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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’
Monday, December 7th, 2009
In previous entries I’ve commented on how the New York Times has the best website of any news organization that I frequent, bar none. One of the things that I like about their website is that you can find an interesting, timely article on just about any topic…which is what I did the other night!
I was sitting at my desk reviewing my personal finances (which is a nightly ritual for me) and I was thinking about how I used to use both Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken software. These days I don’t use anything besides some spreadsheets that I created and, frankly, they work great! But as I was going over my finances I started to think about the old Mint.com account that I opened up about a year ago before shutting it down.
 Some months ago I remembered hearing that Mint.com was purchased by Intuit, which I thought was a real shame since Mint.com had a great user interface and was very user-friendly. Intuit doesn’t have the best record on either of those issues. Anyway, as I was thinking about this stuff I pulled up the New York Times website and wouldn’t you know that there was an interview with the creator of Mint.com (who is now a Vice President at Intuit) right there on the front page? It was a good interview, too! For example, I found out things like this…
Q. Are there parts of corporate culture that you find strange?
A. The corporate campus seems so quiet. A start-up is overflowing with energy. Here it’s a little more subdued. They’ve got these high, very depressing cubicles.
If I wanted a new computer or had some I.T. issue at Mint, I just walked to the tech ops team and they would get me set up in a couple of minutes. At Intuit, being a big company, you call the help desk, and the help desk has been outsourced to some foreign country — I can’t place the accent. They really have no idea of where you are or what your needs are. It’s the standard phone service when you get sent to a foreign country, but this is an internal help desk. It’s a real pain. I expressed this to one of my Quicken colleagues and he said, “Yeah, we just never call the help desk. Don’t bother, here’s who you need to call to skirt around the system…” I thought, that’s sort of dumb in a bureaucratic way.
But at the same time, a big company has processes with much more rigor than what we ever had in a start-up. They have great specialization when it comes to retail, packaging, search engine marketing or affiliate programs. And the financial rigor of a big company is phenomenal in terms of projections, making sure everything is on track on a weekly basis, or reporting your numbers — they’re very, very good at that sort of thing.
I found that interesting, but I also like reading about corporate culture. The interview – linked above – is a short read and one that I think you’ll enjoy if you’re interested in the internet and technology or just how entrepreneurs are integrated into established organizations.
Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Money, Jobs, & Finances | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
This one should have hurt, but it didn’t. Since my Mom gave me this laptop in May 2006 as a present for graduating a graduate school, I’ve never been happier with a computer system. It’s fast, reliable, virus and malware-free – it’s the perfect, stress-free compliment to a fast paced life. As far back as May 2006, I’ve also utilized many of the pre-installed programs to manage my life. Two of those programs were based in personal finance – Microsoft Money and Quicken Starter Edition.
Sure, no individual needs to use both of these programs at the same time. However, as I own my own business, I used Quicken for the business and Money for my personal finance needs and it worked great for years. Then, earlier this year Quicken essentially stopped supporting my version of the software and told me that I had to update (i.e. purchase an upgrade) in order to keep using their program. Not happening.
Instead, I looked into Money and realized that I could easily manage my business accounts under a separate listing and thus moved everything over to that program and uninstalled Quicken. It was somewhat sad to see the program go, but it was the best financial decision. So if you’re keeping score – Quicken is now gone from my system.
Oh, and bear in mind that this is all going on during the same time period where I’ve essentially decided that I want to strip my computer of all non-essential software and remove myself from superfluous websites. Frankly, since I started this stripping down process, my computer runs smoother and I have an incredible amount of room to store pictures, music, and documents. It’s great! But I digress…
During the last few years I’ve also created a series of spreadsheets that monitors and tracks my every expense down to the penny. Some people would consider that level of personal financial management to be a bit overboard, but at 28 years old (and saddled with $98,000 in student loan debt), I think it is absolutely critical to know where my money is and what it is doing. Also, my use of a certain spreadsheet to plan for upcoming expenses has allowed me to have $0 in credit card/consumer debt while increasing the total dollar amount of other, “good” expenses like donations and money put into savings accounts and the stock market. Money provided tremendous assistance in getting me to the point where I could create my own financial spreadsheets and have them actually mean something. However, last week I removed Microsoft Money Plus from my system.
