DropBox vs SugarSync – My Experience!

I signed up for DropBox almost as soon as it came out of beta last year (Dec 2008), as I wanted something more functional than Carbonite, which was my cloud-based backup tool until then.


Now I know that Carbonite is quite different from DropBox. Carbonite backups all of your internal hard drives in the cloud, whereas Dropbox backups up only 50GB in a single folder, while also synchronizing that folder among multiple computers. The synchronization is great fro me, as I can sync all of my most important files among my two home office computers and my one work computer – and they are accessible on the DropBox website where older versions can also be accessed.  I found another full backup solution, as well (discussed below).



About a month after I paid for my DropBox account, I heard about SugarSync, which offers almost all the same features of DropBox, but is cheaper.  So, this December, as my DropBox account was coming to an end, I decided to try SugarSync as a potential replacement.

Well, to cut to the chase, I have deleted my SugarSync account and am now ready to pony up for another year of DropBox!

The main problems I had:

1 - SugarSync inexplicably deleted files and folders!  I have not idea how many, but I did find some that were deleted – though the DropBox website, of all places. I could not figure out how to recover them on SugarSync’s very complicated website, but I did recover them really easy using the DropBox website!

2 - SugarSync created a bunch of extra files. If it encounters any problems in syncing a file, it creates extra copies of it instead.  Each is marked with “(from zzz computer)” – and there were often one for each of the three computers that I was syncing.  I deleted them on one computer, but later found that I may have actually deleted the most recent copies of the documents!  Supposedly this only happens when you are syncing open files, but I had many very old files that also had this problem.

3 - SugarSync inexplicably stops syncing.  So I though I had all three computer synced with SS, but when I looked at the activity screen, each computer showed files that were waiting to either be uploaded or downloaded.  One showed 160 file, another showed only a handful.

ALL of these issues had been discussed on the SugarSync account members forum!  There was a resolution for the last one – it was to cancel SS (Ctrl-Shift-R), then restart it and login again.  There were a lot of upset people on that site, complaining about the bugs in SS and about their poor tech support.

There may be other issues with SugarSync that I did not encounter in my two week trial.  And none of this appears in the reviews of these two products that I found online when considering this switch!  My warning is to stay away from this product.

And hey, if you want to give DropBox a try, please use my referral link at: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTEyMzY0NTk

--------
PS – My current backup solution is I use two 1TB external drives, which I use to backup my desktop computer on a rotating basis. I use Super Flexible File Synchronizer, which is the best backup program for my needs (I only backup personal files, not system files). A free alternative is Sync Toy from Microsoft.

PSS – I also use Microsoft’s free Windows Live Sync to synchronize selected folders between several different computers without the cloud-based website access.  This works very well for syncing podcasts and temporary photos among computers.

My Love-Hate Relationship with Macs and PCs

This is an update of previous blogs about my working with both a Mac and a PC. Previous posts were on July 26, 2009, June 3, 2009, and April 25, 2008.

This past summer, my son decided to wipe his laptop and put Windows 7 RC on it.  Seeing that his experience went well, I decided to try Win 7 RC on my 15” MacBook Pro. At the time, my main computer was my Vista quad core desktop, which ran great and did not need to be changed to 7, and I had XP running in a virtual window on my Mac (using VMWare Fusion), and it was definitely my second computer. I had heard that running Windows in Boot Camp worked better than running it virtually, so I decided to install Win 7 RC in Boot Camp – and WOW!, I loved it so much it quickly became my main computer. 

The primary advantage over my desktop of running Win 7 RC in Boot Camp was that I had more screen real estate – both the MBPro screen and my 22” wide screen monitor.  Whereas, the desktop only gave my the 22” monitor.  The MBPro might have been a tiny bit faster, as well.  I only went over to the Mac-side of the MBPro when I needed to use iTunes for something.

When the final release of Windows 7 went on sale for $50 a piece, I ordered five copies (I actually still need two more).  My son installed it on his desktop without any problem, and I installed it (32bit version) on an old HP laptop, also with no problem. So I then installed the 64bit version on my desktop doing an in-place upgrade of the Vista 64bit system – which went off without a glitch. I also got the Snow Leopard family pack, and upgraded a Mac Mini, a MacBook, and finally, my precious MacBook Pro. All of which went well.

SO – Now to getting Windows 7 (final version) on my MacBookPro.  Three days later and I am still struggling with the decisions I made in getting this to work.

Initially I wanted Win 7 64bit so it would make use of the 4GB Ram that I have on the MBPro.  The problem is that the Win 7 64bit cd-rom is not installable on the MBPro.  Looking online, I found that my version of the MBPro (purchased in Dec 2007) has a very old cd drive firmware that Apple never bothered to update, even though they easily could have.  There are work-arounds for Win 7 RC that are available online, but none that I could find for the final version of Win 7.  I did not know this until after I had wiped the old Boot Camp.

So, I could have installed Win 7 32bit, but I really wanted 64bit! I then read that the new VMWare Fusion 3 could install Win 7 64bit in a virtual machine in Snow Leopard.  So I paid $20 to upgrade to Fusion 3. I then deleted the Boot Camp partition and installed Win 7 64bit as a virtual computer in VMWare.

One problem I had was that the Win 7 upgrade disks look for an existing copy of Windows on the computer as a way of confirming that this is an upgrade installation.  Well, Boot Camp wipes the old Windows drive partition before allowing you to install a new one, and VMWare Fusion starts a new virtual computer, again leaving no earlier version of Windows to be seen. The way I got around this in VMWare Fusion was to first install Win 7 RC 64bit (beta version), which does not have this limitation. Then I upgraded that version using the Win 7 64bit final version cd. That worked – and I was happy!

