Han wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote in
:

Doug Winterburn wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:
Han wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote in
:

I'm running MoneyDance instead of Quicken, it has a native
Linux version.
Advantages: MoneyDance doesn't sunset it's software and
lobotomize newer versions. Imports Quicken files, so the
conversion is somewhat painless. Cheaper than Quicken.
Scrolling
and date auto-fill are much more intuitive and better than
Quicken. Disadvantages: Some people have had some issues with
on-line banking (I don't do that so I can't say). Investing
management is somewhat less intuitive. Checkout
www.moneydance.com, they do have a trial version.

Thanks for your replies, M&J, and LRod.

I did try Moneydance once, but the conversion from Quicken
sucked,
so I discarded it. I'm thinking about retiring, so then will be
the time to switch, especially since I just acquired (late 2007)
Q2008, and have to get my money's worth out of it!

Nobody using emulators yet?


I do use CrossoverOffice (a WINE wrapper). For some things it
works well:
TreePad, Quicktime, Lotus 123 (yes, I still have a few 123
spreadsheets, and TaxAct. For other things not so well. Thus
far
I have found that it won't load TurboCAD (I went with VariCAD
under
Linux), H&R Block TaxCut (too bad, that was what I started using
when TurboTax implemented their spyware activation scheme), or
MindManager.

I used TaxAct in Crossover Office this year for taxes, it
worked,
but I
was a bit more skeptical of the results than with TaxCut. Don't
remember all of the details, but there were a couple state forms
that I knew I had to complete, but TaxAct missed. I was able to
force TaxAct to fill them out, but that is not optimal.

Haven't tried the Msoft Office products under Crossover, I'm
using OpenOffice at home.

You can find what they do and don't support at
www.codeweavers.com




I've been using vmware-server (under linux) for almost a year and
you can run most versions of windoze if you already have a license
and linux and solaris 10. No rebooting to run any win app you
might
need, just boot up your virtual machine and have at it - in fact
as
many virtual machines as you might need. Real memory is the key,
and I've put 4GB on several wintel machines for under $100 each.
Virtual machine aren't emulators and run at your hardware rates if
not memory bound. If your app ran on a non virtual machine, it
will run on a virtual machine.

I looked into that; downside is that I would have to buy a
Windows
license. My machine has Windows 2000 with no OS disk -- it's an
end-of-life machine that our company sells to employees when
refreshing desktops. The license is a legal license, but there is
no
recovery if the machine has problems and also no disk that I can
use
to install into a virtual machine. The price was right though and
with OpenSuse Linux, a three year old machine runs faster than most
new machines with an Msoft OS.

Thanks Doug and M&J!
I might go the virtual machine route, although that would mean
reinstalling everything. Does a virtual installation of windows do
its updates too? I assume it does, as long as the hard drive is big
enough.

The virtual machine is like a separate computer within the computer.
On a machine with enough RAM you can have whole virtual networks going
with virtual servers and virtual workstations running a bunch of
different operating systems, all on the same machine.

You have to install Windows on the virtual machine just like you would
on a physical machine, with each virtual machine needing its own
installation, and with XP and later its own product activation. You
install updates in the virtual machine just like you would on a
physical machine, again with each virtual machine having to be updated
separately. Note--read the license _carefully_ before you call
Microsoft if you've having a problem with activation in the virtual
machine--some versions are licensed for virtual machines, others are
not, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to which are
and aren't--if you're trying to activate a version that's not licensed
for a virtual machine and you tell them that that's what you're doing
they probably won't give you a code.

If you have a valid product key for Windows 2000, by the way, then you
should be able to obtain media without a key inexpensively--call the
hardware manufacturer and see--price should be 20 bucks or so. If
that route fails, you can generally find images of the distribution
media on bittorrent--burn one to a CD and install with your key and
you're set.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)