Tip for visutally impaired or doc with small fonts

As I get older I occasionally run into something that's displayed in a font too small for me to read and with no easy way to enlarge the font. Windows has an answer for my situation and one that may significantly extend the time that visually impaired people can use their PC. That answer is the magnifier utility.Magnifier has been around for a long time -- but it's rarely discussed and most people don't even know it's there. It's available from the Accessories menu under XP. Under Vista, I start it by typing magnifier on the Start Search box and under Windows 7 it's displayed on the start menu.Magnifier is a great little tool. It opens a sizeable "frame" at the top of your screen and allows you to control the magnification from 2x to 16x.Try it if you're even in this situation or ever have one of those "senior moments" when you simply need a little help seeing something.

An Unbelievable But True Weekend

The story I'm about to tell is 100% true. It sounds absolutely unbelievable -- so unbelievable that though I say it's 100%, I'm sure you'll have doubts. With everything I'm discussing in this story, I've considered changing my name from John to Job.

Here goes....

I had a doctor's appointment on Thursday before Labor Day. I assumed beforehand that it would be 15 minutes -- go in and get weighed, have vitals taken, have the doctor listen to my heart and then to McDonalds for breakfast. I didn't consider the fact that I would leave 2 hours later with an appointment to be admitted to the hospital the next day for another cardiac cath.

The cath was about as uneventful as it could be; though the doctor decided I needed to stay at least overnight for some "additional tests".

My wife picked me up on Friday. We were on our way home when I received the first call that put a negative imprint on the holiday weekend. It seems that a friend of ours was spending the holiday weekend riding horses near the Virginia - Tennessee line. His horse was spooked by dogs; he was thrown off; he was transported to the local hospital and was in a coma.

That was bad enough; but at 12:15 on Labor Day morning, I received a call from my sister's middle daughter. All three of my sister's girls were visiting for the long weekend because their dad had quadruple bypass surgery less than 2 weeks before. My sister had fed the oldest daughter's three month old son and was rocking him to sleep when the baby cried out and died in her arms. As paramedics worked on the baby, my sister had a near fatal heart attack.

That obviously put a real damper on the holiday -- and that was certainly more than enough to make this story completely surreal; but it's not over.

At 11 o'clock that morning I received yet another telephone call. The senior minister of the church I served during the near decade we spent in Washington had suddenly died of a heart attack. Jerry was the brother I did not have during the years in DC; so his death was traumatic.

But the story is still not over. A follow-up doctor's visit indicated that the etiology of the pains I have been having in my legs and extremities is in my lower back; so surgery is likely to correct that near term.

See what I meant. We're stretching the belief that God never gives one more than can be tolerated.

Company Identity

I often see nice business cards that include email addresses that read:

username@msn.com or username@yahoo.com or username@bellsouth.net ....

The list of options goes on and on; but you get my drift. To make things worse, I SOMETIMES see cards that contain the address of a legitimate web site with one of the email addresses I mentioned above.

I'm convinced that an established and consistent company image is one of the most important (and, incidentally least expensive) things a company can do. Keeping your company name in front of the public is an essential element of doing business.

Of course, we recommend that almost all companies have a domain name that represents that company's name and, if possible, some representation of what the company does. In most instances, we recommend that a web site be incorporated into the overall marketing strategy.

Whether or not there's a web site, we recommend that companies have name centric email addresses (e.g., username@companydomainname.com) and NEVER -- absolutely NEVER have business email hosted at AOL with email addresses of username@AOL.com.

Talk to us at JFSI for more information about how we can help you with these efforts.

A disturbing reality

I've been following with great interest news reports that project that for the next two years recipients of Social Security Benefits will see no Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA).

The same articles articulate in great detail the fact that medical expenses, typically the largest expense imposed on seniors, and Medicare and Medigap premiums are likely to rise sharply. Since these premium amounts are typically deducted from the recipient's monthly check, the net effect is that for the first time in over three decades, the amount received montly will GO DOWN.

