Mel in Hawaii

If Glynn wanted to talk to me, he has my cell phone number, so does Steve. I haven't talked to him in a while, although I did get a Christmas Card from Steve and family. If it does happen to be him, he could have read the board without registering and since he hasn't confirmed, I doubt it's him. Also, if Glynn wanted to write another program, he wouldn't want me as he already has people at his disposal that are VERY capable of producing another program. As I remember, there used to be an ATX customer with the same name (at least back in 1999) with that spelling, I always found it interesting to talk to him as I thought the record in the database was either a mistake or a typo. Remember, Glynn was starting another software company (dealing with educational software) last I talked to him, he would definately have programmers at hand.

Personally, I don't know if someone was pulling his strings or not, but I know William genuinely has the welfare of the customer in his heart. As one of ATX's best assets, keep an eye on him. If they let him go, you know where the program is headed. I would just like to know what his title is now.

So William, glad to hear you are still there, but what's your 'new' title going to be or are you transferring to GA too?

Wasn't he always here, just under a different name? He didn't post much, but was here. I TOO am happy to see that they kept William, they would have been stupid not to.

Sorry, but this really irks me... What company in their right mind does a major change in technical support staff like this right at the VERY beginning of a technical support rush? What's the hidden agenda here? Try to push people to another program? Technical support staffs should be finishing their ramping up, not shutting down.

One of the enhancements seems to be dumping the tech support staff that knows the program. Always a good start to a tax season.

That comes when it's a program that they really don't want to support. GW really cared about the customers when he was there, losing him was the worst thing that could happen to the company.

Saving money by moving to GA? That's full of bull**** and everyone knows it. Maine is one of the most inexpensive places to hire employees in the nation. The one benefit that I see is that they can't have a blizzard shut down operations, trading that off for a hurricane every so often. BUT, if they already have a support staff in GA, then they can double up the responsibilities so they are supporting two programs and intermingling the way things work. Maybe their knowlege of tax forms will improve, but having to know two different programs won't help. Another area of concern is that during the non-support season, we used to use the tech support people to help with forms development years ago, with these people having much more knowlege to help the customers during the support times. I wonder if that means more 'temporary full time' possitions to handle the heavy load during parts of the year and layoffs during the light portions of the year. I wonder what happened to William if they laid off the support people. He REALLY was a company asset that was worth more than anything that they paid him.

Have you tried 'copying' the CD to the hard disk (put it in a temporary subdirectory you can delete later on) and see if the files copy ok? There could be fingerprints on the CD or something causing a read error. This is an easy test, but low likelihood of success. Most likely it has NOTHING to do with VISTA and has EVERYTHING to do with the other software installed on the machine. There is probably some support file on the computer that has an incompatible version with one of the support files for the program. A really tricky situation where support can take hours figuring it out that you have XYZ utility 'pre-installed' on the laptop by the manufacturer for your convenience that you never ever use. I really hate getting computers with all the bundled software for that very reason. In this case, I would ensure that all updates and service packs are installed on the laptop and try the install again. If not, then support will need to walk you through the support files one by one and figure out what doesn't install.

Careful with paypal... They have been known to lock up your account at the slightest mumble from a customer. I wouldn't have a slow payer use it as I would be concerned they might 'question' the charge and voila, your business account is suspended.

I bet that you had data converted? I don't know about now, but sometimes when things were done for free, they show up in the renewals for the default pricing, even though they might have only been a one time thing as the line charge shouldn't have been carried forward to the renewal... I remember things like customers paying Express shipping charges once so they could get a duplicate CD shipped to another office. Of course they would not want to 'renew' that, but it was something that slipped past during the renewal. I wonder if this is one of those things??

I just wonder if there will be any memory leaks when the above takes place. This bug may have been resolved in years past, but I can remember the time when the data could become corrupted having multiple returns open. If you are doing the above, be very cautious the first few times for splillover.

"Or you could bring a friend and share the goodies." I still have a vivid recollection of this one time I took a friend along to the Jade Palace (many many years ago), she ended up costing me over $100 for the meal. I sat there with amazement as this very skinny lady packed away so much food that I couldn't understand where it was physically going. I didn't say anything to her, but it was on my mind the whole meal. I don't know if the same attitude towards the licensing of the software remains, but the license for the network was meant to cover people in the same office so if you were using it in an office with a couple partners, sharing the goodies was actually encouraged. Yes, thinking of having the users all connected to the network is a good thought, but it also covered the partner working on his laptop that he took to the clients offices. It was an important distinction that they were all part of the same 'company' though. So, in the concept of the plate lunch, it would be like taking my son and daughter with me while going out to eat. They all can share from the same plate as they are part of the family, but it wouldn't work with me bringing in the guy from down the street as we wouldn't be willing to share from the same plate.

