Marc's Musings Reality from Marc's point of view!

After a few exchanges with the Intuit folks (see the comments here) here is what they finally had to say on this matter:

Recently you requested assistance from Quicken Customer Care. Below is a summary of your request and our response. We are committed to resolving this issue to your complete satisfaction.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

Subject
Need to revert back to R5 from R7 release

Discussion Thread
Response (Shivani)    02/25/2010 01:10 AM
Dear Marc Bourassa,

Thank you for contacting Quicken Customer Care.

I can completely understand your concern.

Marc, I would like to inform that issue will resolve in next few weeks. You can visit the link given below to know more about:

http://quicken.intuit.com/support/articles/using-quicken/income-and-expenses/7733.html

You cannot revert back to R5.

I hope this clarifies.

I had found the link above on my own a couple of days ago and am waiting for them to fix the issue. In the meantime I’m keeping updates turned off and I will be ignoring future update reminders (when this issue has been dealt with) for a week or so to ensure that they don’t cock things up for me again.

Posted under Tech Stuff

Nearly 6 years ago (March of 2004) I paid $210 for my HP Laserjet 1012 Printer. When I did so, I took a look at the cost to replace the toner cartridge in it and saw that it would run me about $80 per cartridge.

Given that the cost for just black and white inkjet cartridges at the time was between $8 and $14 (depending where you shopped and if you bought in bulk) I decided that the LaserJet was worth the gamble.

My needs were:

• Black and White only is sufficient.
  • Printing Color photographs is ridiculously expensive, they have a tendency to fade quickly (aren’t “fixed” properly as they are in a proper photographic process)
  • While pretty, color maps and printouts are not necessary for my personal use
  • Any of the above that I need can be done for pennies a page by putting them on a thumb drive or emailing to a local Kinkos or CVS.
• Need a printer that can tolerate relatively long periods between printing (maybe even a few weeks)
  • I found that inkjet cartridges tend to gum up if left inactive for any length of time, ruining the first page or so.
• Would like what I *do* print to be of high fidelity
  • I did not like the propensity for inkjet printers to pick up some dust or to have a jet malfunction and have a smear or a blank spot through the entire print job.
• To be cost-effective
  • When inkjet cartridges are reporting themselves to be empty you can ALWAYS feel that they have more ink remaning in them
  • If you have a combo-inkjet where all the colors are in a single cartridge you need to throw a lot of good ink away in the remaining cartridge cells just because one of them is empty (at least reported empty)

Here I am, February of 2010 and I still have not had to replace my original toner cartridge. I have printed literally hundreds and hundreds of pages  – I really wasn’t keeping count of how many reams of paper I’ve put through that little printer – and I’ve never had so much as a smeared page. I’ve not even had to tap the toner cartridge to loosen up any leftover toner or whatever tricks may be necessary to eek out those last few printed pages if I do not have easy access to a replacement when it finally does empty out.

If / when it comes time to replace this printer, I’ll be looking to the same technology again. Inkjet technology has likely come a long way since 2004, but I don’t see that it will ever hold a candle to the laser technology or whatever tech eventually supersedes laser.

This is easily one of the most satisfying and worthwhile purchases I have ever made in the computer sphere.

Posted under Opinions, Tech Stuff

Just allowed Quicken to go ahead and apply an update bringing it from R5 to R7 and have found that my registers now no longer have a “balance” column.

To be more precise, the column is still there but it is blank. No title, no content.

At first I thought maybe the balances were off the screen so I restarted Quicken and tried running in full screen but neither inspiration worked.

I then tried to use the “pop out registers” option thinking that maybe the different approach to rendering them may help but that also did not correct things.

I’ll send an email to Quicken and see if they have any ideas.

But just a warning, if you use Quicken 2010 Deluxe, you probably want to put off applying the latest update until this issue has been resolved.

Posted under Tech Stuff

OK, let’s try this again. My last computer purchase attempt fell through when, after I had waited a couple of weeks already, they let me know that there was going to be further delay on the box. I took a look around and checked with my boss who was very pleased with his custom built machine and, after checking them out online (in spite of the B+ rating at the BBB), I decided to go ahead with Cyberpower.

This system will be about $500 cheaper and one gpu shorter than my last attempt. But I think I’ve got a stronger system overall. I did a *lot* of research on the motherboard, power supply, memory and overclocking aspects and feel comfortable that I’ve put together a machine that not only kicks butt now, but will be solidly satisfying 3-5 years into the future.

CyberPower X58 Same Day (NO MONITOR) SAMEDAYI7Z, http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X58_Same_Day/

