When AVG’s Anti-Virus Free Edition 9.0 didn’t make the cut of our AV roundup in May, a football stadium full of readers let us know of the injustice. We’re not really surprised by this, considering that AVG was once the hands-down favorite among free virus scanners. At one time heralded for both its excellent detection rate and small footprint, AVG has since fallen out of favor somewhat, partly because of its perceived bloat, but also because competitors’ AV products have stepped up their game. So where does that leave AVG today?

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Flip’s SlideHD reminds us of Rocky Balboa. Unfortunately, not the Rocky Balboa of the original Rocky or even Rocky II. Instead, we’re thinking of Rocky III, where The Champ comes in out of shape and loses to, of all people, Mr. T.

What else would you think after picking up Cisco’s Flip SlideHD? Unlike the Flip MinoHD 8GB, which is truly svelte, the SlideHD feels chunky.

You can thank the camera’s “slide” feature for much of the chunk. Unlike previous Flips that have a tiny two-inch screen integrated in the back, the back of the Flip SlideHD sports a much larger three-inch touch screen that flips open and sits at a 45-degree angle to the rest of the unit for video playback.

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Could any component in a router’s BOM (bill of materials) cost less than an LED? Don’t think so. So why the heck did Belkin design its Play Max wireless router to use a single LED to inform you of its operating status?

Granted, the Play Max’s street price is $20 to $30 cheaper than many other concurrent dual-band wireless routers, and there might even be a lot of folks who don’t pay much attention to details like the status of their router’s ports or whether or not both of the router’s radios are operating. We do though, and a single LED that glows green when the router has an Internet connection and amber if something is amiss doesn’t cut it.

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More often than not, a monolithic public corporation acquiring a small independent company ends up stifling innovation, sacrificing quality for quantity, and inexorably suffocating the golden goose. Happily, that scenario never played out when Logitech bought Slim Devices. While we don’t have any insight as to what’s gone on behind the scenes, we can tell you that the Touch—the fourth addition to the Squeezebox family of digital audio receivers under Logitech’s reign—is utterly fabulous.

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