One really nice feature of this setup is that I can keep all my document files on the Mac-side of the computer, and access them as if they were on the Windows virtual machine.  So I setup my Dropbox account (click here to learn more about Dropbox) to share files between my desktop and the Mac-side of my MBPro (previously, it was going to the Win-side).

When this is all working, it can work really well.  However, sometimes it does not work well.  The Mac-side usually works fine, though it does slow down occastionally. The Windows 7 virtual computer is much less stable. It has been hanging – badly at times – and I have had to reboot it several time in the last couple of days. 

I wonder if this is because of the significant amount of file transfer activity that has been taking place, mostly in the background. I am hoping that this issue will resolve itself once Dropbox is done synchronizing files between my computers!  For now, though, my desktop computer is once again my main workhorse. And I am still wondering if there is a way to get Windows 7 64bit in Boot Camp on my “ancient” 1.5 year old Mac …

(BTW – I really like Windows 7 much more than Snow Leopard, in part because I have some important software in Windows format only, but also because I find it much more colorful and fun to use. Snow Leopard may be more stable, but I personally find it “boring”.)

Fear and Loathing of Health Care and More on the Far Right

The US health care system largely awards the haves and ignores the have-nots. Having health care tied to employment puts each of us one paycheck away from a health care disaster. It has also made the cost of running a business higher in the US than it needs to be, and has given us the lowest health care standards in the world among developed countries. There is clearly a need for change. The behavior of protestors at recent town hall meetings over the health care issue may be a realization among the haves that the time may be coming when have-nots (including the recently unemployed) are going to be provided for.

However, the fear that they are showing is, I think, more than just that. The fear is coming from the far right's being out of power and politically impotent (at least for the moment), which they then blame on every possible conspiracy theory that comes their way. And of course the far right commentators are having a field day fueling this vulnerability with unbelievable lies and outrageous rumors.

I think I can understand this -- to a degree. In fact, if Mr. Obama were a Republican with Bush-Cheney political policies, I too would be grasping for any possible conspiracy that might, in some remote way, reduce his power and remove him from office. That is what I am really hearing from the screaming opponents to health care. They are like a trapped animal striking out where they can -- and health care reform just happened to be what they hit.

====

Update 12Aug09: Related AP News Story on the Rise of Right Wing Militia Groups in the US - driven by a whole slew of conspiracy theories.

20 Months on a Mac and Not Drinking the Cool-aid

Someone posted a request on an email list for comments on his thinking about moving from a PC to a Mac. He only wanted replies from people who have switched from a PC to a Mac in the last couple of years. Here is what I emailed to him, expanded and updated for this blog post…

Just a quick note on my experience … I purchased a MacBook Pro in Dec 2007 as my first personal Mac (though I have had others in my house). I used it as my only computer (though with XP running in VMWare Fusion) while I was away on sabbatical in Spring 2008 and in general I found it adequate and continued using it as my main computer when I returned home in the Summer.

Toward the end of summer, however, the hard drive died on my Mac and I had to send it in for replacement, which took a little over a week. During that time, I started using my desktop Vista PC again, instead of the MacBook Pro, as my main computer. When my Mac came back, I had to reinstall everything from scratch, and I found that I really did not want to use the Mac as my main computer again, due to a number of limitations, which I list below.

By early Spring 2009 (possibly earlier) my Mac started slowing down considerably and programs started hanging ("beach ball of death") more and more. This was especially true when I opened more than just a couple of programs. In addition, MS Word started crashing whenever I opened more than one document, and VMWare fusion (running XP) became incredibly slow. I was ready to chuck the computer!

Finally in late Spring 2009, I decided to wipe my Mac's hard drive and reinstall the operating system. At the same time, I decided to install Windows 7 under Bootcamp on my Mac, and gave it most of the hard drive.

I have been using this configuration (Windows 7 and Leopard on two partitions with Bootcamp) for the past couple of months and basically felt that there was not a lot of difference between the two operating systems in terms of most of what I do. If I opened in Leopard, I generally stayed there for most of the day; if I opened in Windows 7, I generally stayed there for the rest of the day. There was one program on the Mac side that I did not have an alternative to on the Windows side, and there were a few on the Win side with no equivalents on the Mac side – so that kind of determined which OS I would open at startup.

Now, however, I found a replacement for that one program on the Mac side and I almost always open in Windows 7. Although I think they are fairly comparable, I think Windows 7 is visually more attractive and has better functionality (especially out of the box without having to buy additional utilities).

Currently, my fastest and most stable computer, is my relatively inexpensive Gateway AMD quad-core Vista desktop. I have had it longer than I have had my MacBookPro and I have never had any significant problems with system slowdowns or programs crashing. It still runs almost like new! (The fan comes on more now than when it was new, but other than that, I love it – and Vista runs great!) And I install a lot of trial software and run many programs simultaneously. In fact, I kind of wish I could get rid of this 15" MacBook Pro and get a smaller Vista laptop instead (which I would upgrade to Windows 7, of course), because I find that my Mac is just too big to easily travel with.

In general, my complaints about the Mac are:

1. Almost nothing is free and some common file management capabilities on the PC are non-existent on the Mac. Freeware programs that I run on the PC need to be purchased for the Mac. I needed to purchase programs to add functions that are built-in to the PC to the Mac. I purchased Default Folder X (so I can do simple things in the open file dialogue box, like rename a file) and Pathfinder (which replaces the Finder application - Mac's version of Windows Explorer). Most of my early frustrations with the Mac were solved when a friend recommended these two programs to me.
   