Let's see if the birds on the hill who sit on chambers of our legislature take a commensurate cut.

Windows 7 Test Results

We have been doing some pretty extensive testing of Windows 7 since Microsoft released the "production" version to the partners web portal.

We have several test scenarios that I'll describe here.

Scenario 1. Microsoft has said that hardware minimums required for W7 are a 1+ gigahertz processor and 1 gig of memory. We tried to "stretch" that envelope; so we installed W7 Professional on a DELL 4300 with a 1.5 gigahertz processor and 512 MB of memory. We were, quite frankly, suprised that it would even install; but it did and it's running at least as well as XP on the same machine. Of course, we'd NEVER have tried to load Vista on that platform.

We expected to run into problems with the network adapter and the video card. Then we realized that we had long ago replaced the NIC that shipped with the machine with a Netgear adapter that W7 recognized right away and had no problems with.

We had to go to the NVIDIA web site and download video drivers in order to get an acceptable video presentation.

We've run a fair number of programs, including the Office 7 suite and GoToMeeting on the box and so far so good.

Scenario 2. Install W7 Professional on an XP based HP Notebook. The drill was essentailly the same as with the DELL except that the laptop had plenty of memory and is performing better. The install did NOT recognize the Intel Wireless; and getting it installed and configured was a reasonably difficult chore; but once we got over that hump things look OK.

Scenario 3. Install on a new clean machine with an AMD Dual Core processor and 4MB memory. Everything went swimmingly.

Problems...... We had to DOWNLOAD the two versions of W7. It took two tries to get a successful download of W7 Professional and the copy of Ultra downlaoded with errors and will not install. This is a MAJOR problem because of the size of the product and the time it takes to download even on our Time Warner Road Runner Turbo connection.

Email Alternative We Give An A+

Had someone suggested even a few months ago that I would be writing this post, I would have said they were crazy and recommended a thorough mental evaluation. That was back during the days when a product not produced by Microsoft was unheard of in our repetoire of products.

JFSI has from day one run Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange. We liked it so much that we never even considered alternatives; and many of our clients are prety much in the same boat.

Don't get me wrong -- Exchange is a great product. For medium to large sized companies it still has no equal.

A few months ago, a friend and I were talking about the concepts of "Software as a Service (SaaS)". You've undoubtedly heard about it and the whole idea behind "cloud computing".

During this conversation, my friend mentioned that they were evaluating Google's suite of applications called "Google Apps".

The conversation intrigued me to the point where I started doing some research; and that research led me to beta test the product in our environment. To make this long story endless, we liked what we saw so much that we dumped Exchange for Google Apps.

You ask -- WHY?

• We were initally concerned that Google Apps' email was nothing more than GMail. While it has a lot of the characteristics of GMail, it's different; it's secure; it's reliable; it's fast; it's avaialble from any computer with an Internect connection and I like it better than Outlook Web Access (OWA).
• JFSI is in business to support small to medium sized companies -- not medium to large to mega sized ones. An Exchange environment can be very expensive.
• We were initally concerned that we'd lose the ability to access our mail through our much loved, tried and true Outlook client; but that concern was short lived because Outlook works fine with the applications
• We LOVE the fact that multiple users can simultaneously work on the same document, see changes each user makes and know that the application is doing document versioning and keeping track of who does what
• We LOVE the fact that the applications seamlessly synch with our Blackberrys through the air, eliminating the need to tether them to a PC in the office or spend the money to install Blackberry Enterprise Server software
• We LOVE the price -- $50.00 per user per year for a 25GB storage space
• During the last month, we've caught one message in our spam folder that should have been in our Inbox
• While we have not done a lot with it yet, the Intranet services included in the applications seems to rival those provided by SharePoint Services.

Send me an email or give me a call if you'd like more information about our experiences.

BING - The New Search Engine on the Block

Live search is evolving -- and there is FINALLY an alternative to Google's search engine.

