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By Walter, July 20, 2009 10:41 pm

On June 10, 2009, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue sales of Microsoft Money after June 30, 2009. And they did.

The latest version of the software, Microsoft Money Plus, was released in August, 2007, and after such a long time I should have known trouble was in the air.

As a user of Money for well over a decade, I was disappointed to hear the news.  I have never been a fan of the only other (or so I thought) real alternative – Quicken. Not that it’s not a good piece of software. It just never felt right to me.

Truth be told, over the last few years (from about the 2005 version), my wife and I felt like Money started going in the wrong direction. A lot of the automated, streamlined functionality they added either didn’t feel right or just didn’t work.

However, our story at least has a happy ending. I finally decided to give the online money manager Mint.com a try. And we have become converts.

Three things kept me from trying out Mint.com sooner. The first was inertia. We had so many years of using Money to overcome.

More importantly, though, was that I wasn’t sure I was comfortable putting my finances online. But the security features at Mint.com are reassuring. To name the big two for me:

• You register anonymously.  Just an e-mail address, password and zip code. They don’t require a name or other personally identifiable info.
• You cannot move money. It’s a read-only service. You can view your balances, registers, statements, and other information, but you cannot make transfers.

The final problem I had to overcome was that I just wasn’t sure an online service would give me the same level of control I had with a stand-alone application like Money. As it turns out, I not only don’t miss those features (things like bill reminders and debt planners), but I’m now kind of relieved they are gone. Less to worry about.

I’ll post a bigger review of Mint.com after we’ve used it for a while, but for now here are a few things that really impressed us:

• Setup was ridiculously easy. I gave Mint.com the credentials to log on to my accounts. That was it, really.
• Categories work. Mint.com has some really good algorithms in place for automatically assigning categories to transactions. In Money and Quicken, you have to spend a lot of time going through transactions and making sure that it categorized them properly. Most of the time, those programs don’t get them right. Mint.com does. It also gets the vendor names right, so instead of having to go in every time and change, say, “****DEBIT: xxx…” to the name of the vendor, it just happens. These features alone make it worthwhile. We save so much time every day not having to do these things ourselves.
• It’s beautiful. And simple. And intuitive. We find everything about the site just relaxing. That’s a nice change of pace from the glare of Money and Quicken. From the color scheme to the style and placement of buttons, Mint.com has a calming influence. That’s nice when you’re dealing with your money. The design is well-thought out. When we’re looking at something and want more information or to change a setting, the link is usually right there waiting for us. No more hunting around.
• We’re not tied to using one computer. I can check things out from my computer, my wife from hers. We can check on things when we’re out of town, or at work. That’s nice.
• There’s an iPhone app. I know. There’s an iPhone app for everything. But it is really handy being able to check out your balances when you’re out shopping without having to worry about how your bank’s Web site will load in your mobile browser.
• Budgeting is simple. The budgeting tool is not as feature-laden as the tools in Money or Quicken. But for us, that means we’re more likely to actually use it.

Oh yeah. And at least for now, it’s free. So do yourself a favor and check it out. You can learn a lot by watching this great demo of the site given by CEO Aaron Patzer.

Stay tuned for more thoughts as we actually put it through its paces.

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By Walter, December 10, 2008 6:16 pm

As you’ve probably heard by now, Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta is now publically available for testing. It promises better power usage, reduced resource consumption in Sidebar gadgets, Windows Search 4, the ability to burn data to Blu-Ray disks, several other features, and numerous security fixes and updates.

You can see a full list of those updates on Microsoft Technet.

After testing basic compatibility and stability in a safe environment (my notebook), I decided to go for it and just do the install on my primary work machine. Obviously, I made sure I had a good backup first and I recommend you do the same.

The short version: installation was a breeze and so far, not a hitch.

I’ll be doing some performance testing over the next few days and will report back on that. In the meantime, here are the basics and some initial thoughts.

Installing

You can download Vista SP2 Beta 1 from the Microsoft Download site. You can also download the Windows Update Experience Kit, which provides the instructions and scripts necessary to install SP2 through Windows Update.