2. The Mac intentionally tries to be un-Windows. There are a lot of functions that are done in totally opposite ways from Windows just so they can claim to be different, and without concerns for user functionality -- in my opinion. For example, whereas in Windows you can resize a window from any corner or side, the Mac will only let you resize from the lower right corner. Also, in Windows, the menus are part of the widow and move with the window. On the Mac, menus are fixed at the top of the screen. These two less-than-user-friendly design options continue to drive me crazy.
   
3. My Mac will overheats, especially in the summer, giving me the "Black Screen of Death". I think this is why my hard drive died, as I said above.
   
4. My Mac proved to be just as susceptible to the system aging and slow down as it a PC – possibly more so in my recent experience. It also has its bugs. For example, I cannot access to the Ethernet at my workplace using my Mac – and the head of our IT support (a Mac guy) could not resolve my problem. Despite what Apple fan boys claim, I do not think it is superior or more stable to a comparable Windows Vista computer.
   

So anyway, that is my personal experience. I have not drunk the Mac cool-aid and may be selling my MB Pro on eBay this coming year – though so far Windows 7 is mostly running great on my Mac, so maybe I will keep it...

Cheers
Alan

Freetalk and ioGear: A Tale of Two Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Headsets

So I wanted to get a wireless headset for Christmas (for my wife to give as a gift, but of course, I need to identify which one I want.) I wanted them for listening to podcasts, Hulu.com and anything else that was playing on my computer (usually not music, though I did want stereo). I spent quite a lot of time looking online for something with a good review and a good price. Living in a relative backwater location, I could not really check out my option in a store, so I searched online.

I was quite frustrated in that I could not really tell, from the websites I had found, how these worked. Vague websites drive me crazy. I finally settled on the Freetalk Talk 5191 (below), which I ordered through Amazon.com for $63, including shipping. The reviews sounded good and I liked the style better than the more expensive Sennheisers. Unfortunately, I could not tell from the Amazon website that these were USB headphones, which is obvious from the photo below which I captured from Walmart.com.


I have had USB headsets in the past and I did not like them because there were not very dependable. Sometimes they would be plugged in and would not work. Sometimes I would unplug them but the audio would not transfer to the computer's speakers. So I was bummed that I got something that was not going to work was well as I would prefer.

Then, still before Christmas, I came across the ioGear Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Headset Kit (GBMHKIT) on the Buy.com website of $50 (free shipping; photo below). From the photo I could see that this would easily plug into the earphone jack on both my computer and my mp3 player (I have a Cowon D2). This was exactly what I wanted, and was even cheaper than the Freetalk headset. So I ordered this one to, and kept both unopened until Christmas -- when I was going to make my final decision, and return one or the other -- at least that was the plan.

As you might have guessed, I ended up keeping both headsets because they are so different from one another. For example, both come with chargers for both the base and headset, though the iOGear charger plugs into a wall and is completely removed from both the base and headset in order to use them. On the other hand, the Freetalk headset charges through the USB port, to which the base station is always attached, and the headset can be used while charging or not. Nicely, you can add or remove the headset charger cable, which comes out of the base station, without any impact on the audio.

When the Freetalk is a working it is on and paired. Although there is a pairing button and an on/off button, I almost never touch these. I still have the issue of switching from speakers to headphones on the fly while audio is playing. I generally have to close whatever is playing then start it again after plugging of unplugging the USB. But at least it does work when I do that. The headphones are a bit tight, but are otherwise ver comfortable and microphone, which cannot be removed, works well with Skype.

The ioGear heast has a removable mic and are lighter and more comfortably looser. Because they feel different, I will sometimes switch between the two when one starts to feel uncomfortable. The ioGear sound quality is not quite as good as the Freetalk headset, which I tend to use more. The ioGear is less convenient in that I need to turn on and pair the base station and headset each time I use them; but they are certainly more convenient in instantly plugging into and out of my computer, and transferring the audio from and to my speakers, and they work with my mp3 player (and would be great for a TV, too, if I ever watched one).

The Freetalk definitely sounds better (richer sounds) and holds up over distance more than does the less expensive ioGear (which is better for talk than music). I can cover most of my house without a degredation or loss of sound from the Freetlak. I cannot go very far at all with the ioGear before it breaks up and then disappears, though I can carry my mp3 player attached to the ioGear base with me which is convenient. The ioGear has a real problem with walls - the more you have the less likely the signal will pass through them. A simple house layout would probably be the best.

SO - I kept them both and am actually very happy that I did.

The Bernie Sanders Plan: Pass It On!

One can only dream that we had a government that acted or the people instead of special and moneyed interests...

The following message was posted on the New Deal Information Service list-serv by Dr. Joseph Plaud. He is on the Board of Governors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

Subject: [NDIS]: The Bernie Sanders Plan: Pass It On!

My favorite little socialist, Bernie Sanders, from neighboring Vermont (one of only two states that NEVER voted for FDR in four presidential elections, and now 70 years later one of the most liberal, go figure) has a plan. Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the House, and he has a terrific plan for economic recovery, pass it on. Much better use of your little grey cells than watching that drama queen John McPain continue down the Rove/Bush path to utter chaos and destruction. Note how a cornerstone of Sanders' plan harkens back to the New Deal with a focus on repairing the American infrastructure (does CCC, WPA, PWA, CWA ring any bells?). Go Bernie...