Microsoft recently introduced their "next generation" search engine. We were one of the early adopters and beta testers and we became very fond of Bing's capabilities and features.

What we call a "sidebar" is one feature we really like. Hovering over a vertical line to the right of a search result will cause a "snip" of the text of the page in question to be displayed. What's more significant is that this works with both HTML and scripted pages.

We also like the fact that the left side of your search results page contains yet another sidebar -- this time with a history of previous searches.

We strongly suggest that you give Bing a try. It's available at http://bing.com. It's FREE, it's evolving. We believe that though it's got a long way to go from a marketshare point of view that it's got a lot of potential.

An Important But Unfortunate Part Of Our Business

One component of our business is often overlooked; but it's an important part of what we do. It's also unfortunate that this part of the business is necessary -- but when it's needed it is a valuable and important part of our range of services.

That service happens to be our "computer forensic" service -- a service initially deployed at the request of one of our attorney clients. What was initially intended to be little more than a quick check of a computer to see if there was any obviously incriminating information has grown into a full-fledged service offering.

The intent of this service is simple...

• We review the contents of a computer that may contain incriminating information, pornography, illicit or illegal information, inappropriate e-mails, pictures or instant messages.
• We provide this service in a manner that will ensure that information found during the analysis will be allowable in court or significant in mediation
• We provide our client(s) with information we find during our analysis of the computer
• We appear as an expert witness if needed for our client

This service is currently available ONLY to attorneys and ONLY when domestic disputes or divorces are being litigated. We do not plan to extend this service to the "general population" because of legal, technical and ethical issues.

Multiple Time Zones in MS Outlook

I had the situation yesterday where I was working with an individual in a far-away time zone; and I was having trouble calculating the time difference between them and me. Then I found a quick and easy solution to the problem -- to let Microsoft Outlook do the thinking for me.

It's easy as pie to display two time zones in your Outlook calendar. Here's how.

• Click the TOOLS menu
• Click OPTIONS
• Click the CALENDAR OPTIONS button
• Click the TIME ZONES button
• Click SHOW AN ADDITIONAL TIME ZONE
• Enter the desired time zone
• Click OK

That's all there is to it.

June Tips For Using Outlook

I received this from HP earlier today. I have personally been using these tips for quite some time. If you're not, you might want to consider them.

Top tips to keep emails out of your spam bin

Spam surveys state what many of us already know: that the amount of junk email is on the rise. However, exact statistics vary: Internet security vendor McAfee claims 62 trillion spam emails were sent last year, while rival security company Norton says 350 billion went out in 2008.
One thing you can be certain of is that your spam filters are doing a lot of work these days. The trouble is, separating the junk from the genuine isn’t easy. As a result, you have probably experienced the inconvenience of important emails from clients being redirected to your spam bin.

To avoid losing valuable customer orders, or instructions from your boss, you can quickly and easily add your Microsoft® Office Outlook® contacts to a Safe Senders list. This will make sure that messages from these contacts arrive in your inbox.

5 super-speedy steps

To add your Outlook contacts to the Safe Senders list, perform the following steps:

1. On the Outlook Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, under Email, click Junk Email.
3. Click the Safe Senders or Safe Recipients tab.
4. Click Add.
5. In the Enter an email address or Internet domain name to be added to the list box, enter the name or address you want added, and then click OK.

1-2-3: Rescue email from your spam bin

If you have your Outlook Junk Email Filter set on a high level of protection, some of your genuine messages may go to your Junk Email folder – for example, emails from friends or customers that your filter has not seen before. To be safe, you should check your junk folder daily if you are expecting a crucial email. But to make sure your filter knows not to move mails from certain people to your spam folder, follow these three steps:

1. In Mail, click the Junk Email folder in the Navigation Pane.
2. Right-click any message that you want to mark as not junk.
3. On the shortcut menu, point to Junk Email, and then click Mark as Not Junk.
   

