I am working with Kim Moore and Nancy Taggert on their new venture, Cashion Hill Design.  Because the online version of QuickBooks does not fit their needs, we are hoping to find a way to use the desktop version in a shared environment so we can all access.
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This is a question I get often and an important one. How do we share a Quickbooks file without using Quickbooks online?

I understand that Quickbooks online is not the best solution for everyone. It’s come a very long way but it still doesn’t fit the needs of all users. So we are then left with two other choices in the Intuit world:

Use Quickbooks for Windows
Use Quickbooks for Mac

If you have found that Quickbooks online is not enough, you may also find that Quickbooks for the Mac doesn’t reach that bar as well so at this point you may be looking seriously at Quickbooks for Windows. But then how do you share the account between two computers? You don’t really. Quickbooks is not designed to share the same account information between two different computers. That’s why they created QB Online.

Work arounds:

You could store your QB backup or standard file on a portable device and go back and forth between computers but you’d ALWAYS have to work off of that drive. The problem here is that someone will open and edit quickbooks data on one machine then the other person will come along and overwrite those changes with a previous backup. It would take stellar communication between users for this workflow to work.

Or:

You could store the backup or standard file in Dropbox. Again, dangerous. If two users open Quickbooks at the same time with QB pulling from the Dropbox folder, you’re going to end up with “conflicted copies” as Dropbox will see two users modifying the same file at the same time, get confused, then duplicate the files. So that’s a mess.

Or:

The old school way was to have an accountant remote in to the client’s machine and work on Quickbooks on that person’s personal machine. The modern day translation of that might be: accountant and client login to zoom, accountant asks for control of the client machine, account updates the books, signs off. The issue here is that the accountant is using the client machine (albeit remotely) while the client cannot.

All of this to say: the local version of QB is dying. QB online will be the future. The same can be said for Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc…. Local software is very limiting when compared to the benefits of online software. Work from anywhere, always backed up, multiple users working at the same time. That’s where we’re all headed but for now, not all features are there online yet. It’s the same with Microsoft Office. Younger people are using Google docs while old people like me are still waiting for Microsoft Word to open on our machines so we can edit a document that only lives on my hard drive.

For some reason, I can not print from Quicken. Do you think that you can help with that remotely?
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Most likely yes however before you schedule a remote session I suggest first going to the printer manufacuters website and download the specific driver for that printer. I can’t remember exactly but I think you may be using the AirPrint driver for that printer which is fairly generic. It works in most cases but Quicken may be relying specifically on the printer driver due to the print job being more complex perhaps.

After downloading the driver and clicking to install it you can go to system preferences, delete the printer, re add it and select the alternative driver instead of AirPrint or Secure AirPrint which will be your options also. You can change the driver in settings instead of removing the printer and re adding it but I prefer just to delete it and re add. Also, you may want to restart the computer prior to re adding the printer. Sometimes the driver doesn’t show up right away.

Scotty, You were at our home on Sunday to work out some issue we as a family were having with various devices…One of the issues was getting my new email address to come through on my phone….all working fine with that….I went to obtain a free app from the app store and placed the order and then tried to put in my apple id that is associated with my ipad and my email address of name@gmail.com app store / iTunes is telling me that the apple id password for name@icloud.com is incorrect….it is working fine on the ipad but not on the phone….please help…

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Sounds like you may be signed in to two different apple ID’s on each device.  On the device that you can make purchases without a problem, go to settings/scroll down to iTunes and App Store and check the apple ID you’re using there.  Now go to your problematic device and go to the same area, settings/ scroll down to iTunes and App store and select the apple ID.  Choose to sign out of that apple ID then sign in as your correct one you pulled from the other device.  

Scotty,

My husband would like to set up a home office in our downstairs guestroom.  As you may recall, we have a cable line in the master bedroom across the hall.  What do I need to do to get strong wireless access in this part of the house?  I know he's going to need another wireless router back there.  Should I have Time Warner come out and take care of it?
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If you already have one of the apple routers then you can pick up an airport express and that will allow the network to be extended into harder to reach areas of your home. The airport express will only officially extend another apple router but as I recall I think you already have that. Time Warner would not have anything to do with your wireless network. Please let me know if you need assistance.

what is the difference between the i3, i5, and i7?
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Speed.  How many sets of instructions can be executed at one time. Number of cores (orbrains) per chip.  Overall though the difference is on such a small scale considering your needs, I think you'll be happy with either of them.  Maybe aim for the Core i5.   I know you work in iPhoto quite a bit. If you were a heavy photoshop user or final cut user then you may be a little more in the market for the i7 but overall I think the middle line would be a great choice. Here’s a great article comparing each.Core i3 vs i5 vs i7: Intel's Processors Explained If you want to get crazy detailed you can check out the Wikipedia page dedicated to the subject here: Intel Core - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I hope all is well.  Can you tell me how to write the network path for a shared folder that's on my hard drive?  The folder is username/documents/HP Digital Faxes.  Now what do I put in front of this to ensure that my HP printer scan program will scan right to this folder.  I tried the following path: \\computer name\documents\HP Digital Faxes.  I get the error shown in the 2nd screen shot.  It says wait until the remote computer is turned on.  Not sure what this means.