1. Ensure that middle income and working families are not the ones who are paying for this bailout by
* Imposing a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue over five years;
* Ensuring that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and
* Requiring that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the taxpayers’ assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

Taken together these three provisions will substantially reduce the likelihood that this bailout will end up on the backs of average American taxpayers.

2. Include a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect our must vulnerable families from the very difficult times they are experiencing.

3. Repeal the disastrous de-regulatory legislation that facilitated this crisis.

4. End the danger posed by companies that are "too big to fail," that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.

___________________________________________________________________
The New Deal Information Service (NDIS), part of the nonprofit Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum (http://www.fdrheritage.org), is dedicated to monitoring inclusively, as well as analyzing and stimulating critical discussion of, news, informational, and opinion articles located in print and online that focus on or mention Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal. As an NDIS member, you may post your own comment, analysis, and discussion of this article. NDIS members will receive email notifications of all messages posted to the NDIS Listserv. The email address of NDIS is ndis@list.fdrheritage.org. To post to SACRPH-L, send e-mail to: SACRPH@asu.edu Logs for SACRPH-L: http://lists.asu.edu/archives/sacrph.html (Only SACRPH-L subscribers have access.) SACRPH Website:http://www.dcp.ufl.edu/sacrph/

Do you ever have nostalgia for the "Good Old Days"?

USA about 100 Years Ago

• 1900 - 95% of births were at home
• 1905 - 100 workers a day died on the job due to poor working conditions
• 1905 - Recessions/depressions were commonplace, about every 10 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s
• 1905 - Child labor in US factories was commonplace; there were no laws against it
  
• 1907 - Infant mortality = 9.99% (about 10% of all children died at before they reached 1 year of age)
• 1907 - Life expectancy - for Men = 45.6 years - for Women = 49.9 years
  --- i.e., most of the people who were the same age as you were dead by the time you were 50 years old
  
• 1907 - Biggest causes of death: #1 = pneumonia and flu, #2 = tuberculosis, #3 = heart disease, #4 = diarrhea (a different sources flipped #3 and #4, and had #5 = stroke)
• 1907 - Chicago completes first (and only) modern sewage system in the US
• 1908 - Philadelphia completes first (and only) clean water system in the US
• 1906 - First radio voice broadcast from a US based station to specially equipped ships in the Atlantic ocean. Radio would not become fairly common until a decade or two after this (depending on how you define "common").
• 1905 - Icehouses were commonly used to store perishable food and as suppliers of blocks of ice for home ice boxes.
  
  
• THE YEAR 1907
  - Only 14% of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
  - Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.
  - A 3 minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11 ($250.33 in 2007 based on CPI)
  - There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.
  - The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
  - Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California . With only 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union .
  - The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
  - The average wage in the US was 22 Cents per hour ($5.01 in 2007 based on CPI).
  - The average U.S. Worker made between $200 and $400 per year. ($4552 and $9104 in 2007 based on CPI)
  - A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 ($45,520) per year, a dentist made $2,500 ($56,900) per year, a veterinarian $1,500 ($34,140) per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 ($113,800) per year. (in 2007 dollars based on the CPI)
  - More than 95% of all births in the U.S. took place at home.
  - 90% of all U.S. Doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as 'substandard.'
  - Sugar cost four cents a pound. (91 cents a pound in 2007 CPI)
  - Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. ($3.19 a dozen in 2007 CPI)
  - Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. ($3.41 cents a pound in 2007 CPI)
  - Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
  - Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
  - The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.
  - The population of Las Vegas , Nevada was only 30.
  - Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet.
  - There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
  - Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write.
  - Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.
  - Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.'
  - There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S
  
  
• Consumer Price Index (CPI) based currency value conversions are among the most conservative ways to adjust currency values over time. Click here to see how high these numbers could go with other approaches.
  

USA about 75 Years Ago

• 1921-27 - First vaccines for Diptheria, Whooping cough and Tuberculosis
• 1927 - Home refrigerators start coming into widespread use for first time, although home delivery of block ice for ice boxes continued until about 1960
  
• 1926 - NBC radio broadcasting company founded; 1927 - CBS radio founded (but no TV until the late 1930s)
  

• Also checkout: Life Before Social Security - by Richard Paul - audio interview on Morning Edition, March 30, 2005 · Many believe that Social Security helped eliminate poverty among the elderly. But existence without the program wasn't necessarily all that terrible. A look at what life was like before Social Security was created.

USA about 50 Years Ago

Home electronics

• In the early 1960s, the color TV was a new marvel. A good one cost around $400 in 1965, which was a princely sum (worth about $2,300 in current dollars). Still, RCA's annual unit sales rose from 90,000 in 1959 to more than 1 million five years later.
  
• By 2003, flat-screen plasma TVs are the object of many desires. A 42-inch Sony cost $6,000 at Best Buy recently, and aficionados can pay twice that for bigger screens with more bells and whistles. A 50-inch model from Samsung cost $8,000 -- nearly four times as much as those early color TVs.
• By 2007 a 42" flat screen TV cost lest that $1000 on sale.
• There was no Internet, of course, until the 1970s and 1980s.
  

Real estate

• According to the National Association of Realtors, the median price of a U.S. house in 1968 was $20,100. In 2003, it was about $170,000. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, that's a 60 percent increase.
• In the early 1960s, a four-bedroom house in one middle-class New Jersey suburb sold for $19,000. In 2002, the same house sold for more than 20 times that figure.
• In the 1960s, a family was said to be "rich" if they bought a home for $50,000, which converts to $265,000 in 2003 dollars -- far below the modern norm in many leafy suburbs on the East or West coasts.

