Maybe I’m late to the party, but I found that my Quicken Financial Life beta build had expired. Unfortunately, there is also no newer build to download. So, no more testing of that software. But I’m not crying.
Home Tech
I’ve been a loyal Microsoft Money user since 2004 – well, maybe 2003. My transaction logs go back to mid-2004, but I think I decided to start over with a new data file in 2004. I’d played with MS Money since 2003 sometime, but I seriously approached it in 2004. Yesterday, I learned, Microsoft will be killing the product. It will no longer be for sale at the end of this month and automatic services for the product will go dark in two years.
Microsoft Money was the one product that I haven’t found a suitable alternative for on the Mac. And having years of data in its proprietary format doesn’t help, either. Really, there are great Mac software options, including Quicken for Mac (maybe Quicken Financial Life sometime soon), Moneywell or Moneydance.
Its been a couple weeks now since I’ve written a Mozy backup status update. We have progressed quite a ways in the backup process. I have interrupted the backups almost every evening once I get home because it was saturating my upstream connection and degrading my internet performance while I was trying to use it. So, that hasn’t helped my speed issues. But that does bring one point which Backblaze includes in their software – bandwidth throttling. That would be a nice feature to keep the client software from saturating your full upstream or downstream connection.
Beyond that, the backup is progressing nicely. I have less than 10GB of data left to be processed and uploaded. I think that we will be complete by the end of next week, if not sooner.
Since some data is now online, I am able to see the restore features of the Mozy website. As somone from Online Backup Reviews commented earlier, Mozy has added the feature of getting your data (snail) mailed to you in the event of a disaster. The rates are significantly better than Backblaze’s simliar service.
I let my Backblaze trial account lapse. I haven’t done much more with that software, but I genuinely liked the service and the yearly cost. I didn’t like the offline restore cost, though, and that kept me from subscribing. I thought those prices were very high ($99 for DVD?). I may sign up for a trial of another vendor just to see what the experience and software is like. More updates soon.
So, its been exactly a week since I started my Mozy backup. I have now progressed to completion of approximately 20GB of my data backed up. My iMac froze (yes, it does happen…) one day and I had to restart it when I got home from work, but the backup kicked off again. So, 20GB in a week isn’t that bad. But I’m impatient. I can’t help thinking how much fast this would be on Bluewave (my company’s fiber to the home product). I’d have a much faster upstream. That brings me back to my point in the last post – the biggest hurdle to online backup is upstream on home Internet connections. But, that’s where we are today. I’ll be following up later on this.
Since posting about Backblaze, I got some very good comments about Mozy. They have also not been sitting idle and they’ve added a few features to the service. One of those new feature is the ability to get your restore on external media shipped to you, a key differentiator to Backblaze, I said earlier. The price of a similar service was Backblaze was a little costly, I thought, so Mozy’s options are a much better approach. More on that soon.
So, I setup my iMac at home to use my Mozy account. I had signed up for full service a long time ago, but I have to admit, I was too impatient to let the initial backup complete. So, this time, I made a consious effort to backup only the data that I knew I didn’t want to lose and leave away things like the system files and applications which I knew that I could replace easily. That brought my data total to about 60GB to backup on my intial.
There was a time when I was the first on the block to try everything new that came out. Those times have long since past and family and other priorities have taken over. But this weekend, I was able to try Google Gears and finally understood the value of the service. Over the years, I’ve become a big believer in many of Google’s services. They are my primary search in all my browsers, I’m loyal to my GMail (more on that), and I’ve embraced Google Docs, much to the point that I don’t even have Microsoft Office installed on any of my Macs anymore. I must confess, though, that I do have iWork installed, though, for some of the more creative things – like family newsletters.
When Google Gears first appeared, I asked myself, why’d anybody want that? What does it buy you? See, I can’t imagine the world without Internet – its always close by for me, but not everyone is that way. I can’t say I really understood fully until this weekend. My wife and I have been discussing building a house and so all our spreadsheets with potential scenarios are in Google Docs, so we can share (talk about its killer feature, right?). Well, sharing is great, but we hadn’t had time to talk about some of the scenarios I’d put together. See, I am the geeky numbers one in the family and my wife confessed she really didn’t understand what she was looking at… So, we had an hour’s car ride Saturday while traveling to go see the circus with our daughter. Enter Gears.
