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Dancing with the pennies

Mike Evans
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Since I started this blog I've been meaning to review MoneyDance, my chosen accounts package. The name is a bit of a put-off and sounds a bit frivolous, I agree. It isn't the prettiest product and doesn't look like a typical Mac application (but there's a good reason for that, more later). Yet I have been happier with this product than I ever was with a range of predecessors, including Quicken and Microsoft Money. MoneyDance is robust and easy to learn. It isn't cluttered with links to MSN or other commercial web-sites and it just works, solidly and reliably. Title_callout

For the amateur bean counter the interface is straightforward and intuitive. In common with other personal accounts packages you create accounts to mirror your bank and credit card accounts. You can also add asset accounts to cover property or monies owning to you, liability accounts for loans and money you owe, and investment accounts for stocks and shares. All accounts can be nested so, for instance, you can create an overall section for "Savings" and then add all your savings accounts as children of the main account. This is particularly useful for separating currency accounts. Keeping your accounts organised is therefore very easy.

Again, like most personal accounts programs, MoneyDance allocates income and expenditure to "categories". However, there is a major divergence from other products. The "categories" are not tags but are fully-fledged accounts as in a proper grown-up bookkeeping system. This delights the more experienced user who can post journal entries between expense or income categories. If you want to reorganise or change a category, most packages force you to change the category of every item in every account. With MoneyDance you can simply pass a journal entry to transfer a bulk total from one expense category to another. This is wonderful for anyone who knows about bookkeeping, but it isn't necessary to know anything about it unless you need it.

There are two must-haves for my accounts system: investment tracking and currency support. It is amazing how many packages completely ignore currencies. In Europe that's not a good idea because we all tend to travel around. In my case I live in two countries so I have accounts in both sterling and euros. MoneyDance copes really well with cross-border movements and, of course, currency exchange rates are downloaded automatically every day, just as stock and share values are updated. 

Earlier I mentioned that MoneyDance doesn't look like a Mac application and there is a very good reason for this. It is probably the only multi-platform personal accounts manager in the world. There are versions for Mac, Windows and Linux so there are no problems in switching from one system to another: the datafile will open and work on any platform. This was a lifesaver for me eighteen months ago when I was stuck in Greece with a dead MacBook (it turned out to be faulty third-party random-access memory). Fortunately I had a USB stick containing the latest backup of my MoneyDance file. I was able to download MoneyDance to a nearby PC and I could open and work on my accounts without the slightest problem.

While MoneyDance is aimed at the personal user, it is powerful enough to handle small business accounts and can be set in preferences to deal with VAT.

Sure, you can find prettier and more exciting accounts packages but, for my money, reliability, flexibility and proper double-entry bookkeeping principles are of overriding importance. There is also an iPhone version in the offing, but not yet seen in alfa or beta versions.

Blogging 1940s-style now gone with the wind

Mike Evans
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My grandfather, Harry MacOldie, was a great blogger. He wouldn't have recognised the term of course, but he couldn't resist putting pen to paper. Which is strange, considering he was a grocer with a relatively limited education. He had a good turn of phrase and I would consider him to be a good writer. Maybe this is where I get my writing enthusiasm from. I was a journalist, so I suppose that helps. Grandpa was a fanatical cyclist, stalwart of the Wigan CTC (Cyclists' Touring Club) and an inveterate jotter. I suppose his Sturmey Archer was akin to my Drobo; and he certainly lost no time in telling the world about his exploits, mostly in north Lancashire, the Lake District or north Cheshire. Unfortunately his world was a bit circumscribed. How he would have loved to have had an internet blog. 

Right: Blogging gear, 1943     

I have a collection of beautifully preserved accounts of wartime cycle rides, presumably on deserted roads. Paper was at a premium, probably almost unavailable, and the stories are typed laboriously on stained quarto sheets. They are bound in brown paper and stapled precisely for posterity. He was quite ingenious and obviously had a collection of typewriters to allow different styles. He had one with a smaller, italic font and he would swop his pages from machine to machine to add an emphasis. Some stories have been laboriously typed several times, each version with small improvements.

