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Why not try GnuCash[/url] before spending money on Quicken?

I’ve worked in and out of an accounting office for years, and while they use several different accounting programs, including some that are designed especially for terminal server environments, GnuCash does everything most People need and want in accounting software. The office has to have different versions of Quicken installed, and after while, the cost of licenses, and the incessant prompting to upgrade overwhelm the normal user.

Always use Free and OpenSource Software when you have the chance!

I used GnuCash for a couple years (after having used MS Money). When I was presented with an offer for 1/2-price Quicken 2010, I took it – and am using it. But, so far, I don’t like it any more than GnuCash. (Both have plusses and minuses.) So, I should have saved my money and stayed with GnuCash. The biggest advantage – for me, with Quicken is the abillity to download data from all my bank, credit card and retirement accounts. The biggest advantage for GnuCash for me was the ability to easily search for a particular account entry.

I’m very interested in the results of that Memtest. Please post it here.

I had very similar problems – with a Dell Studio 14z purchased in December 2009.

But, for me, diagnostics was showing a SMART (disk drive) error. (I could not find a description of the error via Google, nor on the Western Digital site.)

[Here’s the error message I was seeing: “The scan failed with the following error: StatusUndefined – The SMART status information indicates status code 004Fh. ; StatusUndefined – The SMART status information indicates status code 0000h. Rerun the scan, and if it fails again, use the button to contact Dell.”]

Anyway, Dell wanted me to wipe the HD and reinstall also, but I decided NOT to do that. After about 6 weeks, I contacted Dell again. This time, they decided to send out a new hard drive.

So, I backed up all my data from the old drive, installed the new drive, reinstalled programs, copied data back, etc. BUT, in the process I broke two very small and delicate latches which connect cables from the keyboard to the main board.

So, Dell sent out a new keyboard, but that wasn’t any help since the keyboard did not include the broken latches which needed to be replaced.

So, Dell sent out a technician to replace my main board (that was the only way to get the latches back!).

But, after the tech. left and the computer had been running for about 30 minutes, it shut down. It did this repeatedly. I guessed something was overheating.

I called Dell back (actually chatted with them on their support site), and they sent the technician back out…. He had forgotten to attach the power to the CPU-cooling fan – or else it came loose when he was reassembling the computer. So, he reattached the power and put it all back together.

That was yesterday, so far the computer has not had any problems freezing up, although it hasn’t been used a lot yet.

Personally, I don’t think it was the hard drive that was causing the problem. I’m guessing the “new” main (aka, motherboard) fixed the problem. Although, it wasn’t a “new” main board, but a refurbished one, which is a bit disappointing since I paid for a new computer and now have a refurbished part in it. Perhaps the “refurbish” was to fix the problem which caused it to freeze!? (BTW, I have the same RAM now I had before, EXCEPT that there is 1GB of RAM permanently attached to the main board – and perhaps that RAM was bad.)

Dan

Thank you for that great tip. I was really annoyed by Skype staying on the task bar.