Today's Tips

Hello all. How is everyone today?

I've been thinking recently about home networking. I would bet that almost everybody is using wireless networking. Sure, it's easy, quick and mostly painless. No wires, no electrician, right? Just configure a few things and you're off and running!

Wait a minute though. The Netgear Power Line networking adapters are much faster than wireless. You can have up to 15 devices (don't quote me) on a network. With the advent of streaming video and home servers, it may be better to look into using power line network devices instead of wireless. Sure you can have wireless co-exist with power line. You can hook up your laptop quickly and use your network connection. But for faster media sharing over the network it the desired order would be: First and foremost, Cat 5 or 6 network wiring. That is the fastest beside fiber optic cable. Next would be the Netgear 200mbps power line adapters, then wireless. Keep in mind that most older PC's have 10/100 network "cards" on their motherboards. More recent PC's have Gigabit (10/100/1000) capabillities. So a newer PC could take advantage of the 200mbps powerline network adapters.

Give it some thought.

Peace,

Dave

http://www.davepickel.com/

Quicken Philosophy

I wanted to make a comment here on Quicken. I've been using it for over 15 years. The first version of Quicken I bought was a DOS version. There were no windows versions at that time.

Here's the thing. I have always run Quicken independently of everything. I mean that I don't use the download feature with a few exceptions. With my checking and savings accounts I do my entries manually and then reconcile them at the end of the period with the statements. I find that this is the best way to handle the accounts. I reduce the risk of accidentally over-drawing my checking account. And it serves as a double check with my financial institutions.

I had a client recently who insisted that he was too busy to run his finances that way. And indeed he was. But, I still recommended it. We wasted no less than four months trying to get a bug solved in Quicken with NO success. We were on several conference calls with Intuit support and no resolution. To this day there is no resolution. The problem was with Washington Mutual and Bank of America accounts. And finally after many calls, Intuit support (foreigners in India) insisted that it was the institutions' problems.

I disagreed with that. But since I didn't write the program, I cannot get in and fix the source code. So I will insist that all my customers who use Quicken use it as I direct them. It's more work but it provides a good cross check to your institutions and is independent of any download problems.

The exception to this is if you have IRA's, stocks, etc. These transactions may become complex and difficult to enter and reconcile. My client has an extensive portfolio with Fidelity Investments. And to their credit, Fidelity was performing accurate downloads. This allowed my client to track the dismal performance of his portfolio (but that's another subject all together).

And so, I stick with what I said. I will train you to run Quicken independently of downloads for the most part. And it will run and you will be pleased with the outcome.

Peace!

Dave

Visit my website at http://www.davepickel.com

Windows Vista - The next time around

Microsoft is apparently trying to re-promote Vista. They recently tried an experiment called "Mojave". The deal was they presented a "new" operating system to unknowing users, calling it a beta version of the successor to Vista (Mojave).

The trial users were very impressed. What they did not know is the operating system was Vista with all the updates and service pack. It apparently has improved that much. Microsoft has also updated drivers so the printers that once didn't work, now DO work.

Maybe Vista is ready for another look. You'll have to look anyway because XP is no longer available on newly purchased PC's.

More later.

Peace,

Dave

http://www.davepickel.com