Probably the most important decision any person takes is “What do I do next”. But with so many things to remember or do, a good way of selecting the next task is critical.

I admire Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach. I’ve tried to use the approach and for me it works. The greatest plus I’ve gained from the approach is :

• Don’t do things in the order they arrive on your desk (or inbox)
• Do them in the order you want to do them in
• Remember to review your tasks weekly (if you don’t the lists get longer and longer and you eventually give up)

To do all this you really need a computer solution. I’ve tried to use many of these on a day to day basis and this is what I found for these four GTD task management products:

1. My Life Organised (MLO)
2. Achieve Planner by Effexis
3. Toodledo
4. Pocket Informant

Using GTD methods when you’re away from your desk

Few of us stay in one place. It’s great to be able to quickly view or add tasks to your GTD system when you’re not by your computer.

For each GTD software product I’ve assessed whether it is Usable with:

• A windows Mobile Computer
• An iPhone

A quick summary of to do list software for different situations

If you only use a PC, choose :

• Microsoft Outlook for a simple to do list
• Use Effexis Achieve Planner for extra features

If you use a PC and want to sync with a Windows Mobile PC choose:

• Microsoft Outlook on the PC with Pocket Informant for an entry level solution
• Use Effexis Achieve Planner on the PC with for Pocket Informant for extra features

If you use a PC and want to sync with an iPhone choose:

• Toodledo on the PC and iPhone for an excellent result.

If you want your to do lists only on a Windows Mobile PC choose:

• Pocket Informant
• Toodledo

If you want your to do lists only on an iPhone choose:

• Toodledo

Read on for more detail…

1. My Life Organised (MLO)

Summary

I found MLO an excellent and flexible tool. If you need synchronisation then a sync with your Windows mobile via Outlook works a treat.

I may have stayed with the product if only the memory leaks and subsequent lock-ups had been fixed.

Advantages

Provides an excellent hierarchical list of outstanding actions.

Problems

I experienced repeated problems running MLO a few years ago. It would lock up from time to time. On researching this, other users had reported memory leaks.

It may have improved now. However I just checked out the Google Groups Forum and one MLO user in April of 2009 reports an application lockup that meant the application had to be killed via Task manger. So maybe problems persist.

Synchronise with Windows Mobile

Yes, via Microsoft Outlook

Synchronise with iPhone

No. As at June 2009 this development is “planned”

Effexis Achieve Planner

Advantages

Provides an excellent priority system for To-Do items. I particularly liked the division between “work” items” and “personal” items. The inbuilt priority system can sequence your next action list based on business or personal or combined priorities.

I would have stayed with Achieve Planner if it provided an iPhone interface.

Problems

The learning curve can be a bit long.

Synchronise with Windows Mobile

Yes

Synchronise with iPhone

No.  I frankly think it will be a long time before any iPhone app appears. Web based software like Toodledo can most easily provide an iPhone app as the iPhone app just needs to link to the Toodledo web site and Toodledo developers can control both ends of this link.

But the Achieve Planner files are sitting on your PC and so are not accessible. It is not even easy for the developers of Pocket Informant

Toodledo

Advantages

Currently my preferred option.

It provides pretty well everything you might need:

• Sort tasks by priority
• Hide completed tasks or tasks to be done “someday”
• The iPhone implementation is excellent and syncs flawlessly
• You can structure tasks into folders (e.g. different work projects)
• You can repeat from completion date or due date
• Dales can be input in friendly terms (e.g. repeat every week”)
• The calendar gives a picture of task due dates
• You can assign times top tasks – this, for instance, helps Toodledo suggest how you could spend an hour.

—————————————————-

Problems

It is web based. So your data is not on your PC. If that worries you you should look elsewhere. There are occasional minor bugs, but nothing of any real significance.

Synchronise with Windows Mobile

No

Synchronise with iPhone

Yes. There is a splendid iPhone implementation which is regularly upgraded.

Pocket Informant

Advantages

This product has a well deserved reputation as the very best product to provide easy access on a Windows mobile handheld for:

• to do lists
• calendar access
• email
• contacts

It integrates smoothly with Outlook held on Microsoft Exchange or with Outlook on a local PC

As a to do list manager, it is lacking some of the more advanced features from Toodledo or Achieve Planner. But if portability is your top priority and you have a Windows Mobile handheld, this could be the product for you.