Blue from your boss, red from your friends: color-coding

To help you identify emails from management or certain contacts, Outlook lets you color code emails. This means you won’t miss critical messages from the head office or your loved ones.

To color-code your emails (Outlook 2007):

1. Select an email from someone you want to color code.
2. Press Tools then click Organize. A pane will scroll down.
3. On the left side of that pane choose Using Colors. The name of the sender will now be visible in the above box.
4. Choose the option From. You’ll see the name field automatically adjusting when you select a message from someone else.
5. Choose a color from the dropdown list and press Apply Color.
   

In Outlook 2003, you can do the following to color code your emails:

1. Select and email from someone you want to color code
2. Right click on it, select Create Rule Select Advanced Options
3. Check the box indicating you want to assign a rule to the person who sent you the email (probably the first box),
4. hit next
5. Choose Flag message with a colored flag in the center of the list; to specify the color you wish to use, click on “a colored flag,”select color
6. Click through to finish.

Now each email from this particular person will come into your inbox pre-flagged with the color you specified.

Google Mail and Yahoo! can help too

Outlook has a lot of handy tricks for beating spam. But if you don’t use Outlook, other email clients like Yahoo! and Google Mail also allow you to tag certain emails as junk, while they usually recognize senders loaded in your contacts as non-junk. It is worth investigating the features they offer to help you against spam.

In the battle against the spammers, it pays to be proactive. By using these Outlook features, you can make your inbox more efficient, and improve your chances of receiving the emails that matter most to you.

Microsoft and Outlook are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

2009 Relay For Life

It felt strange viewing Relay For Life vintage 2009 from the sidelines last Friday night. But what a wonderfully good experience watching faces of survivors, caregivers and just people who care.

I want to say "Thank You" to Debrah and Leigh for spearheading another Relay For Life. But they could not do it alone; so I say "Thank You" to the hundreds of team captains and team members and corporate sponsors who have worked so hard to make this year's event the success it obviously was.

You missed a great evening if you were not there. A year from now there will be another -- likely bigger and better than this year's event; so can we count on you to commit TODAY to making next year's Relay successful?

I've made a little clip of a few of the pictures I made. Hope you enjoy.

45 Lessons Life Taught Me

Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio.

To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 last August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

Golfers (and fans) Unite

I think I'm likely the only avid golfer that everybody who's ever played the game can beat! My game redefines the definition of awful! But as bad as it is, I still love to try and especially love the fact that a game of golf gets me outside and away from the frenzy of a "normal" day for four or five hours.

I'm sure that you have heard the news that disturbs me today -- the news that Amy Mickelson, the lovely wife of Phil Mickelson, has been diagnosed with cancer.

My wife and I were in Pinehurst in 1999, watching Phil compete for the title of US Open Champion when Amy was due to give birth to the first of their children. Even though he played to a tie and was committed a playoff round, Phil had told officials and fans alike that he would forego his chances at a major and leave should Amy go into labor.

As a cancer survivor myself, my heart aches at Amy's news and at the uncertainty that's bound to overwhelm Phil and the family. We just hope that they have found her cancer early when chances of a full recovery are best.

Join me in wishing the best for the Mickelson family -- to Amy, to Phil, the kids and their extended family. Join my in praying daily that they will find peace during the difficult days ahead.

JFSI Supports Kernersville Relay For Life

As a two time cancer survivor, I realize that a cancer diagnosis -- even a diagnosis of TERMINAL CANCER -- is a guaranteed death sentence. Doctors are well trained and more often than not can and do predict that actual outcome. But they are not and should never pretend to be GOD.

As someone who has twice been subjected to the pain and uncertainty imposed by the dreaded "C" diagnosis, I encourage you to join with me to support Kernersville's upcoming Relay For Life.

Relay does much more than raise money for research, as important as that is. In my opinion, the most important thing Relay does is emphasize that there is HOPE and to CELEBRATE victories of those of us who now categorize ourselves as "survivors".