As I started this post with – this one should have hurt, but it didn’t…at all. Somewhere along the line, Microsoft stopped supporting their Money series to the level that they support, say, and Office suite. I guess that the increasing sales of Office and other Microsoft products necessitated a shift in focus away from personal finance. Plus, with great free personal finance websites popping up (like Mint.com, which was actually purchased by Quicken), I imagine that the powers that be at Microsoft didn’t think that there was a lot of future profit potential in the Money line.
So, the latest software to get removed from my system is Microsoft Money Plus. I wonder which program will be next…
Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Money, Jobs, & Finances | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
Seriously, what happened to AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM)? There was a time when this was the major method of communication between college students, high school students, and even some small businesses. Yet, the other night I signed on and only 12 of my 112 friends were online. And of those 12 people that were online, 6 were either away or in a sleep mode!
What happened to AIM? Could it be that the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (with their built-in messaging systems) have rendered AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger useless? Maybe the fact that text/picture messages and Blackberries are ubiquitous in today’s society also hinders AIM’s growth. Seems logical.
Granted, I understand that I first started using AIM over ten years ago (probably closer to 15 years ago) when I was a young teenager. Since I’m in my late 20’s these days, I guess that most of the people that I talked to on AIM are either now on my text message list or are a Facebook friend. It would appear that I don’t need AIM any more, actually, since I rarely sign on anyway.
And as I’ve written on JerseySmarts.com a few times already, I’ve been very interested in paring down the software that sits dormant on my laptop. In the last month I’ve removed a bunch of this unneeded software that has been taking up precious disk space. A week or two ago I uninstalled Google Chrome because I rarely used it (plus I’ve already become so accustomed to Mozilla Firefox) and earlier today I uninstalled Yahoo! Messenger since I haven’t used it in over a year. When looking around my computer, I found the old “AOL Instant Messenger” program which was replaced with AOL’s current AIM program…so I removed the old program since I hadn’t used it since the spring of 2006. Also, I purchased a discounted copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which prompted me to uninstall OpenOffice.org from Sun Microsystems. Could AIM be next on the list of programs to be deleted? I’m not sure.
I think that I’d like to keep at least one of each of the major programs (one instant messenger program, one major non-Microsoft browser, one major office productivity suite, etc), so AIM may stay around on that fact alone. But the truth remains that even if the program does stay on my computer it’ll probably be a rarely used piece of software.
Isn’t it amazing how the internet and electronic communication have changed?
Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Entertainment | 3 Comments »
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Actually, I’m really asking this question. Does anyone out there use Google Chrome? If so, can you tell me whether or not it’s worth the hype that it has been getting lately? I’ve read a lot of articles that talk about how it is the fastest browser available (beating Apple’s Safari browser). Can anyone verify this for me?
I downloaded Chrome the other day and I’ve been using it here and there and while it definitely loads quicker than Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, I’m not sure if it is as durable as those two products – especially FireFox.
I’m not entirely sure if I’m looking to make the switch from using FireFox as my main browser to using Chrome, but if there is a significant, prolonged difference in speed and loading times between the two, then I’d consider it. One of the benefits that FireFox has going for it is that you can add extensions and plug-ins, which is always helpful. Plus, it is completely open source so if you know what you’re doing you can go in and play with the source code (which I tried once).
Anyway, looking for advice. Thanks!
Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 20th, 2006
By now you should all know that Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have each introduced their “Next Generation” gaming machines. Microsoft launched the XBox 360 a year ago and has sold over 7.1 million units according to a handy little site called, “NextGen Wars.” Last week Sony introduced their PlayStation 3 while over the weekend Nintendo dropped their Wii system on the United States market.