How far we have come in the last 60 years. Many of these stories were published in the CTC magazine and they convey the scent of the time and illustrate the privations of warfare on the civilian front. They also provide an insight into the life of a grocer who closed early on Wednesdays and thought nothing of riding 60 miles to the Lake District for the afternoon. He had a good sense of humour and one article tells the story of his obsession and love for Lucy who eventually turns out to be a full-size adult tricycle of wayward habits. One of his last contributions was the poignant account of a run to Cheshire on the Sunday after VE day.

Currently I am transcribing these old articles which, if nothing else, have historic and curiosity value. I will get round to posting them and will provide links from here in case anyone is interested. In these days of Twitter, Facebook and unlimited blogging–everyone can now become a publisher–we have lost sight of how primitive things were even 20 years ago. I am old enough to remember the days before computers, before cellphones; the days of carbon paper (remember that? It now exists only in bureaucracies like Greece where the introduction of more computing power would put the paper-form-obsessed Luddite public sector out of work) and mechanical typewriters with black and red fabric ribbons. Now the opportunities are so much greater but, sometimes, we take them for granted.

Tweet anyone?

Mike Evans
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I may be an ancient Macfanboy but I'm not backward in adopting new technology. Not for me the ancient G4 and a copy of Apple Works. Give me the latest OS and the rammiest computer money can buy. I just like new things. But I have to say that I feel deprived because I cannot get used to Twitter. Everyone, especially the podcasters, rave about Twitter. Tour_1

Tweeting is the new publishing and anyone who doesn't tweet every minute of the day is somehow a Luddite. Well I've tweeted and twotterd and can't see the point of it. During the over-hyped mini riots of last week's G20 meeting in the City, I thought I'd monitor events on Twitter. Well, I have to say most of the comments were illiterate and difficult to read ("BG @twitbox:  pleze relay video of assault on innocient rioter") and I couldn't really see the point of it. I've tried, I really have, 'onest officer. 

I twittered MacOldie but was profoundly embarrassed to record I was eating a bacon sandwich in Fouberts' caff. Who on earth, except my digestive system, is interested in this? Maybe I am too old/out of step/slow of learning but I do wonder sometimes.

Four years a switcher

Mike Evans
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Incredibly, I have realised that it is exactly four years since I was converted from PC to Mac. I wasn't exactly on the road to Damascus when it happened; I was on the A4 motorway driving out of London. An acquaintance telephoned to say he'd just bought a Mac Mini for (I recollect) £299 in order to try out the Mac operating system. That weekend I made my first visit to an Apple Store, with absolutely no intention of buying. I saw the Mini, decided I could manage with an existing monitor and totted up the total cost, including a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. It was affordable, so I thought what the heck. Out came my credit card and I carried the very small Mini home. I fully expected to be selling it on eBay before the month was out. The rest is history, to borrow a phrase. Over one weekend I decided that OS X was definitely for me and got so enthusiastic that the following weekend I was in-store buying a PowerBook G4 (which is still bravely soldiering on). 

Switching really was not a problem, although initially there were one or two must-have programs I couldn't replicate on the Mac. I continued with Virtual PC for a time, then along came Boot Camp, Parallels and VM Ware to give a more satisfying PC experience on the Mac. Now, after four years, the software stock is amazingly wide and it is difficult to imagine not finding what you want. I now use my Parallels Windows machine for only two applications–my Sony eBook reader and the annual tax return. I can live with that. 

After four years (it feels much longer than that, and I can hardly remember the time I paid homage to Microsoft) I have not regretted the change for one second. Apple has opened up a whole new community to me. Apart from the excellence of the products and the software, the Mac community is extensive, friendly and helpful. The podcasts are magnificent (thank you Leo Laporte and friends) and Mackery has become an important part of my life.

Since that first Mini and PowerBook I've had a 17-inch Intel MacBook, a 13-inch black MacBook, a 24-inch iMac and, of course, my MacBook Air and new MacBook Pro. So if there are any doubters out there, put a toe in the Mac water and you'll soon be jumping in hook line and sinker.

Cool knees up

Mike Evans
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Laptops, even the MacBook Air, get hot. Resting one on the knees can be an unpleasant experience and, of course, the lack of air circulation can only make matters worse for the computer's innards. So it was with high expectations that I decided to try the rather wacky-looking Targus Chill Mat for Mac. It's a lightweight knee-top desk containing twin fans which are powered from any USB port. 