Problems

It does not run on your PC (But you can use Outlook or Effexis Achieve Planner with good results (I used Effexis with Informant for a year or so.

Synchronise with Windows Mobile

Not applicable

Run on iPhone?

There is a version for the iPhone but so far it has been buggy and slow. Also it does not presently sync with Outlook. Web IS the developers say that Apple block this.

It can synch with Google calendar or Toodledo. But if you use Toodledo you should really use the iPhone version of Toodledo for a really smooth operation.

Web IS suggest you can sync with Outlook through Google calendar. I suggest you avoid this as it means there are now three pieces of software involved in your sync operation. The likelihood of problems is immense. Indeed there are reports of users losing records by tasking this approach

If you

• Don’t have lots of thick branches (more than 15 mm) or
• A large garden to trim (taking more than 50 minutes

Then get a cordless trimmer.

From my experience:

• They are light
• They will save you hours of trimming time.

I would recommend the Bosch AHS 52 LI Lithium-Ion model – do not go for the Bosch AHS 52 Accu model – this does not include the anti-jamming mechanism.

Overview

This post tells you

• Why I chose this type of hedge trimmer
• Why this particular trimmer
• What you get
• Does it work

Do you need a powered hedge trimmer?

For me they make hedge trimming less of a chore. I also damaged my hand using a manual trimmer – the soft tissue injury took 6 months to repair.

What type of trimmer

There are broadly three types:

• Petrol powered
• Electric with a cable
• Electric cordless

Petrol Powered

These are undoubtedly the right machine for heavy duty work If you have a lot of trimming to do their will be a model to meet your needs.

Advantages

• You can go anywhere without needing to be near a power socket.
• Can handle large branches ( blade width can be 20 mm +)

Disadvantages

• Can be difficult to start
• Heavier For example the Homelite HHT2655 55cm 26cc Petrol Hedge Trimmer weighs 6.6 kilo compared to 2.6 kilo for a typical cordless
• Because it is heavier it is more difficult to handle.

Electric with a cable

These are lighter but you are limited to working near to a power socket.

Advantages

• Lighter in weight than petrol – e.g. the Bosch AHS 7000 Pro T 70cm 700W Electric Hedge Trimmer weighs 4.5 kilo compared to around 6.6 kilo for a petrol model
• Can cut larger branches than a cordless – typically 30-40 mm
• Easy to start

Disadvantages

• Heavier than cordless
• Because it is heavier it is more difficult to handle.
• There is always the risk you can cut through the cable if you are not careful.

Electric cordless

These are lighter but you are limited to working near to a power socket.

Advantages

• Lighter in weight than electric model with a cable around 2.6 kilo compared with for example – e.g. the Bosch AHS 7000 Pro T 70cm 700W Electric Hedge Trimmer which weighs 4.5 kilo.
• Easy to start
• Because it is lighter it is easier to handle and so possibly safer
• As there is no cable, you cannot cut through it and is therefore safer

Disadvantages

• Need to recharge batteries
• Limited to smaller branches typically 15 mm compared to 30-40 mm for a corded model

Bosch AHS 52 LI Lithium-Ion Hedge Trimmer

What’s in the box

Well actually not a lot…

The instruction manual

This is reasonably clear with the usual endless health and safety warnings

Initial Battery Charge

The manual says:

Note: The battery is supplied partly charged. To ensure full capacity of the battery, completely charge the battery in the battery charger before using the power tool for the first time.

So you plug the battery in and wait and wait… In my case it took 2 hours 40 minutes before the battery was fully charged.

Bosch product description

The official product details include :

• 15 mm tooth spacing, enabling you to cut even medium-weight branches perfectly
• Winner by weight comparison: up to 30% lighter than comparable tools
• Optimum balance and ergonomics due to new design and softgrip
• Laser-cut, diamond ground blades for a clean cut
• “Anti-Blocking” System for extra cutting power and prevents stalling
• Lithium-ion technology: more power with less weight, no self-discharge, no memory effect

Does it trim effectively and easily

Yes it does. You can undoubtedly save time compared to a manual pair of shears. I’d say trimming with the cordless trimmer reduces cutting time to about 25% of the manual time. But :

• If you have branches thicker than 15 mm it will not cut them and you need an alternative approach.
• Your hands will tingle after a while. If you suffer from bad arthritis you might want to split your trimming work into small sections.

