work, and I don't like to do that for security reasons. There are other software difficulties as well.

The above complaints refer to document scanning. For printing and copying I've found the PIXMA reliable but slow.
913514
The sound quality is very good. However, the interface crashes at random intervals throughout the day. On a fresh install of Windows XP SP3, I frequently got the Blue-Screen-of-Death blaming tascusb2.sys. There was no warning. Computer could be on for hours before doing it, or not. I haven't been able to discern a pattern as to when it happens -- it happens most often when I listen to music, but sometimes it will crash when I'm doing nothing at all with it.

Installing the newest drivers from the Tascam Website actually made my system crash more often than the old drivers. The interface also takes 20% of CPU power to run on a Core 2 Quad Laptop, even when I'm doing nothing with it. The Interface actually crashed my PC once while I was writing this review.

Google it; there are dozens of reports online of people having the same issues as me, and hundreds of reports regarding Tascam's worthless customer support, even here on Amazon. The instruction manual is also littered with typos.

Even when it does output sound, you can't use it in a production environment due to very high latency. If you set the latency to anything other than the highest setting, you will get all kinds of crackling and skipping, even when just listening to music in Winamp or Windows Media Player. It often doesn't get properly recognized in Cubase 5. Recording is nearly impossible.

Support is unhelpful, telling me to disable my anti virus and firewall(not an option due to security concerns, but even when I did do it for an hour, my system crashed again), and outright lying to me, saying that Mac users don't have issues with the Tascam Audio Interface, when even the reviewer above me has problems getting it to work on his Mac.

Bottom line: When the thing works, it outputs some nice, clear sound for the price. Unfortunately it's nearly unusable due to constant crashing, latency issues and worthless support. Stay away until they put out some new drivers, which they have been promising for nearly two years.
1978906
Display driver seems to crash about once a week or so. Not a big deal, but always catches me off guard.
1242750
When it works, it works very well. But it tends to like to fall over and die every 16 or so hours. It does manage to start itself back up, but it's not the best of user experiences when you have to constantly wait for the connection to recover.
4433630
I've now had this machine for more than two months and, like some other reviewers, I was torn between 4 & 5 stars.  Right now, everything seems to be working fine, but that was not the case right out of the box.

Initially, the optical disk drive wouldn't read and I had difficulty installing Office along with some other software that I use.  When they did install, the processes were extremely slow.  The Windows Updater didn't work along with some other Windows functions, Bluetooth wouldn't work and there was no software for the webcam. I had almost decided to return the machine when suddenly the Windows issues seemed to resolve themselves, the optical drive started working fine and after a good bit of fiddling with settings, Bluetooth was functioning without problems.  Also, the Windows Updater seemed to fix itself and began functioning almost two weeks later.  There were several minor issues that were irritating, but caused no real problems and were easily corrected.  I obtained software for the webcam and used the Dell updater, which downloaded several driver updates along with an update for the BIOS.  Right now, everything is fine with one exception: it won't join my Home Group.  Compared to my other computers, there seems to be something different with this version of Windows 7 Pro, but I just can't put my finger on it

All-in-all, it's a fine machine and it's doing great, but initially, it verged on becoming a do-it-yourself project, so much so, that I came very close to returning it.
3434144
It was time to upgrade and thought it would be as stable as the last version. Wrong. It typically takes 3 crashes be for it starts running correctly. I had a trouble shooting session with Intuit. It was helpful but I will refrain from any additional stars for the next couple of weeks or so.
1379804
The hardware is great.  No complaints.  The software is total s*** and crashes each time I load it.  I've tried various updates and drivers but it's just no go with the supplied software.  No biggie really, I just use another program for video capture and this camera plays nicely.  It doesn't require the Logitech software but it's a bit of head scratcher why they'd release such a nice piece of hardware with such poor software.
320291
Tends to be kind of buggy. Sometimes it doesn't record as scheduled and sometimes it crashes all together and needs to be power cycled to restore function.
266556
I was thrilled to get such a high-performance, inexpensive, lightweight computer.  I bought it right after Thanksgiving (2006) and immediately started having issues.  The computer is fast.  The screen is small but brilliant and clear and overall the responsivity of the machine was in the hardly better anywhere -- except that as you are typing or doing work suddenly, for no obvious reason you'll get a freeze -- the system will just stop responding.