Travel

• In the 1960s, the jet engine opened up previously unheard of travel possibilities. Americans started flying to Europe in ever-rising numbers. By 2003, Paris is passé. To be well-traveled means to have visited exotic locations. Scads of companies now sell cruises to Antarctica. Departing from the tip of South America, rates begin at around $3,500, plus the cost of getting there.
• Fewer than 4,000 people a year visited the Galapagos Islands in the 1960s. By 2003, Darwin's favorite archipelago attracts more than 60,000 guests annually, at costs ranging from a few thousand dollars to $35,000 or more for a chartered private yacht.
• Even Mt. Everest -- defined as the most remote place on earth before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed it in 1953 -- has had more than 1,200 people reach its peak. One "elite trek" costs about $6,000 to get to the base camp, plus equipment to make the ascent. In 2007, over 500 people climbed Mt Everest, a record year.
  

Automobiles

• In the 1960s, many upper-middle-class motorists aspired to own elegant sedans. The 1965 Lincoln Continental had a sticker price of $6,166, about $36,000 in current dollars. The Continental is no longer produced, but a good substitute might be the Lexus LS-430. Manufacturer's suggested retail price in 2003: $55,700, before options.

Health

• 1945 - First major antibiotic, Penicillin, becomes widely available
• 1945 - First flu vaccine introduced
• 1957 - Life expectancy - for Men = 66.4 years - for Women = 72.7 years by 2007 - Me = 75.5 years, Women = 80.7 years
• 1957 - Infant mortality = 2.63% (similar to or worse than many of the less developed countries in Asia and Latin America today) by 2007 = 0.637% (or 6.37 deaths within the first year of life per 1000 live births; 41 countries have lower/better rates than the US)
• 1957 - Biggest causes of death: #1 = heart disease, #2 = cancer, #3 = stroke, #4 = accidents (similar to today)
  
• 1960 - 97% of births are in hospitals
• 1965 - Medicare and Medicaid signed into law
  

Some of my sources:
Most of the 2003 numbers above came from The Cost of the Good Life (CNN, 9/12/03)
Some of the numbers above come from an article in AARP Bulletin, June 2007, p.39
Also checkout: Are You Worse Off than Mom & Dad (CNN, 9/12/03)
The 1907 list was sent to the Planet (Planners Network) email list by Dick Klosterman of www.whatifinc.biz on 16 June 2008.

Getting My Macs to Behave on a Non-Apple Router with OpenDNS

This is a follow-up to my earlier "Help, I Got a Mac!" blog entry.

Shortly after I got my MacBook Pro in December 2007, I went to Singapore on a sabbatical Fellowship. There I rented a couple of rooms in a house that came with an ethernet cable on a fiber optic network that was among the fastest (most of the time) and most stable that I have ever used -- much more than I get at home in Flagstaff.

Well, now I am back in Arizona and connecting my MBP to my home router, which also has four PCs and an older, and seldom used, Mac Mini attached to it. To my surprise, while the PCs were running fine on a relatively new D-Ling DIR-655 router, my MBP was having some problems. I frequently got the message that the Mac could not find the server for the web pages that I was trying to connect to. This included www.google.com. I would have to refresh the screen one to three or more times to connect, and a few times it would never connect. This was very frustrating! And it got even more so when my wife got a brand new MacBook and encountered the same problem.

I know that any Mac fanboy will recommend getting an Airport Extreme router (US$180), and I am sure that would probably fix the problem. However, the D-Link DIR-655 is considered one of the best routers available by several computer magazines, and it is supposed to work with Macs.

After searching online, I found this discussion on C-Net.com: http://www.esyurl.com/98o , in which someone had a similar problem, but even worse. They could basically not connect at all. The solution in that email was recommended by a Microsoft support person, who suggested specifically identifying the DNS (domain name server) on the Mac, instead of assuming that it will use a DNS supplied by the router. It went on to suggest copying a DNS address that is found on a PC on the network.

So I tried this. But instead of using a DNS from a PC, I instead used the OpenDNS service, which can be found here: http://www.opendns.com/ - which is a free and highly secure DNS service.

The results have been FANTASITIC! Firefox and Safari both now access websites incredibly fast -- at least compared to what the situations was before. Hopefully this information will help some others who are trying to connect their Macs to a non-Apple router. ... And thank you OpenDNS.

Things, Windows, Mac, Oh My!

A friend recently turned me on to the GTD/To Do List program called Things (http://culturedcode.com/things/), which I absolutely love for keeping track of the many projects that I tend to pursue at one time. However, Things is only available on the Mac, with iPhone and iPod Touch versions coming n June. Thus I am in another Mac-Windows quandary (see my longer blog on this issue).

Things is the kind of program that I like to carry in my pocket -- on my phone, to be precise. I need to replace my Windows Mobile Verizon XV6800, which Things would not work on anyway. I could switch to AT+T and get an iPhone when my current Verizon contract ends in October (5 months from now). I could just get an iPod Touch and a cheap Verizon phone that I currently have. Or I could try to find a cross-platform or web/cloud-based GTD instead of Things.

Trying to figure this out, I tried the web-based Nozbe, which I did not like at all, and Remember the Milk, which I really like as a Gmail addon. Remember the Milk can also be accessed offline using Google Gears and syncs with Windows Mobile and Blackberry.

So currently, I am using Remember the Milk for short term, today and tomorrow, things to do. I use Things for more long term projects. And I am not going to think about my phone quandary until I get back to the US this next month.

