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

Radio Program

Soon we will resume our weekly radio broadcast on Blog Talk Radio. We had suspended these broadcasts while working for our "employer". We will most likely resume Sunday Morning Broadcasting. I will write a post in the blog here saying when our first broadcast will be.

Peace,

Dave

Services

I provide the following services:

-Wireless/Wired home network troubleshooting
-Wireless Home network installation
-Training on popular home and business applications
-Home network design

Active Seniors Welcome.

Call 732-568-4943

Windows Home Server & More..

I ended up taking the WHS machine back. I could not justify keeping it. I think I need a combination of a "server" and a media machine. And I did not see that in the HP WHS Machine.

Also, I have had some medical things going on lately that prevented me from delving deeper into the home server concept. I did do some work on VPN with mixed results. I tried the Linksys Gigabit wireless N VPN router. It was a disaster. Got two of them and neither one worked. I spent a number of hours on the phone with linksys support and no luck. Returned them and got a refund. I tried using the Windows VPN and it actually worked (but not every time!).

The medical things were cataracts. I had surgery on both eyes and now I can see great! While I had only one eye worked on, I could see how bad my vision had become. But it's all better now, so I can get back into my PC stuff.

All for now. Happy Computing.
Dave

Windows Home Server (continued)

OK so recently I bought an HP Mediasmart Home server (EX 470). This is the one that has 500GB of disk space on one disk. It hast 3 drive bays empty so you can expand storage.

Some observations:

-You cannot schedule individual backups for PC's. The backup program handles all the scheduling. So you can't specify that PC A backs up at 10:00am and PC B backups up at 2pm. Don't work that way.

-Although you can't use remote desktop to get into XP Home or Vista Home Premium, you can use remote desktop connections to get into the server. Once there you get numerous warnings that anything you do can "break" Windows Home Server, and you'd be better off to use the Windows Home Server console.

-During setup I could not change the workgroup. I had to remote in and do it through the computer properties. Once that was changed I got all my pc's and the server into the same workgroup.

That's about it. I am deciding whether or not to keep the server. I could return it in 30 days.