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Lessons learned from a computer crash

First: Don’t believe a Mac is any more reliable than a PC. It’s not.

Second: Never believe what Apple’s sales staff tells you. When I bought the Mac, I specifically asked if the Quicken data the Apple Geniuses obligingly converted to Macintosh format could be converted back to PC format, in case I didn’t care for the platform. They said there would be no problem. That turns out not to be true. A Mac-compatible Quicken data file can not be converted to a PC-readable format. Thus, if you’ve faithfully backed up your Quicken data every time you enter transactions and you own only one Mac, after it crashes you may never be able to retrieve your data-especially if your version is out of date and a newer version of Quicken won’t read it. (Remember, this is one of Quicken’s devices to force consumers to keep buying new, unneeded software: if you decline to buy each bloated new version, when you go to buy a new computer and have to install the current version, you may find all your old data is unreadable.)

Third: However, you can save a Quicken file to PDF format. You can do this with transaction reports and with entire account registers. I don’t know if it’s a function of Acrobat Professional, which resides on all my terminals, or if Quicken will make PDFs on its own, but I think it’s the latter. The process is very easy: simply print to a PDF.

While a PDF of course has no functionality, it does at least save your data in a format readable on both platforms, and PDF files are extremely stable. As such, they provide a last-ditch back-up. If everything in Quicken crashes and for some reason (there certainly are reasons!) you can’t get back into your QDF files, you at least can get at the data so that you can re-enter it in a new version of the program or into Excel.

Fourth: The relationship between Intuit and Apple is tenuous, and Mac-compatible versions of Quicken for Mac are pale (often annoying) shadows of Quicken for PC. Although Intuit alleges that it will come out with a spectacular new Mac version so ground-breaking it must be rebranded “Quicken Financial Life for Mac,” believe it when you see it.

Consider using Excel for bookkeeping. This requires you to forego the swell online communication with your bank and investment brokers…but really. How necessary is that, in the large scheme of things?

Fifth: The capability to back up Quicken data files to MobileMe is dubious. For one thing, it’s unclear whether the file is stored with a .qdf extension, and so it’s equally unclear whether the file can be used to reconstruct lost data. Then there’s the alarming fact that one of Apple’s online support gurus told me flatly Quicken cannot be backed up to MobileMe. The store’s manager denies it, but given the contradictory tales that have come at me from all directions, I believe it’s smart to put that bit of intelligence somewhere other than in the circular file.

For this reason, all QDF files should be backed up to an external hard drive and also to a flash drive. If there’s any chance you will not have access to a second Mac loaded with Quicken, also back up your account registers in PDF format.

Sixth: iWeb’s blogging function is resident on your computer and only on your computer. Thus if your computer crashes, your blog is gone. Gone for good. Unless you’ve backed up the content of your site, it can’t be retrieved; the Genius who revealed this gem was unclear whether saved data can be imported into iWeb on a new computer. If you start anew on a fresh computer without having imported your old posts, even if you can access your blog site (a matter that appears to be questionable), the minute you publish a new entry you will erase all your blog’s archival content.

Never, ever do a blog on iWeb!

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