This may not seem tax board related, but give me a moment of your time. I don't go out to lunch/dinner as much as I used to... Too much work to do, with the kids taking up much of my time, I guess. Years ago, I used to go out to the local Chinese place (man I loved going to the Jade Palace) and picking up a number 8. It was my favorite thing to do after work before I headed home. Being single, I hated cooking for one and if I didn't eat out it generally meant Mac-n-cheese. Every time I went, I generally would get a number 8. It was a huge plate of food and after going 30-40 times, I finally started to take some home with me. Eventually I learned that if I divided up my meal while I was there, I could make it into 4 satisfying meals and it was hard to imagine that I actually ate it all in one setting months before. Fast forward to today, being a single dad with kids, I generally make my lunch while I am making the kids lunch for them to take to school and bring it with me when I go to the office. The sweet and sour chicken fingers have been replaced by a sandwhich which probably has 1/10th the calories, and yet it satisfies me. Today I ran out of bread when making the kids lunch, having just enough for theirs so I decided that I would go out to lunch. Looking at the menu, I could get a full plate lunch for five something or a 'mini' plate for 4. Sure the full plate lunch is cheaper per pound, but I wouldn't be eating that much and don't have a way of storing it, hence it is a waste for me. So, I picked up the mini plate and took it back to the office with me. About halfway through the meal, I just couldn't finish it. I can't imagine how people could eat the regular one and started to think that I needed a 'mini' mini plate. Would they consider this? No, it would cut into their sales of the larger plate and take just as much time to prepare, hence costing them money. This brings me back to the constant discussion of the 'packaging' of the software program. Years ago, the company offered such a slice and dice of the program where you could basically make any combination that you wanted that it cost the company a lot of money solving the logistics of selling such a program. It wasn't just the extra complexity of the catalog, there was the extra printing costs of extra pages, training the sales staff to understand what was for what, duplication machines capable of handling every possibility, duplication of forms throughout multiple programs requiring extra disks for installation, extra disks mean heavier packages and more money for the physical disk... I am sure I missed some of the 'extra' logistics required, but you can see my point. Finding a 'middle ground' that satisfied many users but wasn't so expensive that people would balk was important and hence the 'Package X' aka Saber Pro and the later names. Eventually the smaller little programs were dropped to reduce costs (which would have been passed along eventually). Yes, moving to a CD distribution solved a lot of the Physical logistics since everything could be packed onto the CD, the training and printing costs remained, plus trying to explain to the customer what they were getting and comparing it to what they needed extended the length of sales calls requiring more staff. Yes, I can see the customer's side of things, having all those other programs available made it really convenient to get 'just what they needed' with no added expense, but it actually upped the cost for everyone. Since they are paying less, then the other guys have to make up for the lost revenue and increased expenses. The small guy was forced to go to the bigger package and was unhappy about it, but the larger customer was happy that he didn't have to buy ALL of the smaller ones to get the functionality of the bundled one. It was a compromise and one that was actually not hard to find the point of by modeling it after the IRS publication X at the time. Remember when you try to request a smaller package, that ATX's cost of servicing you remains the same regardless of what you order. It doesn't make sense to sell a package that is only $29 and does a couple forms as the cost of shipping updates will excede that price. Plus, if you are really looking at a small package such as the 'City' packages, there are very few customers to spread the cost of designing those forms over, hence requiring a higher price. Is it worth it to you with that higher price? Is it really worth it to ATX to produce it? Just how small does the company really want to make it's plate lunch available for? The smaller amount of rice only probably translates into a savings of a few cents, a few cents for broccoli and tofu isn't that expensive either... It isn't woth it to them, so I guess I will be forced to buy the bigger one and throw away what I wouldn't be able to eat.

The forms team and the program team are different groups, or at least they used to be. While I wouldn't expect them to implement 'drastic' changes such as changing whole printing routines, simple changes can get streamlined in rather easily if they make sense. I wouldn't use the excuse that the development teams are busy to stop you from submitting suggestions. Unless CCH has changed how things operate (probably have) then all the suggestions get reviewed and ranked/sorted quite frequently. Yes, they probably are locking down the software version for a production copy for testing (or already have) but the developers can still be working on the changes to be slipped in during one of the updates required to fix bugs that everyone complains about being too frequent. Now, some of these suggestions do go towards the forms team, such as allocations and stock options worksheets. I doubt that there would be time for them to work on such at this point, but it would be added to the list of possibilities for after the forms are done.

