To the Napster (real, not pay-for) generation, such as my self, the peer-to-peer thing has always been enticing. That’s why I was so impressed when I stumbled upon CrashPlan last week. It immediately struck me as a great idea for backup. Peer to Peer backup really puts you in control of your data backup and potentially offers some features that the other online guys can’t. After looking into the topic a little more, I found that the idea has been tossed around by many students in academic papers and there are even a few additional software on the market for this – including Cucku.
Category:
Personal
Ok, its been months… I’m kind of bummed. I signed up for the Quicken Financial Life for Mac beta program back in February of 2008, shortly after AppleInsider’s first coverage of the product. While I’ve waited patiently and while I’ve signed up on the their beta signup for several time over the months that followed, Intuit has been completely mute about the beta. As a matter fact, they carefully hid the signup form for months and only within the last three have they really released any information about the product on their website. All the while, I’m wondering what about that beta signup?
On top of this, their last release – Quicken for Mac 2007 – hasn’t been aging gracefully. My biggest heartburn is the lack of import or transport for my years of data held in the grasp of Microsoft Money. I simply can’t find an alternative that meets my needs, and so I am desperately hoping that the ground-up rewrite of Quicken will do that… I’m not a serious number cruncher when it comes to my personal finance, but I want a couple things: 1) the ability to carry over all my prior transactions AND their categories and 2) the ability for the software to automatically download my transactions from my banks or credit card companies.
All the while that our Office programs have been growing more compatible with interchangable file formats, our money management software has us locked into their proprietary grips. Sure, there are QIF and other interchangable file formats, but we all know that the bulk of our data won’t move using those file formats. And, call me lazy, but I don’t want to go and re-do all the work that I have completed for years and years of transactions just to move into a new program. So, alas, I find no good MAC alternative for money management and I continue to use Microsoft Money in Windows in VMware Fusion on my Mac…
I have also examined the online alternatives, including Quicken’s free online tools, Yodlee, Mint and others. But those tie me down to my internet connection. I have more than once balanced my checkbook while whizzing down the highway……………. no, my wife was driving, not me, just for clarity sake. Anyways, enough rambling. I just wish I could find the solution… Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
One of the perks at my full-time employeer is the ability to do an employee computer purchase during the year. With just 15% down, the company will finance the rest of a computer and payroll deduct the remaining amount from your paycheck. In addition, they usually get pretty decent discount because of quantity with the various vendors.
After the offer of the computer purchase plan was made last year, several of us contacted our internal HR person who coordinates this and asked that she try and add Apple computers to the plan. Thanks to her hard work, we were able to get a Mac this year on the plan. I don’t think the response has been huge and I think my order was the first processed and to arrive, but there is a lot of interest.
Within my department, there is a fairly good following for Macs. I know we have two converts who are purchasing their first Mac this year through the employee plan. There are two more that are seriously considering it.
Yesterday, my MacBook Pro arrived and I got the call from our supply department to come and pick it up. I took it back in the help desk and it was like Christmas for all of us. Everyone got to look and watch me unwrap the power up the laptop for the first time. I have it at work again today… I just couldn’t bring myself to leave it at home. Poor thing doesn’t need to be left all alone!
But seriously, I’m liking it a lot. I ordered the base model MacBook Pro but customized it with 4GB of RAM. The dual video cards are a very cool concept and the ability to switch between them is great to conserve battery life. I, of course, switched to the performance setting instead so I’m running on the NVidia 9600M GT card right now and loving life. I really need to move my Photoshop and some other apps over to this laptop and seriously give the graphics card a workout.
Oh, and I’m sure its been noted elsewhere, but this MacBook Pro shipped with OS X version 10.5.5, which I don’t think has been released to the wild yet via software update. I though that was a little interesting.
Well, after a week of issues with the Parallels Desktop 4.0 upgrade, I trashed my VM that I have lovingly used for the past year and I have started over with a fresh import from the Virutal PC VHD file I keep on hand. See, here is my history with Windows virtualization on the Mac: I purchased a copy of Microsoft Office Professional for the Mac which included Virtual PC. When I got my first Intel Mac, I became a Parallels Desktop Beta user, then purchased the real thing when it was released. I’ve upgraded (paid upgrade, mind you) with each release since.
I apologize for slow updates on this blog. I feel like I got a false start on it and then left it hanging for a couple weeks. During that time, I’ve had some personal things going on that have taken much of my attention, but I’m going to be trying hard to post and keep this blog more updated.
In light of HP’s crap support yesterday, today I thought I’d relay something more positive towards a company I admire. This time its not Apple. Its USAA – the United States Automobile Association.
USAA is a bank/insurance/financial company which is a member’s only corporation serving active and former members of the armed forces and their families. Once you’re a member, you are a member for life and your children can inherit membership, along with their children and so on. My wife and I are members thanks to her grandfather Fischer, who served in the Air Force for many years.
Background aside, I can’t remember when I’ve been more impressed with a company. USAA is not only a financial company that really has great products to offer. I think there are lots of those companies out there. USAA just gets customer service. That is what makes this company so different.
