JohnH

Now THAT'S what I call a good collections policy.

I keep a hammer in the laundry room.

H-m-m. Hadn't thought of that. I think I'l buy my wife a CFL bulb for our laundry room.

You could follow this recent direction from IRS: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Warns-of-Pervasive-Telephone-Scam

I've scheduled about 5 for somebody else. I sent each of them an email notifying them that I'll have to file an extension if they want their return done by me next year - they all declined.

In looking back at my last post, that question I asked can be read with an unintended tone. "Your computer isn't too much for you, is it?" was meant to be rhetorical, but it looks a little snarky on the screen. My intent was just to suggest that using your smart phone is essentially the same thing as using you computer, which I 'm sure you can do to whatever degree of proficiency suits your purposes.

Maybe that's because you thought it was a phone. Actually, a smart phone is a sophisticated, highly portable computer which just happens to have telephone capabilities. Your computer isn't too much for you, is it?

Yes, it does appear to be a paradox, doesn't it? But I still contend that my disdain for e-flinging isn't a matter of being old-fashioned. And yes, I freely admit to being a gadget guy - always have been. Anyhow, take a look at how tech-savy Joel is. Compared to him, I'm still in electronics kindergarten - and he has quite a few years on me.

If one of those CFL bulbs got broken over your laundry, I think the EPA would want you to destroy all the clothes the fragments fell upon. http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl I've installed a few LED bulbs in my house and I like them much better than CFL's. LED's are more directional, but they are great in table lamps and can light fixtures. Prices still need to come down some more to make them truly economical, but I think that will come about over time.

Also, I read that even though the e-ink display is the reason the Pebple has a longer battery life, the Bluetooth connection drains the iPhone battery in about 7 hours on average. And that's without email notifications.

. I agree.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. - Mark Twain, a Biography Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man. - Notebook #14, Nov. 1877 - July 1878 All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity. - Mark Twain's Autobiography; also in Mark Twain in Eruption

But there is a HUGE, demonstrable advantage my practice of turning them off. I sleep much better at night, and consequently I am much less grumpy when posting to the Politics Forum. :)

True, and probably nothing wosrse than that will ever happen. But if you ever do have a serious problem, when it's over you'll be saying "Been doing this since 1980, and UP TO NOW the worst thing I've ever seen was a DOA system when opening in the morning". I've been drivinng for over 50 years and I've never caused an accident, but I still buckle up every time behind the wheel.

If you had seen some of the electronic equipment malfunctions I've seen over the last 40 years, you would have a different viewpoint. I don't trust anything with a moving part (fan) or anything with a heating element (printer or copier) that is left to shut itself off or go to sleep under any circumstances. If I knew a device could wake up on its own overnight in an unattended building to do an update or a backup, I'd probably not sleep well. I deny power to them before leaving the premises.. I know it's a belt & suspenders approach, but we all have our obsessions. Mine is based upon personal experience.

It's occasionally a problem for me when I'm shutting down for the day. I have a main power switch for each set of computers that I switch to ''off" before leaving, so when an unexpected update starts, I have to wait it out.

Good advice KC. That part of the post was not a joke. I was actually planning to buy one the next day. Went to Best Buy, talked with them, began to have some doubts, and then decided to read some more before parting with the $. The Pebble is very limited for the iPhone. I still intend to buy one, but I'm waiting for more apps and better features.

I'm not opposed to converting back. It all depends on how the software works and what the relative prices are. One never knows what can happen in business, and I still maintain you have to keep your powder dry. Besides, if the new ATX is the whiz bang program some are claiming, and if they can solve their dreadful slowness problem (BIG IF HERE), it might become something I'm interested in for other reasons. With my small number of clients, I didn't find it very difficult to simply enter everything by hand - didn't even bother to run a conversion program. Plus, the majority of my work was done on extension and that will be even more true in the next couple of years. I'm scaling back, so I expect to have even less clients by the 2014 filing season. This upcoming year is my big push to get at least 20% of them off my client list while increasing fees on the ones who are left. By the end of next year I'll see how that all shakes out.

Thanks Jack. I won't be using ATX for 2013 return, but I'm sticking around to see how things go for those of you who elect to continue with them. Looks like 2014 is going to be the shakedown cruise for the new and improved ATX. I'm tentatively keeping ATX on my short list of backup programs. One never knows - if I'm still in this business after next year, I might decide to give ATX another try in 2015.

Thank you, Taxed. That addressed my situation 100%.

Thanks. All those suggestions make sense. I do have essentially the same software on all 3 (except for my tax prep software beig on only one of them). But there are some hardware differences, And I agree with Jack - I've been beating the dead horse for a while. I expect it's going to start stinking up the corral by next Feb or Apr, so I'll have to call the dead horse guys to haul it away. (Assuming, of course, that Drake tells me I need to take that action)

I have a question about updates to Win XP that puzzles me. I have three computers at my work space. I switch each of them off at the end of the day and restart them the next morning. Each is a stand-alone with no networking of any sort, but all 3 use the same hard-wired internet connection (just in case that should matter). All three are running windows XP and I use each of the three in a similar manner each day for the tasks it is running. At mid-week, when I shut them down, two of the computers usually begin to install updates to XP, generally 4 to 6 updates. Then the next evening, the third computer will install updates. Sometimes it is the same number of updates and other times it is a different number of updates. But the third one almost never runs updates on the same day as the other two. Can someone explain to me what may be going on here? Since all three use XP and all three run the same duty cycle, why would one consistently get its updates later than the other two?

Did IRS commit a Circular 230 violation?

Drake probably pulled their conversion without comment because they are going to be honest with you while resisting the urge to cast aspersions on their competition. In my opinion, that's the honorable way to run a business.

One never knows when tax preparers may be called upon to help send men into space or process data for the NSA. Need to be prepared for any contingency. Tax preparation isn't just about basic math, looking things up in tables, and filling in forms, you know.