Most forum software operates in a similar fashion. The ranking is based on your interaction with the board based on your post count. It's based on the notion that people who only post once have less of a commitment to whatever subject of the board, hence their comments should be looked at with some level of hesitancy. Based on that theory, people who post a LOT and don't get banned from the board must be either posting valuable information or keeping up the atmophere of the community. You will know that they really value your presense when they add the 'moderator' designation... *grin*

The reality is that it is too late in the season to get a program out for this year. Initially I worked on it mainly thinking that ATX was getting blown out by the competition. When I realized that wasn't really the case, I didn't work as hard on it as I am still hoping ATX will survive as a distinct entity, I certainly don't want to be competing against my friends up in Maine.

Ok, I will change my nick again to make it easier to understand. Sorry that I forgot about Mike having that nick orriginally as I was just switching to my initials rather than my whole name.

Um, I am not Mike... Melvin here.. I heard of it orriginally on a financial blog that I regularly read. I am just afraid it might go the way of sunrocket and all that seemed to die the VOIP death. I like the simplicity of dialing a normal phone and got a minimal handset to go with it so that when we are out we can plug it into the laptop and use it as a phone there. Sure, there are other VOIP solutions that you don't need the phone, but you should see the stares I get when I am talking on the phone at a McDonalds. Cell phones are good, except that I tend to use too many minutes.

What do you think about the MagicJack (www.magicjack.com) product? I have been using it for a month and like the price and the quality is ok. Has anyone else tried it? For me, I don't use the land line phone service at home, so I just rely on my cell phone, so that means I usually use thousands of minutes (the month before I got my magicjack we used over 4000 minutes on my family plan with about 1300 of them being non tmobile to tmobile). The cost of having a dedicated land line didn't seem easy to justify, but this $40 for a year of service did since we already have cable broadband internet. Comparing the voice quality of the local cable company's digital phone service, I would say the quality is much better, but occasionally you will hear a blip, especially if I am playing a network game at the same time (might be CPU resource as much as network traffic).

I agree... Video card is only going to help with the 'fun' parts of your workstation. Faster processor and increased RAM are my recommendations. Hard drive speeds are somewhat of a factor, but modern hard drives all seem to perform just about the same for every day use. If you opt for gigantic hard disks, make sure your backup solution is comparable and up to the task.

I wonder if the installation program has just not been programmed to recognise the OS yet. Quite frequently the honest answer is that they haven't had enough customers using the product in that platform to know of all the 'kinks' that might occur. While it might work good in testing on a standard configuration, it might not work on another configuration, know what I mean? Too bad that we can't have William's insight into the issues coming across the lines.

Actually, having had my mom work for the Census full time for almost a decade, I can guarantee you that this is NOT the case. Surveys are ongoing and cover many subjects all the time (Crime, Consumer Spending, etc). If you don't agree to fill it out, they will come back and back and back, send the supervisor, call you from the regional office and then the Washington office to convince you to fill it out. Luckily my mom loved to talk and had the knack to get people to answer even when they initially resisted, so much so that she was one of the people they would get to call you when you refused the first attempt. Yes, some of those surveys are really detailed, luckily you aren't getting one that is asking about your drug usage. Even with the statements that the data is kept secret and only used for statistical reporting, I wonder how accurate it is when it asks you when the last time and how frequently you smoked pot, did cocain etc... The good thing, once you have been selected for one of these surveys, you likely won't be selected for another type, although you will get a followup survey later on asking the same questions for trending information. BTW, if you question if they are actually from the Census, ask them for their Identification. They are required to take it with them every time they go out, and are SUPPOSED to show it to you each time that someone answers the door. They also have an 800 number you can call to verify the identification and authorization for the agent to be working on that particular survey.

Yes, if two computers attempt to check the same email account at the same exact moment, the mail server will only allow one, the other will fail. This will be a hit and miss type of thing which one will work the other won't and it will reverse. The last number should be different for each machine (they all need uniques). I would look at the network adapter on the trouble machine and see if you can find counters for how many bad packets it's seeing. I can't give you specific instructions because it depends on the implementation of the network cards drivers. It could be something as simple as a slightly failing connection, or sympathetic noise induced from another electronic device (flourescent lights for example).

Actually that protocol CAN leave the messages on the server, it's just up to the client to properly handle that (hence my mentioning the settings).