The verdict is that it works better than I could have imagined. It is comfortable, quiet and ideal for anyone who does a lot of knee-top computer work. I suspect it is also the thing for those who just have to have a laptop in bed with them. Nothing gets the temperature up like a laptop resting on a pile of blankets.

Apart from the obvious cooling, and the nice waft of cooled air over the lap, the device acts as a solid desktop and makes working on the computer so much easier and more pleasant. For sitting in front of the television and doing the odd bit of browsing it takes some beating. It sells for about £21 on Amazon UK and is worth every penny.

iPhone 1, Quills 0; Lord Nelson tweets to victory

Mike Evans
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Earlier this week I visited my bank to discuss pensions, as one does at my time of life. My pensions manager arrived complete with iPhone and an instantly recognisable geek-exuding Westfield Designs briefcase. I know him to be a great Mac enthusiast and, indeed, it was his suggestion a couple of seasons ago that I try DevonTHINK Pro and move towards the paperless office. We spent considerable time discussing GTD applications and just squeezed in an update on the flagging (and flogged) pension fund.

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All this new technology is the more impressive in the venerable surroundings of the bank. You see, it's a very traditional and rather grand place but it now combines history with modern ways of working. I remember thinking, 47 years ago when I opened my first account, that Charles Dickens would have been at home there. Actually, he was, because he is indeed a former customer.  The banking hall was all oak and brass and the clerks sat at very high desks on very high stools and had inkwells full of very real ink. No doubt there was an Ink Monitor lurking backstage with a quart dispenser (not yet metrified), ready to wage war on the upstart and verboten ballpens wherever they might be traced. 

It's as well they did have the ink because they were still writing with 19th century quill pens and had to take care not to get stains on their impressive black frock coats and pinstripe trousers (they were all men, of course, and women were then kept mosque-like behind a screen). Nowadays, these outfits are worn only at weddings and the quills have been passed to the in-house museum, along with Mr. Dickens' club subscription instructions, Lord Nelson's billets-doux and the Prince Regent's standing order in favour of Mrs. Fitzherbert ("….pay until countermanded in writing, George P…"). We've now moved on to Macs and iPhones (I've stuck that in because we are getting a bit off-subject here). 

Just think: The Lord High Admiral could have Tweeted instead of fumbling with all those flags. Undoubtedly, though, history would have been the poorer for it. England expects my ramblings will never appear in the museum.

USB memory sticks at 64GB

Mike Evans
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Not so long ago it was a talking point to own a a 64MB USB memory stick. Now 64GB sticks are filtering through. I ordered a Kingston 64GB dongle from an on-line supplier ("10 units in stock") but after waiting two weeks I was told they were not in stock. A plague on their house and I will look elsewhere in future. This morning I did a trawl of Tottenham Court Road, the mecca for geeks of all ages, sizes and shapes. 

But nary a whiff of a Kingston 64GB stick, and I needed one for my travels. So I settled for a 32GB Kingston stick from Protape in Percy Street. Very helpful and well priced. Most of my mission-critical files can go on this memory with sufficient space to cope with incremental backups. 

Memory is becoming cheaper and cheaper. In my MacBook Air I have a 64GB solid-state drive and that came at a huge premium twelve months ago. Now they fit 128GB for a lower retail price. And 256GB drives are now readily available. Soon, I imagine, all notebooks will be fitted as standard with solid-state drives instead of trouble-prone mechanical units. SSDs do not require periodic de-fragmentation and they are likely to be much more reliable in a mobile computer. My own experience shows that my Air boots much faster from an SSD than from a mechanical drive, and I believe that applications and data load quicker. So there is no downside other than cost, and that is being addressed as I write. 

At the shrine of the Blessed Steve Jobs

Mike Evans
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I see that we have no fewer than 20 Apple Stores in the UK, including the brand-new offering in the Westfield Mall, only a mile or two from my home in West London. But it was the venerable Regent's Street store I was entering on SatPhoto_whitecity
urday when I heard an Apple geek talking to a puzzled middle-aged woman about the joys of switching from her PC. I hope he was successful in his persuasion because I cannot now imagine not having my Macs and my iPhone. 

