I recently started the process of converting my personal finances from Quicken to Moneydance. I have been using Quicken for at least ten years, not because I like the program, it’s just that it’s “what I’ve always used.” I decided it was time to apply some of my own consulting practices and take a look at my personal finance management situation as if I was a client, and ask myself “is this the best solution for my problem?” The answer was a resounding “no.”
Archive for the ‘Desktop Software’ CategorySoftware Review: Moneydance (Including a Rant Against Quicken)Friday, August 14th, 2009Software Review: Rubber Ducky System MonitorSaturday, August 1st, 2009Today I am reviewing a tiny, free, handy piece of software for end-users: Rubber Ducky System Monitor by MimarSinan International. The program is a tiny application which gives even a novice user a simple, easy to read display which tells them how busy their system is and identify potential problems. (more…) FOG – A Free Computer Cloning SolutionFriday, July 3rd, 2009Symantec Ghost is a useful application for what’s known as “imaging” or “cloning” computers. It allows you to copy a single computer’s hard drive contents to multiple machines at once so you have a base Windows install that’s exactly the same on all of the machines. The only difference is the uniquely identifying information about the machines (computer name, Hardware address, etc.). Recently one of our client’s Ghost subscriptions came up for renewal. While Ghost does what it’s designed to do well enough, we were wondering what other options there were out there in the world. Enter FOG. (more…) Microsoft Office 2007 Document CompatibilityFriday, June 19th, 2009If you’ve purchased Microsoft Office recently, you got version 2007 (unless you’re on a Macintosh). Office 2007 represents a “great leap forward” according to some (in Microsoft marketing), but from my perspective, it’s a lot of change, and a lot higher system requirements for not a lot of new, useful features. One of the “feature” of Office 2007 is the new document format. Like previous versions of office, this latest version uses a format that older versions cannot read. This makes perfect sense on two levels. The file format was made after the older versions were released, so they didn’t know about it, so they can’t read it. Also, from a sales perspective, it makes sense because if Alice runs Office 2007 and Bob runs Office 2003, Bob must then upgrade to Office 2007 to read Alice’s documents. Or must Bob? (more…)
You Can Never Have Too Much MemoryFriday, June 12th, 2009This will be a short post on the virtues of keeping your computer hardware current. Even today, I still see older computers which would be perfectly capable of doing their job, but because of a lack of enough memory, they grind along at a glacial pace, causing significant employee productivity loss. How can you tell if your machine could benefit from a memory upgrade? First off, if you hear your computer’s hard drive running hard, or see the hard drive indicator light on a lot, particularly if you have multiple applications running, that’s a good sign. Another is to use the Task Manager, a utility included with all versions of Windows, to see how much memory your computer is using. The best time to do this is to during the middle of your work day, when you have the most applications running. In Windows, simply press Ctrl-Shift-Esc and you should see something like the image to the right. Pay attention to the “Available” number under “Physical Memory.” If this number is lower than, say, 256,000, your machine could probably benefit from a memory upgrade. Techspeak alert! Note that if you have a standard, 32-bit version of Windows (2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, or 7), the maximum memory that your system can use is 4GB, minus the amount of memory used by your video card. So if you have a fancy video card for gaming or CAD or some other applicaiton which requires a high-end card, however much memory is on that card counts against the total amount in your system. If you find that you need more than 4GB of memory in your system, then you need to run a 64-bit version of Windows to use it, otherwise your computer will simply see 4GB as the maximum available, unless your computer supports Address Window Extensions to do some backflips to allow it to see more than 4GB of memory.
Using Microsoft Outlook to Access Other Users’ MailboxesFriday, June 12th, 2009If you have a Microsoft Exchange server at your business, Microsoft Outlook has the ability to access more than one mailbox at a time. This is a useful feature if multiple users need to share access to the same email address, or if someone needs to cover another person’s email (when an auto-responder won’t suffice) while on vacation. (more…) So, How Do I Drop Those Administrative Rights, Anyway?Friday, May 22nd, 2009If you’ve read my previous post on why administrative rights over your computer are a bad thing and you are motivated to do something about it, you might ask “just how do I go about dropping these rights to make my system more stable and less prone to malware?” (more…) Why You Do NOT Want Administrative Rights on Your ComputerThursday, May 14th, 2009This is almost always a hot button with some users. One of the absolutely most effective ways to shield yourself from viruses and spyware is to not log on to your computer as an administrator. As soon as I say this, I usually encounter some resistance, because users think that giving up admin rights equates to giving up power. In a way, you are, but for decades I’ve likened full admin rights on a computer to walking around with a loaded gun that might go off at any minute, and pointing it at people (including yourself). I have seen plenty of damage done by users who thought they needed (or just wanted) administrative rights over machines, and in truth, they did not. (more…) Why We Recommend Foxit Reader Instead of Adobe Reader for PDFsWednesday, April 29th, 2009This is an excerpt from an email we sent out to several clients last month, but remains as good advice for many others as well.
Microsoft Disables AutorunWednesday, April 29th, 2009In this blog post today (and one yesterday), Microsoft announced that they will be disabling AutoRun. (more…) |
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