Scott,

I'm trying to set up my HP officejet to email scanned documents.  I enter all information correct regarding email set up, but I get an error saying that it could not connect to server.  See attached screen shots.  Any thoughts?


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A few things to try. First, wireless scanning in 10.5 is extremely unreliable. Wireless scanning in 10.6 with the updated HP Scan software is better but mileage varies from printer to printer. The less expensive printers seem to be less reliable. Note that HP Scan Pro is the old version of the software and HP Scan is the more updated version. Check to see if using either of those will work first. HP Scan gives the option to send the scanned document directly to email.

Now to address the file path question. Usually the correct nomenclature for file paths would be as follow:

Macintosh HD/Users/yourname/Documents/HP Digital Faxes. It’s also possible that this software requires the IP address of the computer. Just not sure. I would strongly suggest checking out HP Scan. Search for print drivers on HP’s site and select the updated one. As I said 10.5 is not so Hot. 10.6 wireless scanning is warmer.



Another thing to consider looking at your second screen shot is that \ slashes are not used in file path names on a mac. Only forward slashes /. You may be more successful in the Network tab, most likely assigning an IP address to the computer then designating the file path. I’m assuming this is a web based configuration page.

If you are not doing this wirelessly then I’m guessing this is an ethernet printer and your computer is also connected to this network via ethernet?

Scotty
How do I add a bookmark to Firefox?
How do I delete one item from a drop down of a bookmark?

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To add a bookmark to Firefox you’ll want to click on the star on the right hand side of the url bar at the top. You’ll then see a drop down menu where you’ll be able to select where to save the bookmark.



To organize or delete bookmarks in Firefox, you’ll go to “Bookmarks” in the menu bar. From the pull down, you’ll select to “Organize Bookmarks”.


Now you’ll be presented with a window showing all your bookmark folders and from there you’ll be able to select each bookmark and either move or delete it.

since they stole my computer, can they access our history? Can they see our online banking, etc??

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I would say absolutely yes. That is a serious concern. I would move forward with trying to reset all the passwords you have as soon as possible. If they are smart enough, they can discover your passwords to sites and other. Your computer does not store banking passwords but there is plenty of other data there to look through.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Scotty,
I hope all is well with you and I look forward to seeing you soon!  My son will be going off to boarding school in the fall and we need to purchase a new laptop for him.  Do you think he should get the macbook or 13 in macbook pro?  We would like it to make it through his high school career.
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The most popular choice for high school kids is really the macbook.  It has the plastic case which makes it very durable.  A little less investment considering what teenagers can do to computers.  And it's plenty powerful enough for their needs.  The one things I do find that kids like to do that the macbook is a bit less capable of doing is gaming.  Playing video games on a mac laptop is not the most spectacular experience.  Even the macbook pro's are not scream machines in this area but their dedicated graphics cards do a better job.  If you can do without that, then the macbook should be just fine.  

Scotty,

I thought this was fixed...... but today I received this message again.  Why do I get these error messages and how do I fix this?

Thanks,



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Interesting.

There may be an issue with your Internet service provider.  I can't remember.  Are you Bellsouth/Att or Road Runner Time Warner?  With Time warner there should be absolutely no issue at all however with ATT there can sometimes be an issue where that ISP will block outgoing mail not associated to its own services.  

Hi Scotty,

Thanks so much for your help on Saturday.  I have not had the issue of my connection dropping off since you changed things.  However, all of us are running very slow now.  Could this have something to do with changing the channel?  I think you changed the channel from 1 to ???  was it 6?  Anyway, I thought I wrote it down but didn't.  Is there a way that I can figure that out?  If I change back to 1 is it likely that my problems will start over?

Please advise.

Thanks,
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Hi,

The channel shouldn't really have any bearing on the speed.  Not anything noticable anyway.  But if you'd like to change it, you can do so by going to the airport utility, double clicking on the airport icon until you get the manual setup box as below.  Next, choose wireless, select the desired channel and hit apply.  Not much to it really.  The change we made should not affect your speed.  There is most likely something else at play.  I would also suggest testing your connection from a hard wired computer to the router, or even directly at the modem (although the modem would need to be restarted in order for it to distribute a new IP address to a single computer, then restarted again when next reconnected to the router).  You can check the cable modem's speed with Time Warner's own speed test which can be found here:

Time Warner Bandwidth Speed Test
results should be in the area of 10 megs down, 250 kbps up.

How can I share printers between two windows Dell computers where there is no Mac involved?

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Hi Chris,

Sharing printers from one Windows machine to another without the mac being involved is outside my area of expertise but these knowledge base articles should be able to help you.  

Sharing a printer through a wireless network - DELL COMMUNITY
Dell - Support

Hi Scotty,

I was getting a recipe off the internet and a screen came up and same my computer is under attack and I have all kinds of viruses on my computer.  I can't tell if this is a real problem or not.  

The web site's address begins with no1virusscan.com.   Another screen has popped up that says "Windows Security Alert" but my computer is a mac.

I  left everything up on the screen so that I can show you what it says.  Please let me know what you would recommend!

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What you’ve encountered is absolutely nothing to worry about. It’s a scare tactic meant to scare windows users into clicking on links that will either advertise for them to sell something or actually cause harm to your windows machine. Either way, you are on a mac and the virus warning you saw was nothing. Only an advertisement. There are no viruses for the mac as of June 23, 2009.