The whole experience from Apple is so smooth and trouble-free. It does come at a premium, though, and Microsoft's new US ads highlight the fact that you can get a 17-in laptop from XYZ for under $1,000 but all you can get from Apple is a 13-in MacBook. So be it. But the difference is not that huge when you bear in mind that Macs have a strong resale value and move quickly on eBay. Not long ago I sold a MacBook after two years' ownership for a staggering 60% of what I paid for it. Try doing that with a PC, however big the screen and however many gadgets are tacked on. The overall cost of ownership is therefore far less than the retail price differences would suggest.

Of course,  my credit card is always twitching when I enter any Apple Store and I confess I have occasionally bought things I didn't really need because the staff are so nice and friendly. Now I have the Westfield Mall store within walking distance I shall have to exercise restraint.

Vodafone 3G data networks

Mike Evans
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My experience, supported by press comments, is that Vodafone have one of the most extensive and fast 3G data networks in the UK. I certainly have few complaints about not getting a signal and I normally find that it's a fast connection. I've done speed tests and logged up over 2 Mbps, which is pretty good (the modem is rated at an optimistic 7.2 Mbps but I don't think the network yet supports over 3.6 Mbps). Like fixed broadband connections, the speed must vary depending on the traffic load and the number of users in a particular location.

But one thing sucks with the Vodafone for Mac experience. The software is dismal and lacks any semblance of design or user-friendliness. It pops up to activate the modem and then disappears as soon as you activate the service. You have to be pretty slick to jot down the usage to date shown on the opening screen. This is the only way you have of checking what you are doing. Once you have connected, there is no monitoring, nor any way to send text messages. All these problems are addressed by the far superior Windows software. Sadly, this piece of Mac software has not changed in the three years I have been using Vodafone products and is well past its sell-by date. 

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I was reminded of this again over the weekend when I was asked to set up a friend's T-Mobile pay-as-you-go data card. The T-Mobile software for Mac is excellent and you can monitor your usage very easily. It also allows the sending of SMS messages as you would expect. Incidentally, this deal from T-Mobile costs £2 per day for unlimited downloads (with a 3GB "fair usage" policy), which isn't bad at all. The weekly and monthly PAYG options are less attractive and you are better off with a 12-month or 18-month contract.But for the occasional user, £1.70 a day is great.
 
My friend will use the modem only occasionally, not more than on three days a month, so this makes sense. My message to Vodafone is to start looking after their Mac customers. 

Complaint pays off in the end

Mike Evans
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While I am on the subject of complaining, I have just had victory in my four-month-old dispute with Vodafone over a roaming charge applied to my Greek 3G data account. To remind readers, I have two Vodafone contracts, one in the UK and one in Greece. Both have similar modems and I take great care not to use either outside the country of origin. I know how disgusting data roaming rates can be. Over Christmas I caught myself out. Sure, it was my mistake–I plugged in the Greek modem instead of the English one while staying in an hotel in Brighton. I soon realised my mistake and shut down, but not before using some 27 MB of data. 

I immediately wrote to Vodafone Greece to say that I hoped my use was within the automatic daily roaming bundle of 50MB for €14.50. They came back to say it wasn't, citing the fact that my account predated the advent of this discount bundle and I should have requested that it be applied to my account (even though it is a no-cost option). They had the cheek to say I should check the small number on the back of the SIM card–44 for UK, 30 for Greece. This is all very well, but you don't want to keep taking the SIM out of the modem and that's why I have two identical modems (they are now clearly marked UK and Greece, now the horse has bolted).

Obviously I wasn't best pleased and wrote at length to tell them what I thought of their system. Shortly afterwards I was walking through London when I got a call from Vodafone Greece to assure me that there would be no charge for the use. Relief.

Of course this wasn't the end of it. I subsequently found €213 added to my January bill and no amount of cajoling or complaining got the charge removed. As I know from past experience, consumer laws in Greece are so rudimentary that suppliers do not respond to pressure. So I put pressure on Vodafone Group Plc in Reading, specifically to the Group Finance Director. 