Help, I got a Mac! - Frustrations moving from Vista to a Mac

First off, Help I Got a Mac! is the name of a podcast for people who have switched from MS Windows to a Mac, which you can find here. I bought my MacBook Pro last December, and have been using it for the past six months. I have yet to "drink the kool-aid" (i.e., I have not yet become a Mac fanboy). I sent a list of my initial frustrations to the Help I Got a Mac! podcast last January, which became the basis of their 14 January 2008 podcast (listen here - mp3 file).

Note that some of my questions to the Help I Got a Mac guys were misunderstood - mostly my own fault as a newby. The list of Pet Peeves that I sent them is below, along with comments on how I have learned to overcome them in the past few months.

~~~~~~
Hi Cliff -

I got a Macbook Pro about a month ago, which I also run XP through VMWare Fusion. This is not the first Mac in my house, but it is the first that I have used regularly as my primary computer, prompted by Vista problems this past year on an under-powered laptop. Here is my current list of pet peeves in using the Mac. I would like to know if there are utilities or other ways to do these tasks. - Thanks, Alan

FILE + FOLDER MANAGEMENT

- Move files from one folder to another – finder only copies files, which I then need to move to trash.
[To address this pet peeve, I recently broke down and purchased Path Finder from Cocoatech.com which now runs in place of Finder most of the time on my Mac - cost: $34.95. Path Finder is a very powerful file manager that not only matches what I could do on my PC, but well surpasses those capabilities.]

- Moving or Copying a file into a folder where another file with the same name already exists – does not tell me which of the two copies is newer or larger - I need to open both folders and compare the files -- what a hassle!
[Clarification: This is when copying a file to a folder where a file with the same filename is present. They might be the same file, or one might be newer than the other. Windows gives me this information so I can decide which file to keep and which to delete. The Mac give no information other than the file names. I still have no resolution to this -- Any Suggestions?.]

- the Finder Window sometimes gets too long below the bottom of the screen – I cannot grab the lower right corner to resize because it is below the screen – in general, I keep wishing I could grab other corners or the sides [Clicking the green (+) button fixes this. However, if the top bar is hidden behind a menu or is off the top of the screen I am stuck as there is no way to access it at all. There is a shareware program that allows you to grab anywhere on a Mac app window/box and drag it, but I believe that it currently only works on Tiger, not Leopard.]

- Can not change File Names, Delete Files, Copy or Move files when in an "Open File" screen – can not access non-openable files from an Open File screen - I often see files that need fixing while in an Open Files menu, which I can easily address in Windows. [I have been using the trial version of Default Folder X from St. Clair Software for this. I am not yet convinced that it is worth the $35 they charge for it.] [UPDATE 7May08: I used Default Folder X several times today so I decided to go ahead and pay for it.]

PHOTO PREVIEW

- Cannot Zoom photos and images to full size in Preview - can zoom larger, but cannot tell if I am zoomed to full size - because of this, I still use Windows Preview on XP in VMWare to browse and delete my recently taken photos.
[I have three comments related to this:
(1) The reason for this pet peeve is that I take many hundreds of photos when I travel, which I use for teaching. I need to skim through these as fast as possible to decide which to keep and which to toss.

(2) This question was a new user mistake on my part. I confused Cover Flow for Preview. Yes, what I want to do can be done in Preview, but not in Cover Flow, which I was using. I have since learned about Preview and it works well for previewing photos. I was also quite excited to learn that Preview had basic photo editing tools, like crop, color correction, and sharpen - which I use regularly on my many photos - available on flickr.

(3) HOWEVER, I was shocked to find Preview destroying some of my photos when I saved them after editing them. So far, I have been able to crop and save without a problem. But when I color correct and then save, occasionally Preview will save a mostly, but not entirely, black image. Because the image overwrites the original upon saving, the photo is destroyed! This happened about six time before I figured out what was going on. I now only edit color in Photoshop, which I have in Windows XP - and which really works much better than Preview anyway.
Update: I installed Gimp, a free photo editing program from sourceforge.net, using the Wilber loves Apple website and my initial reaction is very positive. I can see myself using this instead of Photoshop.]

- Preview - can not "Move to Trash" when a photo is enlarged to almost full screen – photo covers edit icon where the Trash command is found – Again I use XP's Preview instead because of this. [Again, this is a Cover Flow problem, not a Preview problem - my mistake. Cocoatech's Path Finder has scalable thumbnails, which work much faster for quick previews than the more flashy Cover Flow, which I no longer use.]

- Can not Flip a photo in iPhoto; Can not show a photo Full Size in iPhoto [I use Photoshop Elements in Windows XP, instead]

OTHER ISSUES

- After sleeping a couple of times the keyboard stops working, requiring a restart [I only sleep my Mac if there are only a couple of programs running - this seems to resolve the problem.]

- Can not view images in MS Word – need to open/edit the images to see them - these are probably on files that were created on a Windows computer [There is probably a fix for this out there somewhere, but I have not yet looked for it.]

- One feature that I loved and used often in Vista was the clock. The new Vista clock allowed you to create 2 or 3 different clocks for different time zone. All I had to do was click on the clock on the task bar and I would see these different clocks -- it was great for skyping with friends around the world! [As the podcast guys said, the Widgets Screen can do this by pressing on the + button in the lower left. I did not know was there prior to the Help I Got a Mac podcast. I have since highly customized my widget screen with additional utilities.]

BTW - I agree with you on iPhoto encapsuation – I hate it – I want to be able to access to my photos from a variety of different programs – I want to know where the files are so I can move them, copy them, edit them, upload them, and download them. [I use Photoshop Elements for Windows -- someday I will probably breakdown and get a Mac version of Photoshop.]