At first I thought it was just a software glitch especially since the ZoneAlarm security software is about as intrusive a bit of irritating software as I've ever encountered.  But after removing in every case the system that seemed to be offending, I've come to the conclusion that it is just some fault with the computer.  It's made in China afterall.

My experience with it is just awful.  It freezes, it goes to a blue screen sometimes without warning, it says that it's lost registry entries on boot up but has recovered them, but this happens repeatedly.  I'm using it now to write this review looking over my shoulder waiting for it to freeze.

Maybe after they get the bugs out this will be terrific -- but right now it is a lemon.  If I was the only one I'd think it was a fluke.  But when I started researching the "freeze" I found other users with the same problem.

I'd avoid it for now.
UPDATE -- I took the first Averatec back to Staples where I bought it and the fellow there was very surprised saying that they generally had a good reputation.  So I thought, "OK let's give'em another chance."  I exchanged the first machine for another and gave it to my son for Christmas.  Well he was thrilled.  But in three days of use, heavy use since he was playing WOW on it heavily -- but then for no reason, no abuse, the video started misbehaving.  It refused to heal itself.  Two computers, two major issues, no abuse or misuse.  We took that one back and now he's checking out his new HP.  Meanwhile I'm pretty satisfied with my new Vaio although it's a little pricey by comparison.  If you get a good Averatec you're probably in good shape.  But 2 strikes in 2 tries is a surprisingly bad record.  I don't see any reason to be very optimistic about this beastie.  I probably should demote the thing to one star.
4686620
Not a week ago I would have rated this at 3 stars because of the software.  The keyboard itself is very well-made, as anyone would expect from Corsair. The cherry switches feel fantastic and I've not had a problem regarding any of the mechanical aspects of it. The software was a whole other monster. Originally it would not keep track of my profiles, the lights would get stuck on, and quick switch buttons would become unusable. It tended to either lag to hell or crash on opening the UI. That seems to have been fixed as of 11/15/14. There could still be a few bugs here and there with the Utility Engine, but I have yet to encounter them again. I give it a tentative 4/5 stars as all the problems I've had with it seemed to have been fixed with the most recent firmware and software updates, but I'm still uncertain that all the bugs are worked out.
2120321
I bought this card mainly to transfer the contents of some old VHS video tapes to DVD. It did not take much work getting the card installed and running but the software has some glitches. It is intuitive and easy to use but sometimes for some unknown reason it will freeze up. This is easily recified by doing the old Ctrl-Alt-Delete routine to end the program but it is annoying. The program will freeze up and need to be restarted at least twice an hour. You cannot use any other software to interface with this card. I tried 3 different video editing programs with no success before I went to the manufacturer's website. They have a section on there where they tell you that the card will only work with the software that came with it. Even the slimmed down Ulead Movie Factory Toolkit that came in the software package cannot interface with the card directly. That was a little disappointing. The WinTV software does work and I am satisfied with the quality of video that I am able to capture and save with it and the card. Hence my rating of 4 stars.
There is one other strange issue that I have had. I'm not sure if it is the card or a coincidence but you might want to watch out for this. My husband has several video games installed on the machine. Shortly after we installed this capture card, a few of those games stopped working properly. The games would run and we could hear sound but the graphics would not display. No amount of tinkering, reinstalling etc could fix the problem.
4781479
I have a mixed impression of this device, and feel like it's at once 5 stars and 1 star. When it's working, it's amazing - in a tiny box at  a very low price it does what my previous BD/DVD/streaming device did but at less than1/4 the cost, and with a better interface.  The catch is that it regularly crashes.  I keep the software up to date, but once a week or so it just freezes either on a blank screen, or a frozen image.  The only fix seems to be to unplug and reboot, like a computer with a glitch(just powering off doesn't do it).  Considering that this is a new device, but not new technology, that is disappointing.
The other minus is that it is weirdly slow.  Coming to life from pressing 'power on' is slow, and it takes about a minute to get from the menu to actually being connected to Netflix. Hardly a disaster, but feels wrong. All my other devices (desktop, smart phone, iPad) can connect in a few seconds. Maybe it's a trade off Samsung made to reach a low price. You can easily enough get used to that too, but it does make me wonder if there's a competitor who makes a device without these flaws.  Oh, and as others have remarked, there is virtually no way to tell if the device is on or off, as there is not even a little light on the power button - nada.  It seems it is built to turn itself on when the TV is powered on, and turns itself off similarly.
On the plus side, the onscreen user interface is excellent.  My old device had a conspicuously weak Netflix interface, but this one does everything it should, allowing you to view not only your queue, but also several other categories as you see them when you go to their site.
All in all, I would suggest looking around to see if there is a better machine, but be willing to buy this as the trade offs are reasonable.
4157726
In general, the software quality seems to be top notch.  The animations are bright, friendly, and smooth.  We have experienced no crashes or problems.  However, we have a few issues with the program, which is why we only gave it a 3 out of 5 stars:

I was a bit disappointed with the installer.  However, these problems may be minor to most customers.  By default, it installs into a cryptic folder called "sz80xx", rather than something descriptive, like "School Zone\Math 1", like you would expect.  You can override this, of course.  The complete installation actually takes place in two steps, the second of which happens when you run the program for the first time.  This is a problem for people who have correctly set up the security on their machine to disallow non-Administrative users to perform software installations.  To overcome this problem, answer "Yes" when asked to run the software during setup.

Also, there are no written instructions to copy the data off of the CD and onto the machine's hard drive.  Without this capability, your son/daughter -- or you -- will always have to handle the CD's, popping them in and out of the machine.

My daughters seem to be 1-2 years ahead of the prescribed lesson plans in this series.  For instance, in kindergarten, they are doing Grade 1 Math.  Therefore, the games (which are rewarded to the child after finishing every two lessons) are too fast-paced for them.  As a result, they get frustrated by them.

Conversely, the drag and drop method employed by the software is consistent with novices, requiring a click to "pick up" an object and a click to "drop" it.  Any child who has been using a computer for more than a few months (like my daughters) will find this counter-intuitive and frustrating.

Finally, the "workbook style" methodology of this program was unexpected.  We're accustomed to "game style" learning programs in which you:

  a) choose a game, and

  b) play it repeatedly until you've mastered it.

The only way to go back and repeat a lesson (i.e. to improve your skills) is to "erase" your entire workbook (all lessons) and start over.  My daughters quickly moved from exercises that were too easy to ones that were too hard since in the "workbook style" you would typically only do one or two lessons in a day int he software and a few in the paper workbook (included).  The idea of starting over was not desirable, either.  The result was, again, frustration.

My recommendation is to purchase this software if you plan to work with your child and help them plan out a schedule in which you use the paper workbook and the software in conjunction, limiting the lessons to two a day.  If this is your plan, then I highly recommend this software.

Purchasing this software and letting your child work with it on her/his own won't work.
3470062
Initially, I liked this player very much, as the pointer was comfortable and intuitive to use and setup seemed simple.  However, as I tried to do more with it, especially the PC software, it became unstable, crashing repeatedly and requiring re-install.  In the end, I ended up returning it, as I could not get the software working after yet another re-install and I found out that the player (and probably software) was discontinued.
2697871
I was very excited when I first got this in. Install time for Windows 8.1 was super quick, and everything was up and running great. However, about a month after I purchased it, I'd noticed my system would randomly freeze up while on my desktop, or just browsing the web. It's only seemed to happen when I'm actively using programs that are installed on the SSD. When I'm playing games like Skyrim/WoW/S.T.A.L.K.E.R./Anything else in my steam library, the freezes don't happen, as they're all installed on my HDD.

Boot time is still super fast. I turn on my PC and it's usable within 20 seconds. If it wasn't for the random freezes I'd gladly give this a 5 star, because otherwise it's amazing. But when my system hangs for anywhere from 5-20 seconds at a time (and it's multiple times a day) I just can't look past it. A few times I've just had to kill my PC (pressing the power button on my tower) just to get it to respond.

I don't want this review to scare anyone off, as I'm pretty sure mine was just faulty. Otherwise this is a great budget SSD for those that don't need 'Pro' performance.