Within three working days I have had a full apology by phone from Athens. The charge will be removed. It just shows that you have to be persistent. And it also draws into focus the criminally high roaming charges applied by telcos. We've all heard the (probably apocryphal) story of the holiday maker in Benidorm who incurred a $50,000 charge for watching movies on her phone. Vodafone Greece still charge €10 per MB or €1,000 per GB. That's just one episode of Spooks if you're inclined to a bit of entertainment when on holiday. At last, though, the European Union has its beady eye on the service providers and some improvements are forecast. 

The Waterstones/Sony Reader debacle

Mike Evans
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I was on my high horse this morning following a misunderstanding with Waterstones, purveyors of eBooks to the Sony Reader. All I buy from Waterstones online are eBooks, so when I received a special 10% discount offer valid for three days I decided to stock up with books for the summer. I bought £60-worth of eBooks yesterday but was surprised to find that the discount code hadn't been applied. I complained and Waterstones have taken refuge in the small print which specifically excludes eBooks from the discount. This is disappointing, but is quite typical of the disastrous way in which Waterstones, probably Britain's largest bookstore chain, have approached the new technology.

For starters, the web site is totally confusing with eBooks mixed up with Dead Tree Books. If you start looking for eBooks you are pretty soon sent to a real book and it isn't immediately obvious that that is what it is. I want to see a web site that shows me nothing but eBooks. Secondly, the site is very slow and the checkout process is laborious and unpredictable. Often the first attempt doesn't complete and I am forced to re-enter credit card and other details. Amazon can show them the way in almost every respect. 

Finally, and probably of most importance, the software to link the downloads to the Sony Reader is shameful. The fact that it is PC only is surely unforgivable in 2009. But it is also clunky and badly designed. You must use Adobe Digital Editions to buy the books (this is a good piece of software) but then you have to transfer them to the Sony Reader. The Sony software is one of the worst-designed pieces of rubbish I have ever come across, even for a PC application. Buying books stretches the capabilities of this Macfanboy because every book has to be manually transferred from Digital Editions to the Sony. How much easier it would be if the Sony were linked to the Adobe software instead of having its own. Heaven help the technically illiterate.

I have now fired off another red-hot email to Waterstones suggesting they get their act together before Amazon arrive with the Kindle. Or, worse for them, Apple decide to add eBooks to iTunes. I still love the eBook experience and am more than ever convinced that it is the future. Podcast guru Leo Laporte has recently been heralding the collapse of newspapers and the mass market for DTBs (dead-tree books) and I think he is right. Most people now download music, DVDs and selected television programs and the High Street retailers of physical products are falling off the perch one by one. There's a future here, and that future will not include Waterstones unless they pull their collective finger out. 

MacBook Air comes of age

Mike Evans
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My first-generation MacBook Air with the 64GB solid-state drive is now one year old. After being sidelined for a month or two, following the arrival of big-brother MacBook Pro in November, the Air has now come into its own as a "netbook". When I first added it to the stable I tried to make it my main computer and carted it to and fro between London and Athens. I soon realised it has some limitations which have been well chewed over in Mac circles: the single USB port, no Ethernet port (except with an adaptor) and no internal DVD drive. As a result, I had to carry a powered USB hub and I wasn't happy to go abroad without packing the external USB drive in case I had to reinstall OS X or other software. So my travel weight, including the lightweight 3lb Air, was almost the same as carrying a MacBook or even a MacBook Pro. There had to be some compromises, too, in what software to load and what data to carry. I made a good fist of minimising the OS (for instance, dropping unneeded printer and language support) and stripping languages and legacy pre-Intel code from applications. For the latter I used XSlimmer, an excellent, easy to use and reliable way of reducing program file sizes. 

Now I have the Pro, I've taken to using the Air purely as a portable web browser and find it light enough to pack in my Crumpler messenger bag and carry around with me. Using my Vodafone 3G data card, I'm able to get on the web from almost anywhere. I don't carry any sensitive data on the Air and I use Dropbox to store data files in daily use, including my MoneyDance financial file. Dropbox makes an excellent job of synchronising data with all my computers and is much faster than MobileMe. I'm now very happy with my Air and will use it until something better comes along. I haven't overlooked the increasingly strong rumours of a 10-in Mac netbook which many commentators believe is scheduled for later this year. 

