mashby

May 3, 2011

Any Buyer’s Remorse Yet?

Today Apple unveiled new iMacs, which marks the second refresh to the line since I purchased my 27″ i7 back in January 2010. I dug through the specs, like I’ve done before, to see if there was anything compelling enough to consider upgrading.

The differences between what I have now and the new 27″ i7 are:

A processor that is .6 GHz faster
2MB less L3 Cache
Upgraded video card with quadruple the RAM (2GB vs. 512MB)
HD FaceTime camera
(2) Thunderbolt connections

Last time it was easy scoff at, but I have to admit that this time has me scratching my head a bit. I even went so far as to price the value of my current machine on Gazelle (screenshot) to see how much I’d have to come up with.

$2,730.16 – New 27″ iMac w/ Tax
$1,132.00 – Current 27″ iMac
————————-
$1,598.16 – Difference

With that much of a gap, it just doesn’t seem worth it for the upgrade. The difference alone is enough for a MacBook Pro.

So do I have any buyer’s remorse? Absolutely not. I’ve had this machine for almost a year and a half and if my 2007 MacBook is any indication, I’ll be using this bad boy for many years to come.

April 9, 2011

Quickbooks Online Crashes Safari

I’ve been a QuickBooks user since I started my first company back in 1997. It’s been a love hate relationship mostly because I don’t enjoy working on the books. Recently though, QuickBooks has kicked things up a notch by drop kicking my browser when it prints more than one time.

When I switched to the Mac back in 2006 I wasn’t happy with the Mac version and so I continued to use the Windows version. In 2009-2010 I switched to Quickbooks Online because it looked like the product had become more stable and relable.

Why didn’t I get QuickBooks for Mac? Well, for starters it’s almost $200 and (from what I’ve heard) lacks many of the features found on it’s Windows counterparts. Of course QuickBooks Online charges me a monthly fee, so I suppose it’s all the same in the end.

I have looked for alternatives, trust me. I bought Cha-Ching, but they were acquired by Intuit. I signed up for Mint and they too were acquired by Intuit, but they’ve at least kept the service running. Even today, I did a search on AlternativeTo.net, but I just don’t see any viable alternatives.

There are some great invoicing products out there, like FreshBooks, but I need the full accounting package, not just invoicing.

Why am I so down on QuickBooks? Because of a new little gem that happens every time I need to print more than one item. I can consistently crash QuickBooks Online meaning that my browser completely shits the bed and crashes. What special magic does it require? Simply print more than once. Don’t use Safari you say? Well, the same thing happen in Firefox and Chrome as well. It’s a pain in the ass, but at least it’s consistent.

Here’s a video that will show you how the crash ~~works~~ happens.

QuickBooks Online Crash Issue When Printing from Michael Ashby on Vimeo.

I posted a question in the Intuit Community [link] and was surprised that I got a response. Unfortunately, the response was to call customer support. I’ll be sure to get right on that when I have an hour to waste.

In the meantime, if anyone has any other suggestions, I’m all ears.

March 23, 2011

Drool…

The images above are examples of the name tags that were used at the last Facebook Developer Conference. The design completely blows me away. All I can do is sit and drool looking at these incredible name tags. If you want more, I suggest you check out the Fonts In Use article since they have better command of the English language than I do at the moment.

Source: Fonts In Use

March 23, 2011

Why I Love Louis C.K

This is a segment of the last routine I saw by Louis C.K., I forget what the tour was called, but it’s a perfect example of just how damn funny this guy is.

Source: Kung fu grippe via YouTube