East High School is once again the venue; and the event date is Friday evening May 29 through Saturday morning, May 30th. The event kicks off with a survivor lap around the track, with the rest of the evening event filled and fun for the entire family.

Can I count on you being there?

Life can be much too serious

I thought you would like to see something other than the economy or the flu. So, I laughed at a few of these .

If you have a kid (or are a kid) you will like them

1. How Do You Catch a Unique Rabbit?
Unique up On It.

2. How Do You Catch a Tame Rabbit?
Tame Way, Unique Up On It.

3. How Do Crazy People Go Through The Forest?
They Take The Psycho Path.

4. How Do You Get Holy Water?
You Boil The Hell Out Of It.

5. What Do Fish Say When They Hit a Concrete Wall?
Dam!

6. What Do Eskimos Get From Sitting On The Ice too Long?
Polaroids.

7. What Do You Call a Boomerang That Doesn't work?
A Stick.

8. What Do You Call Cheese That Isn't Yours?
Nacho Cheese.

9. What Do You Call Santa's Helpers?
Subordinate Clauses.

10. What Do You Call Four Bullfighters In Quicksand?
Quattro Sinko.

11. What Do You Get From a Pampered Cow?
Spoiled Milk.

12. What Do You Get When You Cross a Snowman With a Vampire?
Frostbite.

13. What Lies At The Bottom Of The Ocean And Twitches?
A Nervous Wreck.

14. What's The Difference Between Roast Beef And Pea Soup?
Anyone can Roast Beef.

15. Where Do You Find a Dog With No Legs?
Right Where You Left Him.

16. Why Do Gorillas Have Big Nostrils?
Because They Have Big Fingers.

17. Why Don 't Blind People Like To Sky Dive?
Because It Scares The Dog.

18. What Kind Of Coffee Was Served On The Titanic?
Sanka.

19. What Is The Difference Between a Harley And a Hoover?
The Location Of The Dirt Bag.

20. Why Did Pilgrims' Pants Always Fall Down?
Because They Wore Their Belt Buckle On Their Hat.

21. What's The Difference Between a Bad Golfer And a Bad Skydiver?
A Bad Golfer Goes Whack, Dang! A Bad Skydiver Goes Dang! Whack.

22. How Is a Texas Tornado And an Alabama Divorce The same?
Somebody's Gonna Lose A Trailer!

Now, admit it. At least one of these made you smile.

Time Warner's Decision Sucks

JFSI has since 1998 been dedicated to providing high quality web, network and data services to professional clients throughout the Southeast.

The choice of Internet access technology and Internet vendor was one of the first major decisions we had to make. After a bad experience with a failed DSL vendor which came into the area, JFSI chose Time Warner Cable’s Business Class Road Runner service as our preferred way to access the web. Road Runner has never been the “cheapest” solution; but I’ve always considered it to be a cost effective solution when considering BOTH service/bandwidth and price. Many of you followed my recommendation and installed Road Runner at your businesses and homes.

Time Warner Cable is considering making some changes that deeply distress me – changes that will potentially reduce the service we’re now getting and markedly increase the costs.

TWC has always based its monthly rates on unlimited traffic at tiered bandwidth. For instance, a home or business user who elected TWC’s “turbo” service had unlimited amounts of service at whatever bandwidth was guaranteed for the “turbo” service (e.g., 10 mbs). Both bandwidth and traffic will be metered under the new plan.

I recently had a long chat with TWC – a chat driven by my displeasure with the service they were providing and the price point for that service. The meeting centered around:

• Me being upset because of several protracted outages. These outages were planned by TWC; but users were not notified ahead of time, leaving us potentially unable to deal with customer problems until TWC completed their work. My argument was simple – had I KNOWN, I could have PLANNED and told my clients that there would be times when I would potentially be limited in terms of ability to provide remote service.
• Me being upset because of the TWC pricing model and the fact that my TWC bill is the second largest I pay every month – second only to mortgage. I was also upset because of steep discounts being offered to new customers at the same time they were raising rates on the “faithful”.
• Me being upset at their customer service / support. We had recently gone through a period where I had spent unproductive hours on the phone with TWC support working on problems that various clients had experienced.
• I reminded TWC that they had lost sight of the fact that they were no longer the “only kid on the block” in terms of quality Internet service.
  