You do need to have Service Pack 1 installed before installing the SP2 beta. I’m hoping that the final version will include SP1. In the meantime, if you have not yet installed SP1, you can install it through Windows Update or download the standalone SP1 update for 32-bit or 64-bit.

The installation of SP2 is straightforward. It creates a System Restore Point, copies files, and asks you to restart. My installation was quick – about 25 minutes. Your mileage may vary.

Experience

As most of the changes in SP2 are under the hood, you won’t see a lot of difference right off the bat. After using it for a couple of days, I did notice that the wireless connection on my notebook seems more solid. Occasionally, I’ve had to reset the wireless adapter under SP1, but not yet with SP2.

All of my software and hardware that worked under SP1 work just fine under SP2. My software list includes (at least the big stuff):

• Office 2007 Enterprise
• Adobe Creative Suite 3
• Windows Live 3 Beta
• Roxio Creator 2009
• Firefox 3.1 beta
• IE 8 beta 2
• Ultramon
• Tivo Desktop
• Picasa 3
• iTunes 8.02
• VMWare Workstation 6.5

I’ll let you know more as the days wear on.

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By Walter, December 19, 2006 12:02 am

I picked up a couple of the SanDisk Cruzer 2GB U3 Titanium USB drives today because I found them for $50 each after an instant rebate at Costco. I’ve been needing to upgrade from my old 512 MB drive for some time anyway. The drive itself is beautiful – a brushed silver look with a thumb slide to extend the drive, so no more caps to lose.

Getting it installed on Windows Vista (RTM) was a little tricky, though. For those that don’t know, U3 is a system added onto these drives that lets you install applications (such as email and Web browser) on the drive and then run them from any computer you plug it into – in essence, carrying around your important apps with you. Sounds pretty cool in concept. The drives are formatted in two partitions – one a small partition that Windows sees as a CD-ROM drive and a larger partition that Windows sees as a USB drive.

Unfortunately, Windows Vista does not recognize U3 and cannot install the drivers for the smaller partition. You also cannot remove U3 without first having the drive recognized by Windows. So, I took it over to my Windows XP machine. On Windows XP, the drivers installed just fine. After playing with U3 a bit, I decided there were a few reasons I just didn’t care to have it:

• No Vista support yet.
• It loads up on any machine you insert the drive onto and putting it on a friend’s or coworker’s machine can make them (rightly) feel a little nervous about the extra menus that pop up.
• While the technology is cool, I just really didn’t have the need for it.

Getting rid of it proved tricky, though. You can’t just reformat or repartition the drive. You have to use an uninstall program. The U3 interface has an uninstall feature built in, but it didn’t work for me. When I tried to use it, it just told me there was no drive connected. I downloaded the uninstall program from SanDisk, but it turned out to be the same program and also could not recognize the drive to do the uninstall. Of course, the drive was there and working just fine. The only program that couldn’t see it was the uninstaller.

Seems a lot of people have similar problems getting rid of the U3 software, though, because U3 has created a U3 Uninstall Web site that lets you remove U3 from any drive that has it installed. After telling the site a couple of times that I was really, really sure I didn’t want their amazingly useful software, it finally let me reformat the drive to work as a simple USB drive. One catch, though. Once you remove U3 from your drive, you cannot reinstall it.

When I plugged the drive back in on the Vista machine, Vista recognized it right away.

Now, what I like about the drive itself (and that’s pretty much everything but the U3 software):

• It looks great, as I mentioned.
• It has a retractable key.
• It’s extremely strong – rated to withstand 2,000 lbs of pressure.
• It is blazingly fast.

I plan to use one of them to test out Vista’s new ReadyBoost feature, so when I get around to that, I’ll be sure to post a review of how it does.

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By Walter, November 11, 2006 1:12 am

I’ve been on the lookout for a good FTP client for Windows for a long time. I favor a simple interface that lets me easily move files between my computer and FTP site. I used LeechFTP for some time, then moved to Smart FTP. I found both reliable, but a little hard to get around in. I’m now a delighted user of the FireFTP extension for Firefox (for versions 1.5 – 2.0). It opens as a tab within Firefox and sports a simple, intuitive interface for moving files around. It also has all the features I could want from an FTP client.