Thanks, Alan
***************

Some additional comments:

I like the speed of my MacBook Pro (15 inch). It is the most powerful and capable laptop I have ever owned -- comparable to my desktop PC at home. Unlike that PC, however, my Mac starts up and shuts down almost instantly -- which is very cool.

I push my Mac to the limit though, with all the program I often have running at the same time -- and yes, programs do crash and I do need to reboot the Mac from time to time. I will upgrade to 4gb ram soon, which I expect to help with this. A new Vista computer with appropriate hardware probably runs just as well as my Mac. I think, though, that a Vista computer would slow down over time much sooner than the Mac will -- we'll see. I wish MS Office 7 was available for the Mac, as I use it at work and absolutely love it!

Occasionally I think about just running in XP all the time, mostly because of three programs that I currently have only in Windows versions: Photoshop [though Gimp on the Mac may allow me to uninstall Photoshop], Dreamweaver [I may be able to get a Mac version from my workplace] and Roboform [unfortunately there is no Mac version of Roboform].

I also wish my MBPro had an SD card reader, though that will be fixable with an Expresscard adapter that I hope to buy soon.

I may be a bit of a ludite, as I still miss features in Wordperfect that I loved, but was forced to leave behind many years ago as MS Word overwhelmed my workplace. I will update this blog post as I continue to sip the kool-aid in the coming months.

Cheers
Alan

Outlook and my PDA on Vista - "Beta" Frustrations

About every one to two weeks I clean up my calendar. Sometimes I do this on my Windows Mobile 5 PDA (Verizon Audiovox/HTC XV6700), occasionally I will do it on Airset.com (my online calendar that sync's with my Outlook calendar and contacts). Mostly, however, I do this on my laptop computer in Outlook -- which is the fastest at making such changes. It is one of only a couple things that I open Outlook for, as I have otherwise weaned myself off of using it (see my previous posts).

So I cleaned up my calendar two nights ago and then synced the changes to my PDA. HOWEVER, the changes that I made did not appear on my PDA, even though my computer said that the sync was "successful." The changes did appear in Airset, but after several attempts and re-boots, nothing new was showing up on my XV6700! What happened?!?!

I did a search today and found Mel Sampat's blog about a recent Vista update (RC1), and how that update did not update the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC), and how you had to do the update manually. Guessing that this might be my problem, I uninstalled the my current version of WMDC and downloaded and installed the new version (6.0).

Well that fixed the syncing problem, sort of. All new entries were now syncing. However, to get an entry that I made a couple of days ago, I had to change it in someway and then it would sync. Otherwise it was only on one device and not on the other.

I dragged every item that appeared in Outlook on my laptop, but not on my PDA to an adjacent time slot, and it would then appear on the PDA. By doing this, I found that this problem has been an issue for the past 2 weeks, but I had not notice, probably because I had been so busy. And no one at Microsoft informed me or apparently has tried to fix it.

The bigger hassle was changing entries on the PDA that were not in Outlook (or Airset). That was much more time consuming, having to open each one up individually. I also ended up with some duplicate entries along the way, and I hope I did not miss anything out in the more distant future.

Until this issue arose, I had been a very happy camper. I had been able to sync my PDA with WMDC in Vista without any problems. Previously, I was constantly having problems with ActiveSync in Windows XP, and except for this RC1 update issue, syncing has been working great with WMDC. Hopefully I really did fix this problem with the WMDC update install.

I just wonder how many other people out there think they are syncing their PDAs, when they are not; how long it will take them to figure this out; and what kind of frustration they will go through to find an answer to this problem. Just another sign that Vista really is a Beta product -- but they that was how I felt about ActiveSync in XP!

LogMeIn - The Perfect Office Anywhere Tool?

Martin in Sydney left a comment on my original post telling me that I should try LogMeIn.com as an option to Foldershare.com (too buggy) and GoToMyPC.com (too pricey). Well it took me a week or so, and some agonizing moments when Foldershare deleted some recent work that I did, before I gave it a try. (I found those files in the Foldshare Trash, but that is not where they should have been!)

So, I finally installed LogMeIn on my desktop computer. I had already had an account, as I had considered LogMeIn's online backup utility (though I chose Carbonite.com instead). After one night of using LogMeIn all I can say is Hallelujah - I have reached the Promised Land. Although I could not get it to work with Firefox on my Vista tablet pc, it works like a charm in Internet Explorer 7. I love it!

According to the LogMeIn website, even the free version allows file synchronization, though I have not yet tried that. Clipboard text is synced across computers, though you apparently cannot copy and paste files that way. Right now I am using the GSpace plug in for Firefox to move files from one computer to another through my Gmail account. That works really well.

Also, I think I am using the LogMeIn Pro version at no cost for 30 days, after which I will revert to the downgraded Free version if I do not pay for a subscription. The Pro version includes file copy and synchronization, which has become my major uses of LogMeIn when I am traveling. I think the Pro version is about half the monthly price of GoToMyPC.

I am now comfortable with Gmail as my main email program (instead of Outlook, which I rarely open any more), Airset.com for my calendar and contacts, and LogMeIn for file access. Other than the cost of high speed Internet access, and electricity for my mostly on desktop computer, my office anywhere set up is working great (so far) and is completely free!

Update --- Well, "Free" for 30 days, at lease. I ended uyp paying for LogMeIn to keep the file synchronization capabilities. My only complaint with LogMeIn is that I cannot get a Thumbnail view of my photos from within their File Manager. I can see the photos using the desktop Remote Control feature, but to go back and forth is a hassle. Other than that, though, I am a satisfied user.