  BusinessWeek has an article that describes the TWC plan for tiered pricing. It’s at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090331_726397.htm. With JFSI providing extensive remote support and MANY large file downloads, etc. it’s a given that our already large monthly invoice will certainly increase. I will keep you posted on what we do; but I hope that you will join me in voicing opposition to Time Warner implementing this policy.
  

EXERCISE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5-lb potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato bags.Then try 50-lb potato bags and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I'm at this level.)

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each bag.

Summary of Tax Relief Plan

I'm sure that many of you are, like me, Turbo Tax users. If so, you likely have been advised of the information I'm including in this post.

The current TurboTax Newsletter had the following explanation of the government's tax relief program. I hope you'll find it helpful.

Most taxpayers will get more money in their pockets in 2009

The new recovery act, according to the White House, will give a direct tax break to 95 percent of workers and their families, through the Making Work Pay Credit.

The law contains many other tax breaks that should provide a financial boost to everyone from the unemployed and low income, to families with children and children in college, to first-time homebuyers and taxpayers buying new cars.

The $787 billion legislation, which Congress approved Feb. 13, is designed to get both individuals and businesses to open their wallets and to lift the economy out of its slump. Most of the cuts are good for only a year or two.

As more details about the tax changes become available, TurboTax will post them here.

Tax breaks for individuals, families:

Workers

Making Work Pay Credit: Workers and the self-employed would get a payroll tax credit for 2009 and 2010 of up to $400 a year for single taxpayers, and up to $800 for couples filing jointly.

The IRS will get the money to taxpayers by adjusting the withholding tables, thereby boosting paychecks. The increase could be as much as $40 per month per worker, depending on when the withholding tables are changed. Self-employed workers will claim the credit on their tax returns. In the meantime, they can reduce their estimated tax payments for 2009.
For single tax filers, the credit will begin phasing out at an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $75,000. For couples filing jointly, the phaseout zone will start at $150,000 of AGI. (Adjusted Gross Income is your total income from wages and other income minus certain adjustments, such as deductible IRA contributions and alimony paid.)

Unemployed

Reduced taxes on unemployment income: Normally, people receiving unemployment benefits must report them as income and can be taxed on them. The new bill makes the first $2,400 of unemployment income nontaxable.

First-time homebuyers

First-time Homebuyer's Credit: The tax package increases the $7,500 first-time homebuyer credit to $8,000 for primary residences purchased between Jan. 1, 2009 and Nov. 30, 2009, and eliminates the requirement that the credit be repaid, as long as the house isn’t sold within three years.

College students

Expanded Hope Credit: The Hope Credit for college costs is increased to $2,500 for 2009 and 2010, covering 100 percent of the first $2,000 of tuition and related expenses per year and 25 percent of the next $2,000.

The credit is available for all four years of college, up from only two years, and covers the cost of books. It is 40 percent refundable, and begins to phase out at $80,000 of Adjusted Gross Income for singles and $160,000 of Adjusted Gross Income for married couples.

The bill also allows tax-free distributions from Section 529 College Savings Plans to cover computer purchases.

New car buyers

New car sales tax deduction: Buyers of new cars, light trucks, SUVs, motorcycles or motor homes during 2009, can deduct the state sales or excise tax they pay, even if they don’t itemize their deductions.

This break starts phasing out for single taxpayers with Adjusted Gross Income over $125,000 and couples with AGI over $250,000.

Tax Breaks for Families

Expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): More couples who file jointly and have children will qualify for the Earned Income Credit.

The tax package starts the phaseout range at $21,420, an increase of $1,880. Also in 2009, the credit increases for families with three or more children to 45 percent of the first $12,570 of earned income, up from 40 percent.

