Michael D.

I've used this a couple of years. It's not so feature-laden as to be a burden to use as are many password managers that can be invasive and annoying. It pretty much just holds your passwords. But it will also hold identities and bank cards. Works great with one exception as of this writing. It's buggy with Firefox. Bitwarden told me the fault lies with Firefox, that they have brought it to Firefox's attention, but nothing has been done. Aside from that, it's hard to beat.

This review is just about their Dragon browser, not their other services, which I have never used. Dragon is based on Chrome and works well and looks good. I tried it for about two weeks. One big problem: A few times a day, a tab pops up informing you that your Chrome -- yes, Chrome -- browser is an older version, and you need to update it. I interpret this to mean Dragon is based on an old Chrome and is not kept up to date. I went to Comodo's user forum, asking about this issue. No one from Comodo ever responded. I uninstalled the browser.

"Start for free." Lots of online tax-prep services begin this way, and it can be true. Most of them make their money by charging you later for your state return. I do not begrudge them that. They are a business, after all, and their purpose is to earn money. I support capitalism.

Here's what they tried to do with me. I am a U.S. retiree who lives in Mexico, so I do not have a state return, just federal, and the last few years I have filed for free successfully with another online service. I decided to try Liberty due to some minor unhappiness with the other site.

My tax situation is simple. My income comes from Social Security, a corporate pension and, now and then, withdrawals from an IRA. I do not itemize. I take the standard deduction. None of the other elements of the IRS maze apply to me. My return is very simple and straight-forward. Three sources of income, and that's it. No house stuff, nada, zip, zed.

Here's what Liberty did. Suppress your laughter. They have four packages:

1. The E-Z, "best for simple returns."
2. The Basic, "best for families." $19.95.
3. The Deluxe, "best for investors." $39.95.
4. The Premium, "best for small business owners." $69.95.

I opted for the Basic because I use the 1040, not the 1040EZ, and I was willing to shill out 19.95.

I started filling in the info. It didn't take long till I got to the income section, and on mentioning my pensions and their accompanying Form 1099-Rs, which is a simple form that states how much I received, how much was withheld, if any, Liberty immediately told me that neither Package 1, nor 2, nor 3 would cut the mustard in my simple situation. Only the highest-price package would do, the one for small business owners. It leaped right over option 3 to the priciest level.

Thinking this was an error, I went to chat, asked why it was doing that, stated the obvious, that it made no sense whatsoever. I was not a small business owner. No matter. That was what I would have to pay if I wanted to continue, the chat gal told me.

Obviously, I did not. I used another service, and filed my simple return for free. I recommend you steer clear of Liberty.

I've been using Bitdefender for almost two years, and I like it. It's unobtrusive, reasonably priced, attractive, and I've never had (knock on wood) any virus problem since I installed it. And that's the bottom line, is it not? I'm currently using their Antivirus Plus 2015, and I have every intention of renewing when the time comes. I had a little glitch once, and they solved it. Bitdefender is one of the major players in the field, and there's a reason for that. It's a great program. It works!

Four months ago, I went searching for an email provider that wasn't Gmail. I was hoping for a free service, so I tried AOL, Mail, GMX, Lycos, Yandex and Zoho. All had some significant problem. I upped my search into the realm of paid providers. Finally, I found Fastmail.

It was easy to use. It's good-looking. The calendar (essential item) was simple to use. My mail from Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail could be sucked into it, also essential. And responses could be sent out from the original email to fool folks.

Fastmail is incredibly well-organized. Though not a free service, the prices are very reasonable for individual use, starting at just $10 U.S. Then there's a $20 plan, and a $40, which comes with priority tech support. I got the $20 version. Priority tech support starts with the $40 plan. During my free trial, I was using the $40 plan. Twice I requested tech support, and it came quickly and efficiently. My $20 plan does not have priority support, but if I ever was in need of it, I'd simply upgrade to the $40 plan. So, far -- seven months in -- the system is working great. And it's noticeably faster than my Gmail.

I've become a big fan. (For some reason this review appears to be for fastmail.fm, but I use fastmail.com.)

I've tried a good number of password managers. A couple of years ago, I tried Lastpass, but I quickly found it confusing. I went on to Dashlane, which I used for over a year. But Dashlane began to give me headaches, so I returned to Lastpass recently. It's really not confusing at all if you simply pay attention for a while as you grow accustomed to it. There's a brief learning curve. It works far better than most anything else -- of the five or so alternatives I've tested.

Lastpass long had a butt-ugly interface, but they recently changed that, and now it's as good-looking as Dashlane, which is best known for attractiveness.

(Update: Dashlane's newest version is great. I've returned to Dashlane even though I still recommend LastPass heartily.)

Amazon does everything right. It sets an example for all online firms. Great service.

I used Dashlane a few years back. It was good, but it often got in my face trying to fill out things I neither needed nor wanted filling out. I wearied of struggling with it and switched first to Sticky Password and then to LastPass. Sticky and LastPass are good too. LastPass is better than Sticky.

Then I read somewhere that a newer version of Dashlane was superlative. I went back and gave it a run. I was impressed. That was about two months ago. I think that some of its shenanigans when I first used it were my fault. I did not have the settings done as I would have preferred. This time I'm taking more care with it.

I have tried a number of password managers in addition to Dashlane, Sticky and LastPass. The others were culled almost immediately. No password manager is perfect. They all have their glitches, but at this moment I'm putting Dashlane at the top of the stack. I'm happy with it.