Update #2 - 3 August 2007 - I hate it when I find something that was probably better and cheaper that what I had bougnt. I have been looing at Avvenu.com and I think it might be better than Logmein.com. The main reason, for me, is because it offers the ability to search my home computer from my traveling computer. Logmein.com does not offer that capability, which has been frustrating at times!

Gmail Craze: 40 Tools and Hacks for Gmail (MakeUseOf.com)

So the next step is for me to free myself from Outlook is to become a Gmail geek. This posting on MakeUseOf.com is a great start:

Gmail Craze: 40 Tools and Hacks for Gmail:

• "All for Gmail: handy Firefox extensions, best Greasemonkey scripts, some desktop tools and lots of useful tips. Take this Gmail thingie to another level."

Another good list of Gmail tools can be found on LifeHacker.com

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/gmail/

Toward an Office Anywhere Work Environment: Weaning Myself Off Outlook

Mike Smith on the the Mike Tech Show podcast recently talked about his efforts to break away from relying on Microsoft Outlook. I have been thinking about this myself, mostly due to a desire to be able to create an Office-Anywhere / Ubiquitous Computing work environment.

Where I Am Coming From

After many years of using Netscape and the early generations of Thunderbird for my email, and Sony Clie/Palm Desktop for my calendar and contacts, I made the move to Outlook for both about three or four years ago. I made the move because Thunderbird was not able to handle the large number of emails that I had stored in it. In fact, it was excruciatingly slow, and I had read on a blog somewhere that this was due to Thunderbird's poor database structure. At about the same time, I had purchased my first Windows Mobile PDA/Phone (and Audiovox 6600) after Sony had pulled out of the U.S. PDA market -- I had no interest in Palm devices, which I considered physically ugly.

So, for the past several years my life has been organized by Outlook (2002 at first, then 2003). I ran Outlook off my laptop computers, which had served me well as my principal work stations -- carrying them between home and work (I now mostly work at home) and on the several long trips I take every year.

The problem with this scenario is that even the 100GB/7200RPM hard drive that I put into my last tablet PC did not offer enough space and speed for it to serve as my principal work computer. What I want is to be able to go anywhere at anytime, and without limitations to my calendar, email and documents.

What I am Currently Experimenting With

- A new Fujitsu P1610, 2.2 lb, 8.9" screen, tablet PC - mostly for traveling, taking to meetings, and syncing my PDA with Outlook and Airset (see below).

- My PDA Phone - I have the Verizon Audiovox XV6700 with Windows Mobile 5. I do not have EVDO -- I tried that in the past and found that I am seldom in situations where I needed it, and when I am it is easier to just pay for Internet access. I do use the Wifi feature when I can access a wireless router.

- I use Airset.com for online access to my calendar and contacts, which I sync with Outlook on my tablet PC. The tablet PC is then synced with my PDA phone. I originally tried using Google Calendar, which has a nicer look and feel to it than Airset, but I could not get it to sync properly with Outlook, and Airset also syncs my contacts, which Google Calendar does not do. (To sync to Google Calendar I tried CompanionLink and GMobileSync - both of which caused significant problems, though none that I could not fix with some time and effort. I just came across GooSync, which I might try.)

- I use Google Mail as my primary email reader. I forward email from several different accounts into a single GMail account for this. I also have Gmail set up to send mail using my work email address (a great feature!), which is necessary for the many listserves that I am on and manage.

I download my email into Outlook for backup and to use Outlook's better sorting and searching tools, when I need them. By using Pop3 (no IMAP) I can access the email offline, when I need to.

This has been a real challenge. I get at least 50 emails a day that I need to read and most of which I store for future reference. Changing from storing them in folders in Outlook to organizing them by tags in Gmail takes quite a mental shift.

[Addendum: I just discovered a very useful feature in Outlook. The Archive button removes messages from the Inbox without deleting them. You can see the whole "messy" Inbox by clicking the All Mail link. So by tagging and then moving emails out of the Inbox, this comes pretty close to using Folders in Outlook.]

I am not yet convinced that tags are better than folders -- but I am still forcing myself to try and adjust to this approach. Google Mail is very fast, which helps a lot! And of course the more emails that I have tagged, the less I am going to want to spend time reorganizing them again into Outlook folders.

- Foldershare is a free online utility (purchased by Microsoft) that allows me to sync folders between my home computer, work computer, and tablet PC (and any other computers that I allow), and search and download the files on any of those from any Internet connected computer. Foldershare works really fast and is quite amazing for a free utility. While I would love to have something with the functionality of GotoMyPC, I just can't justify spending that much money -- at least not yet.

So that is my Office-Anywhere / Ubiquitous Computing setup. In addition, I run the Juice (podcatcher) on my tablet PC, and sync the podcast folder with my office and home PCs. I originally tried to run Juice on two computers and sync the folders, hoping that files in one folder would cancel the other when they are downloaded by both computers . But I mostly ended up with two copies of podcast episodes, which quickly became a hassle.

One other utility that I use is Cabonite for backing up my main home computer where all my documents reside. I also back up periodically to an external hard drive.

What I like about this arrangement is that it is keeping things that I do not need off of my tablet PC, and even off of my office computer, which I only use a couple of times a week.

Is It a Perfect Setup?

It is working so far, but I am also still getting used to it -- putting it through its paces for my work style. I have not yet tried it on a long trip (I have one coming up soon), and it may prove especially challenging on an overseas trip. However, I think I can manage that if I can anticipate what documents I need before I leave town. I will find out this summer!!!