Margret Sloan

Read on the Yahoo main page that Microsoft is stopping support of their Windows XP this summer. They expect everyone to upgrade to VISTA.

I’ve heard a lot of people fussing about bugs in the VISTA program, but to be honest, I’ve been using VISTA for over a year and I love it. Knock on wood - I’ve not had any problems with it. There have been a couple of odd things, but usually when I restart the computer everything is back to the way it should be.

I think my only concern with the VISTA and the way I use my home PC is that sometimes I like to take a break and step away from the computer, leaving multiple windows open so I can resume my work later. But a few times when I come back to the computer, it has automatically downloaded updates and has restarted the computer on its own. So all my windows get closed and that ticks me off.

Real estate agents and brokers have the need for a very specialized database, with information relevant to their industry. Agents need to keep track of critical documents, such as offer letters, contracts and closing statements. Most agents use some sort of database to keep track of clients and prospects, and often merge those names and addresses into letters, envelopes and postcards as part of their marketing campaigns.

A successful agent is very busy and keeping organized and efficient is critical to their success. Computers have been a great tool for agents, but until now finding software specific to real estate agents has been hard to do. Now there is help for real estate agents with a software package called Agent Organizer. If you have an interest in software for real estate agents, take a look at the website for Agent Organizer and see if this new program meets your needs. You can try it out for free for 15 days so if you decide to buy it you will know what to expect and how to use it.

My daughter-in-law is in the process of moving to her new apartment this week. I rounded up all the large empty boxes I could find and sent them over to her so she could get started packing. The new apartment has an extra bedroom and is more spacious, so I’m glad she’s moving up.

She’ll be turning the extra bedroom into a home office so she can do more work from home and not have to pay for child care, plus she’ll be saving cash by not having to commute. Of course, setting up the home office will take a bit of cash, but you can’t make money if you don’t spend money.

We’ll be underwriting some of the home office equipment to help her out. Since we are on a tight budget, we are looking for ways to save as much money as we can, yet we can’t always get the cheapest products - there are some quality and reliability issues to consider as well as price.

A great source for money saving coupons is a website I found online. There are a variety of coupons to save significant money on Dell small business computers. We are also going to need some home office furniture, at the very least a computer desk and task chair.

I’m not sure which way to advise her on a printer for her new home office. I haven’t had much luck with the last ones I’ve bought. At the moment I’m using a cheap laser printer that only prints black and white, but it is a workhorse and I can use refilled toner cartridges, which saves a lot of money. I think for the sake of just getting started, she should probably have one like what I’m using, and when she starts making money she can upgrade to a color printer later.

I’ve been reading more and more about being carbon neutral and our carbon footprint. There was a good article in Wiki and several recent articles in the major dailies. Now there is a search engine similar to Google but it is a Carbon Neutral Search Engine.

The way the Carbon Neutral search works is that the company hosting the search engine takes an estimated carbon emission for each search and donates a minimum of 300g via their offsetters Climate Care and Carbon Fund.

Climate Care is a leading offsetting organization in the U. K., and Carbon Fund is a leading US non profit carbon offsetting company.

It is a pretty cool idea and if you like the search engine results, then you are helping the planet by using it as your default search engine!

Found an interesting note today about people making plans to set a new world record for throwing backgammon dice. I didn’t realize that there was a record for this already and that is was a sought after record to break!

The operators of a website that holds backgammon games and tournaments has made plans to hold a backgammon tournament on a huge field with huge playing pieces and dice, then have the people in the tournament flying in helicopters to drop the dice from the air onto the field. Thus, the new world record, based on the distance from the helicopter to the playing field. Interesting plan, don’t you think?

Backgammon is a great way to play a quick game against either a live opponent, a computer opponent or an online opponent and there are some websites that let you wager money on the outcome of your backgammon game and online backgammon tournaments.

Most websites have free downloads of their backgammon game software and many have large communities of regular players who compete online in league games and online tournaments, some of them win points and ratings and serious players compete for money. After all, backgammon was originally a betting game, with doubling the bets a large part of the player strategy to increase their winnings.

The world record seekers, Backgammonmasters.com have online backgammon tournaments and also online blackjack games. If you need help getting started, read the online help for beginners and often an experienced player will not mind volunteering to play a game with you and help you along.