About 1:59pm today, I finally received my invitation to the Quicken Finanical Life beta program. The software is currently downloading in the background and I anticipate installing it and giving it a test drive here shortly.
Update:
There is a confidentiality agreement for testers, so I won’t be providing any details, but I will be playing. Good luck to others and I hope you’ve received your acceptance, also.
The much hyped T-Mobile G1 handset will hit the market next month, but its in my eyes, it has a major obstacle to overcome – the overwhelming lack of a 3G network to operate on. Many site AT&T’s 3G coverage (or lack) as a weakness with the iPhone 3G models, but T-Mobile’s 3G network coverage is abysmal. It looks like parts of Texas, New England, Atlanta and spots of California are the only lucky 3G coverage in T-Mobile’s network from examining their coverage map.
Saw a lot of media coverage about T-Mobile’s introduction of the G1 handset. I’ve watched several demos and I’m not really sure what I think of the handset yet. Its certainly not got the wow factor that I had after seeing the introduction of the iPhone. Maybe the missing piece was the Steve’s reality distortion field.
The software looks compelling in the demos that I have seen, but lacks the polish of the iPhone. Google has done a good job creating a platform, though I’ve seen some outstanding UI concepts that are not integrated into this particular handset. What seems to be lacking is the cohesiveness that makes the iPhone great. The UI looks a little disjointed with the main menu which scrolls in and then the ability to dock widgets and app icons on the “desktop.” I really don’t know what else to call it – home screen maybe.
Surprisingly, the capacity of the G1 is very minimal – sitting at only 1Gb of storage. That is a major limiting factor, but reflects the fact that the G1 isn’t an all-in-one, convergence device. Its just a smart phone with internet. That is the iPhone’s biggest competative advantage, but then I don’t think we’re seeing Google squaring off the device against Apple. Apple has turned out to be a great partner which showcases many of Google’s online products within the iPhone, so the G1 isn’t going head to head with the iPod capabilities of the iPhone for sure.
AppleInsider has a great piece about the differences and goes much more into depth comparing the devices – worth a read for sure…
Both Microsoft and Apple have press events scheduled for 9/9/08. Apple’s event, titled “Let’s Rock”, should usher in a new refresh of the iPod/iTunes franchise. For a few quarters now, the iPods sales numbers have been down as I think the market has reached maturity for portable music players. Fortunately, Apple released the iPhone at the exact right time to offset the lack of growth. So, what can we expect to see from Apple?
- iPod Nano – Leaks seem to point to a new size for the Nano – back towards the original candy-bar style and away from the short, squatty version we know today. Of course, that is based on accessory vendor leaks which show the dimensions of the 4th-generation accessories.
- iPod Touch – While the iPhone has gotten a nice 3G refresh, the iPod Touches have sat largely the same as when first introduced. I think we’ll see a slightly more beveled, maybe slimmer Touch with this next refresh. I think it’d be surprising to find any new hardware inside, though I think adding the GPS would be a great idea. Unfortunately, the GPS in the iPhone is only an assisted GPS, which I believe requires an internet connection, so, probably won’t happen.
- iTunes 8 – Everyone is suggesting a new version of iTunes. Kevin Rose is reporting a grouping technology which will build playlists automatically by matching songs that go together. It be surprising if HD video didn’t make it into iTunes also, since its currently restricted only to the Apple TV
- Apple TV – And speaking of Apple TV, let me go out on a limb and say that the lovely little TV box will see some sort of refresh too. I, personally, love the Apple TV. I really think its the litchpin to Apple’s video market from iTunes. No one else in the market seems to be focusing much energy or garnering much success from it, but Apple’s ecosystem works well for me. Still, a better compression algorithm could go big lengths to improving download times for TV shows and especially movies. Maybe we’ll even see a true Apple “TV” – with the technology integrated into a widescreen television. I think it would be a mis-step for Apple to enter the crowded TV set market, so lets hope they don’t go the way of Gateway, HP and Dell’s failed TV’s.
- New MacBooks? – With an event called “Let’s Rock”, I think its unlikely we’ll see new Mac hardware from this event. I think we’ll be waiting to January’s MacWorld to see new hardware, but the last few year’s MacWorld hasn’t ushered in much new hardware either… so we’ll see….