• *BASE_PRICE: [+1155]
• BUNDLE: None
• BLUETOOTH: None
• CD: LG 22X DVD±/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive (BLACK COLOR)
• CD2: None
• CAS: * AZZA Solano 1000 Full-Tower Advance Cooling Case w/ Dual 230mm Fan + Extra 3 Fans [+60]
• CASUPGRADE: None
• CS_FAN: Default case fans
• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
• FAN: Asetek LCLC 240 Liquid Cooling system w/ 240MM Radiator and Dual Fans (Extreme Overclocking Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) [+79]
• FREEBIE_RM: None
• FA_HDD: None
• FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer [+10] (BLACK COLOR)
• FLOPPY: None
• HDD: Extreme Performance with Data Security (RAID-0+1) with 4 Identical Hard Drives [+119] (1TB (500GBx4) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD [+52])
• HDD2: None
• IEEE_CARD: None
• KEYBOARD: Xtreme Gear (Black Color) Multimedia/Internet USB Keyboard
• MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
• MODEM: None
• MULTIVIEW: Non-SLI/Non-CrossFireX Mode Supports Multiple Monitors
• MONITOR: None
• MONITOR2: None
• MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD7 Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 24 Phase Power ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Dobly Audio, Dual GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI [+215]
• MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+209] (Corsair Dominator [+143])
• NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
• OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more) [+49]
• OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional [+31] (64-bit Edition)
• POWERSUPPLY: 750 Watts Power Supplies [+143] (Thermaltake ToughPower 750W – Quad SLI Ready)
• PRINTER: None
• PRINTER_CABLE: None
• RUSH: RUSH!!! READY TO SHIP IN NEXT BUSINESS DAY
• SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
• SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
• SPEAKERS: None
• TEMP: None
• TVRC: None
• USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
• USBHD: None
• USBX: None
• VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 5870 PCI-E 16X 1GB DDR5 Video Card [DirectX 11 Support] [+330] (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
• VIDEO2: None
• VIDEO3: None
• VC_PHYSX: None

I just got an email (and phone call!) today that the Corsair memory that I spec’ed is on backorder and they suggested that I could go with the Kingston X memory for $10 less. But I’m going to have this for a while and the Corsair seems to be more highly regarded for overclocked applications so I need to follow up with them to see what kind of delay this will introduce.

Posted under Tech Stuff

Is it a side-effect of the new Google “Buzz” that messages that I review and delete on my BlackBerry in my gmail account are now remaining in my inbox and, when I open them, have only:

1 deleted message in this conversation. View message or delete forever.

in them?

Definitely puts a cramp in my ability to work my inbox, especially since you can’t tell from the inbox (i.e. before you open the message) that this is the situation.

I haven’t tried this with the gmail for BlackBerry app, but rather my IMAP connectivity to my gmail inbox.

Anybody else notice this this morning?

Posted under Tech Stuff

I have been playing with this software for a while now. But I have found no channels for sending them feedback. So today I left the following comment in their blog post regarding their upcoming 2.0 release:

I don’t see any way to find what new features will be released with the newer version.

There does not seem to be any way to send you feedback on the product? I’ve been through the website a couple of times. Am I just missing your feedback arena?

It has excellent potential but major shortcomings:

- Need to be able to shut it up (the same way I can get my ringer to be silent by hitting the volume key) for situations where it starts reading a message and I’m focused on something else. Or if I leave the status announcement on. I’ve had it interrupt conversations in stores announcing that it’s figured out that I’m not driving anymore. This would be fine if I could just shut it up for that one announcement.

- Need to be able to discriminate between messages. I’d like to have the option to ONLY read Level 1 email messages and all texts. If you want to create a separate filter system or allow more granular discrimination, that would be great too. Allowing profiles to control this would make sense.

- Licensing is unclear – It implies that purchase applies only for life of device. Most products you pay one fee for all minor version upgrades regardless of devices. I’m a BES admin and go through devices rather too frequently to have to re-purchase all my software on a per device basis.

- Would be nice if it could parse canonicalized names and just read out the common name for folks on a corporate BES.

- Would be nice if there could be option where it won’t read non words (those with numbers? Those in blacklist?). I receive plenty of important automated notifications and would love to not have to listen to the Lotus Notes generated monitor numbers – they take a while to read out.

I think there is tremendous potential for the product but I also need it to be a bit more friendly to my needs before I invest in it.

Thanks!

Marc

Posted under Tech Stuff

I’ve been chafing for a little while now to upgrade my machine to 64 bit and to take advantage of the new Windows 7 64-bit operating system.

I’ve used Vista for a couple of years and really had no complaints. Once I had the UAC disabled (took all of about 15 minutes before I tired of its intrusive confirmations) the OS was pretty solid and didn’t present me with the pains that I’ve heard described by other folks. Of course I also wasn’t trying to use it in a corporate environment.

I had some particular requirements in looking for my new box. Alienware nudged out the competition by offering a factory overclocked i7-920 cpu. They also had a deal where I was able to get the 2nd video card for no extra cost.

I thought about saving some money and putting together the computer myself with individually purchased parts but the price tag for those was going to be about 75% of the cost of having the machine assembled, tested and warranteed. I figured I’d have spent quite a few hours exchanging things that were the wrong shape or that my limited understanding of todays components led me to spec incorrectly not to mention the prospect of various dud components what I would need to troubleshoot to ensure that it wasn’t a configuration issue on my part.

No, the additional cost of having them make it for me will be money well spent.

Here’s what I’ll be picking up if you’re interested:

BASE,PHOBOS,ANW-DT,AREA 51
Overclocked Intel Core i7 920 (3.2GHz, 8MB Cache)
12GB Triple Channel 1333MHz DDR3
No Keyboard
No Monitor
Dual ATI Radeon HD 5770, 1GB GDDR5
1.2TB RAID 0 (2x 640GB SATA-II, 7,200 RPM, 16MB Cache HDDs)
Cosmic Black, Alienware Area-51 Chassis, 1KW PSU
19-in-1 Media Card Reader
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Alienware Optical Mouse, MG100
AlienFX Color, Plasma Purple
24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW)
Alienhead Glow
Alienware High-Performance Liquid Cooling

Posted under Tech Stuff