The trouble with NERO, after Nero 6, is that they added in Nero Scout and all sorts of security things to make Windows VISTA happy. Nero Scout, even if you custom install and tell it NOT to install, still installs anyway. It is an indexing program, something to do with all of the home theater applications that so many computers are coming up with. Nero seems to feel this is necessary to be an active player in the multi-media world of computers, downloading, and devices integrated into home theater use, but it slows down many other applications and is more annoying that useful.

I finally uninstalled my Nero 8 and went back to an old copy of Nero 6, where it either isn't present or doesn't present the slowdown problems that the others do. And Nero Scout is pernicious, it buries itself in lots of little places so it can be triggered from numerous applications. If you uninstall it, you also need to do a search and dig it out of all sorts of other places.

Shield your eyes if you don't approve of burning a backup copy of your DVDs: Newer versions of Nero (7 and above) won't play nicely with DVD Shrink. Anything you burn using Shrink will only play on your computer, it won't play on any other DVD devices, like the stand-alone player in your living room. If you are inclined to send a copy of your favorite DVD with your daughter to college so she can show this great movie to her friends, and if it is lost in the mess of her bedroom it isn't a total loss, then you need to use Nero 6 or earlier.

SRS