Enhanced Child Tax Credit: Plus, the Child Tax Credit will cover more low-income earners: For 2008, the credit is refundable to the extent of 15 percent of an individual’s earned income in excess of $8,500; for 2009 and 2010, that floor drops to $3,000.

Retirees, veterans and the disabled

One-time payment of $250: Because the payroll tax credit only goes to employees and the self-employed, the bill adds something for others as well: a one-time payment of $250 to recipients of Social Security benefits, Railroad Retirement benefits, Supplemental Security Income payments, and pension and disability benefits from the Veterans Administration.

Government retirees who don’t get Social Security will also get a one-time refundable tax credit of $250 in 2009.

Homeowners

Extended energy-saving credits: The 10 percent tax credit for energy-saving home improvements climbs to 30 percent and is extended through 2010. Improvements that qualify for the credit include energy-efficient skylights, windows and outer doors, along with energy-saving water heaters, central air conditioners and biomass stoves.

The bill also eliminates individual credit caps for the different types of property, and instead imposes a $1,500 cap on all qualifying property.

Middle-income taxpayers

One-year "patch" on the Alternative Minimum Tax: To keep millions of middle-income taxpayers from being forced to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for 2009, the measure increases the minimum tax exemptions to $70,950 for couples filing jointly and $46,700 for single filers. Otherwise, the exemptions would top out at just $45,000 for couples and $33,750
for singles.

Businesses will get a big share of the tax breaks

Small businesses would most likely be affected by the following changes:

Bonus depreciation

Special 50 percent, first-year bonus depreciation is revived for assets bought and placed in service during 2009.

Loss carrybacks

Businesses that averaged $15 million or less in gross receipts over the past three years will be allowed to carry back losses for five years instead of two. The easing applies only to 2008 losses.

A Password Horror Story

Our clients often get aggrevated or downright mad when we suggest using strong passwords because they're hard to remember and sometimes even harder to type.

We invaiably suggest that passwords have the following characteristics:

• At least seven (7) characters long
• At least one upper case character, more than one is better
• At least one number
• At least one special character
• A life of not more than 42 days (that's 6 weeks for those who are numerically challenged)
• Mandatory password change every 42 days
• Passwords cannot contain any part of the username
• Passwords cannot be reused for at least 13 months.

One of our clients insisted on keeping passwords SIMPLE. The administrative password was a subset of the company name and all users shared the same short password. They held firm and nothing we said could make them change their mind -- that is UNTIL

• There was a requirement to reboot their server
• The system immediately rejected the administrator username and pasword when entered
• No amount of guessing resulted in a username/password combo that worked
• The perpetrator also hijacked disk space and turned off all administrative reporting so that network administrators would have no idea what was happening
• They took a two day outage while the server was reloaded.

Was it worth what happened to keep things simple? I argue NO.

How To Reduce System Vulnerability

Never does a day go by without at least one client calling to report a security related problem. More often than not, it's a problem with a computer they have at home rather than one at work.

We universally ask the same question -- at the time of the problem (or system infestation), were you signed on as a user with administrator rights on the system. The answer is almost universally "YES".

The byline of an article I read earlier today says "Removing admin rights stymies 92% of Microsoft's bugs." Believe me, folks, 92% is a BIG NUMBER when you consider the number of bugs reported to Microsoft.

Having less than administrator rights makes operating a computer a little cumbersome -- it means that you may not be able to install software or add printers to your machine. There are also a few programs (e.g., some versions of QuickBooks) that expect you to be signed on as a user with administrator rights; but there are usually ways around that.

So what do I suggest. Have two (2) user accounts on your PC and ALWAYS use the user account unless you absolutely need to do something that requires administrator priviledges. That's not nearly as big a problem now as it used to be anyway; because in most instances you can "Run As Administrator" when installing software even if your user account has less than administrator priviledge so long as you know the right passcode.

Try this, you'll like it and find your system stability to improve.