Mr. Sweeney's arguments seem a bit alarmist. I have been using Microsoft products since the DOS days, and remember how Lotus would mysteriously break upon a new release, but in the modern age, I see this happening less and less. The proof that is offered appears to be anecdotal, and/or is the far past, and/or is a circular argument where the proof is based on another article by the same person.

There is no proof, no even hint of proof, that Steam has been "made worse" so far. In fact, I could argue the opposite. As a gamer, I remember will when Steam was forced upon us. I managed to not install it until a game was exclusively offered on Steam, and was forced to make the plunge even though I did not want it. I went through the hassles of being forced to be online to play Steam single-player games, of debating what games to buy to avoid digital-only content where I really "owned" nothing, etc. My past self claims that Steam ruined my gaming experience further by giving me less - no ownership, no trades, no printed manual, no local backup media, etc.

Everyone and their mother is adopting proprietary digital content delivery and it is most definitely NOT in the customer's best interest. Each delivery method means open ports, proprietary back-end databases containing sensitive content (credit card numbers, etc.), and software running with elevated privs that could easily be misused, whether by design or mistake. GoG Galaxy, Steam, uPlay, Origin, Battle.net, et al. Running all these eats up system resources, puts the host computer at higher risk of exploitation, puts the user's private (and often financial) information at risk, and on top of all that, does not make it easy to access a game library as a whole.

Proprietary digital content delivery is not about the customer, it is about the company.

Given all this, Mr. Sweeney's core complaint seems to be with UWP specifically, which is, at least initially, something that seems to be relatively good for the customer - specifically, giving him/her games on more than one platform, often for a single purchase, and providing a single location from which to purchase games (a single library, if you will).

That being said, a game is just an application. Code is code - you can download and install it in a variety of ways. I have no doubt that Steam, uPlay, Galaxy, etc., will all adapt as the platform changes. In fact, I fully expect that proprietary delivery systems will hook into UWP, if it ends up living up to the hype. Think about it - I already own games in Steam that actually run uPlay so I can play them. Precedents already exist.

If I were to truly buy into Mr. Sweeney's hype, I would claim that all proprietary digital delivery is, in essence, a closed, vendor-locked-in "platform", and that what customers really deserve is a universal content delivery system that supports concepts of ownership, trading, selling, a single library, etc. Wait - customers DO really deserve all that.

I have 4GB of shared data on a shared everything plan. I got a call from Verizon months ago informing me that the price was going down. They asked if I wanted to pay the same price and go to a bigger data plan (6GB, I think), or if I wanted to save money and keep the 4GB plan. I opted to keep the 4GB plan.

Thus, my PERSONAL experience is that Verizon contacted me about the change.

Disclaimer: I work for Verizon, but at the time did not get the Verizon Wireless discount. I doubt this affected my treatment, but it is possible, I suppose.

First off, ignore everyone who recommends Microsoft Security Essentials and/or Windows Defender. Google why - it sucks, totally worthless.

Second, the person who recommended http://www.av-comparatives.org... is wise. Look over their reports over the past few years, as well as http://www.av-test.org/. You will see that Avira, AVG, and Avast are very good products (all free). Some are more bloated that others - I prefer Avast, personally.

NOD32 by Eset used to be known as have the least-impacting AV product - no popups, silent gamer mode, low CPU and disk utilization, etc. It is not free.

I only resort to HijackThis or MalwareBytes when helping someone who already has some form of malware/virus. Safe browsing habits and a decent AV product will protect you just fine.

AVG was it's own company, then got bought by Intel, IIRC.

The person who recommended SandBoxie is also wise. It is a great product to use when you want to browse a site you are unsure about. My biggest complaint about Avast is that is dislikes SandBoxie - to get it to configure settings that I am uncomfortable disabling, so I gave up on using SandBoxie.

I only looked at ClamWin years ago - it did not have an on-access component, it only did disk scans. If this is still true I do not recommend it. You want an on-access scanner that can protect you as soon it it is read or written.

For free, I recommend Avast. For money, Trend Micro and BitDefender always perform well, and I would consider ESET, too.