Each system has their drawing points. The XBox 360 has a library of games that far surpasses the competition, while the PlayStation 3 has a built-in high-definition DVD player and a vast collection of PSOne and PlayStation 2 games that are playable on the new system. The Wii, though, is priced at $250 – less than half of the competition – and sports and extremely simplified controller with high-tech motion sensors.
So do you go for the price of the Nintendo Wii, the power of the PlayStation 3, or the library of the XBox 360? For me, I’m not really sure. I’m a Final Fantasy fan, which means that I should probably focus on getting that PS 3, but I’m not looking to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a game system…which leads me to the Wii. But I also want a system with a large number of titles to choose from – hello XBox 360. Of course the XBox 360 runs us right back into that cost dilemma.
It seems like the Wii is the way to go, and given recent media reports, there is more excitement for the Wii than there is for the PS 3 launch. However, I spent a good deal of money putting together a powerful, high definition TV and surround sound setup in my apartment, so why not get a gaming system that utilizes all of these goodies?
But the thing that will probably keep me from jumping into the console wars and buying a next generation system right now (aside from price) is the fact that I really don’t get around to playing video games too often any more. I began playing Square-Enix’s Kingdom Hearts about a month ago and played it for 2 days before I just didn’t have the time to settle in with it. One of the fraternity guys who I advise was at my apartment the other day and said that he’s playing the new Final Fantasy 12 and that another one of the guys beat it in 65 hours.
Sixty-five hours?! Man…if I had an extra 65 hours in my week, I don’t know what I’d do. Actually, that’s a lie. I’d sleep more!
Getting back on track, though, I don’t think that I’m going to get a new system just yet. I want to see what Black Friday has to offer this year (it sucked in 2004 and was so-so in 2005). If there are great sales on games and accessories for these systems, then I’ll probably look into getting one. If not, then I’ll probably just wait until the new year to even think about getting one of these things!
Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Entertainment | No Comments »
Friday, November 12th, 2004
I downloaded and installed the Mozilla FireFox browser that everyone is talking about. It was released just the other day and since I always like to have the latest and greatest software and hardware on my computer, I figured that this would be a good update for me. After two days of using it, I have to say that I’m mildly impressed – let me explain.
First, the browser is actually extremely stable. I thought that it would be crashing left and right but that has not occurred during my use of FireFox. I am probably most impressed by that single fact – new software that is released for a wide distribution is usually riddled with bugs and little quirky problems.
Or is that what years of using Microsoft products has ingrained in my thinking?
Second, the cool “features” of this product are actually so-so to me. Again, I am jaded from my years and years of Microsoft-only computer products so I might not be as impressed by integrated RSS feeds and tabbed browsing as I should be. Apparently, these are big features and the fact that Internet Explorer doesn’t have them makes that browser a sub-par product. I wouldn’t agree with that statement, but I will say that it’s nice to have all of that tabbed browsing stuff – pretty cool indeed.
I didn’t get rid of Internet Explorer. From time to time I play games on PoGo.com and those games don’t load on FireFox. So IE will come in handy for that. Also, you never know when you might need to go back and use old faithful in the event that some hacker out there decides to unleash a nasty worm on the new FireFox browser.
Overall though, I am impressed by the browser and its seamless setup and transfer of IE Favorites (called Bookmarks in the Mozilla world). My final vote – I recommend this product. You can find a download link for the new browser on the right-hand sidebar of this page.
The other note that I wanted to make was that being a wrestling fan, I decided to head over to WWE.com. They’ve done some changes over there! I recommend stopping over if you haven’t been there lately. It looks good.
To finish up this report, I want to make sure that you are all visiting the main page of this very website – TheBalrogsLair.com. Eddie has done some good work on that site and it really is looking great. There are great syndicated and exclusive columnists and great content for you to browse through as you’re surfing around. Take a look, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Entertainment, Sports | No Comments »
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