Full house for data security

Mike Evans
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Here's the final addition to my security and backup strategy: cloud backup to Carbonite. However good your backup system, you need a reliable and up-to-date off-site arrangement. Over the past year a number of systems have become available and, also, viable because of faster internet connections. The pack includes Backblaze, Jungle Disk and Carbonite. The two main contenders for ease of use, according to the Macfanboys of the podcasts, are Backblaze and Carbonite. I tried both and finally settled for Carbonite because I felt the Mac interface was better. The subscription cost $100 for two years' service and the installation of the software was automatic and painless. Backup started immediately and I was told that there was a total of 30GB (essentially this is all the user files but excluding system files and applications). I also excluded movie and TV-show downloads because they are large files and, in any case, are backed up locally. I have a fast internet connection with up to 1.5MB upload speed, and it took just three days to polish off the 30GB. From now on Carbonite works in the background and, of course, incremental updates are relatively small. In common with other similar systems, Carbonite offers encryption of the data on upload and download. I now have a full house of protection: Carbonite for off-site, Drobo for reliable home backup, and PGP Whole Disk Encryption to protect my data in the event of loss of my MacBook Pro. Fingers crossed and a pinch of salt over the shoulder…..

Virgin territory

Mike Evans
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New to the MacOldie household is Virgin's 50 megabit cable broadband. Up to now I've had their 20 mbps offering so I was keen to take advantage of the new high-speed service available in many parts of the country, including my area of west London. Installation meant a new modem (the previous model was at least 10 years old, so about time). Speed tests during the day show that I am getting near enough to 50 mpbs but this slows down to around 25 mbps at peak times, presumably when neighbours are home from work and using bandwidth. So far so good. A big advantage for me (see my post on Carbonite) is the 1.6 mbps upload speed. This is really useful when a typical hard-drive backup to a cloud can take many days. With the new connection I'm achieving 10GB a day, which is pretty fast.

Drobo robot for peace of mind

Mike Evans
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My interest in backup and security has burgeoned in the last six months. The more we store on our hard drives, the more we begin to rely entirely on being able to retrieve important info at any time. I've mentioned before that I now run a paperless office; all my documents are scanned and then destroyed, except for the very few originals that must be retained. So a loss of electronic data is potentially a disaster. One backup isn't enough. Two is the minimum, and one of those should be kept offsite. Failure of a hard drive (and I've had one already this month) is only one problem. Theft of equipment, including external hard drives, is always a danger; and a home or office fire is the ultimate destroyer of electronic data.

The first step towards peace of mind is a backup system that provides protection against disk failure. Instead of having separate external disks and attempting to manage the backups manually, I've now installed a Drobo after hearing lots of positive comments on various podcasts. Unlike main RAID drive solutions, Drobo is extremely simple and is a plug-in-and-go answer to mirrored file storage. It holds up to four 3.5in SATA drives but the minimum is two for obvious reasons: if one drive fails the other contains all your data. To start with I've put in two 1 TB drives which gives me up to 1 TB of storage (the other terabyte being reserved for mirroring). Adding more drives increases the proportion of space available for files. With four one TB drives in a Drobo you have 5.5 TB of storage space with 1.8 TB of overhead for protection. Not a bad deal. The maximum theoretical storage space on any one Drobo is 16 TB but there are no 4 TB disks available yet–the maximum being the new 2 TB.

I also bought a DroboShare which sits under the Drobo box and allows networking to allow backup from any machine on the home network. All in all, the Drobo, DroboShare and two Western Digital 1 TB 7,200 rpm drives cost £750.

The beauty of Drobo is that you can swop out broken or redundant drives and the system automatically copes without any intervention. If a drive fails, just remove it and put in another. If you run out of space, just remove one or two of the smaller disks and put in larger ones. 

With the Drobo, you can forget about separate hard drives and there is consequently far less hassle. In theory, it provides a fail-safe solution and nothing short of theft of the Drobo or a fire could alter that. So far I am in my first two weeks of Droboing and I will report back later on experiences, good or bad. 

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