These photos illustrate what can be quickly achieved:

Before:

After:

 Does it jam when cutting larger branches

From my experience it does not. This model includes an effective anti-jamming mechanism.

What you can do to trim thicker branches

I found that a clippers with inbuilt leverage work brilliantly. The pair I use looks like this:

You can get these from most hardware stores. This particular model is the Wilkinson Sword Large Gear Action Bypass Lopper. The key to its success is the lever action that magnifies many times the pressure that you exert on the handles.

The Technical environment

• PC is Lenovo ThinkPad with Vista SP2
• Router is Netgear DG834N
• Versions of ESET – both Version 3 and Version 4

The Problem

The initial symptom was that internet access was either blocked or very intermittent. 

On further checking it seemed that the PC could not get IP address from DHCP on router. This also meant that local network access was blocked.

A partial solution was to hardcode the IP address and this gave local access but still no reliable internet access.

After lots of trial and error we isolated the problem to the ESET firewall. We absolutely knew this was the cause as simply suspending the firewall always resulted in reliable internet access.

What we tried 

Here’s list of all the things we tried that did not work:

1. Reset Netgear Router to Factory Settings and reboot the PC

2. Reset ESET Personal Firewall to initial settings

• I was confident this would fix the problem but it did not.
• If you are interested an entry in the ESET Knowledgebase says how you can do this. It involves deletion of these files after rebooting into Safe Mode:
  • - epfwdata.bin
  • - EpfwTemp.dat
  • - EpfwUser.dat

3. Delete history and cache

• Seemed then ok for 45 minutes or so but then problem returned

4. Switch router off for 30 minutes

• This supposedly resets link at the local Telephone Exchange)

5. Change to OpenDNS settings in router (in place of letting router get info from ISP). This involved using these DNS addresses: 

• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220
• This had a bad result – no connections at all! Even if these settings made for PC and Router

6. Removed IP V6 from protocols

7. Changed all network properties to match a similar (working) PC

8. Enabled LMHosts LookUp

9. Changed ESET Configuration Settings

• Deselected
  • ARP Poisoning attack detection
  • DNS Poisoning attack detection
  • Both as suggested in ESET Knowledgebase article SOLN2217
• Added (as a wild guess):
  • Maintain inactive TCP connections
  • Allow communication for bridged connection

10.Also switched ESET firewall to interactive mode and chose the “Set rule” option each time.

• This gave added fun and games and generated two blue screen crashes

11. I enabled Test Mode

This setting is accessible from Advanced SetUp, Update, Setup.

Setting test mode “on” had no effect on the problem. Test mode allows ESET software to download the very latest level of ESET software. In my case this resulted in download of the “Personal Firewall Module: 1010 (20090625)”. This update seemed to enable successful access to the Internet for a few hours but then the problem returned.

You can check which release of the Firewall module you are using via the ESET program window. Click on ‘Help’ then ‘About’.

What I did next

I simply switched off the ESET firewall and now use the Vista firewall. The result – everything is now working

This all looks like very bad news for ESET users. I have been a great fan of ESET software. But their forums are full of problems like this.

Some users have found that the problem arose on version 4. But I upgraded to Version 4 to hopefully escape the problem on version 3 – and in fact the same problem arises on both versions.

I was also very surprised that restoring the firewall to default settings did not fix the problem. I can only assume that some registry settings are screwed up and this is unaffected by a rest to default settings.

The future

I hope ESET can fix these problems. But I will certainly be on the lookout for a more reliable firewall. In the end a Microsoft product wins. Is that a first!

I maintain a WordPress blog and when creating blog posts I often use images from the clipboard. I have usually generated these by using the wonderful tool Snagit.

I found the provided WordPress editor a little tricky to work with in two respects:

• Pasting images from a clipboard seems to be a cumbersome process.
• As it is an online editor any slight delay in web refreshing is quite annoying and has sometimes led to lost edits.

So, I wanted to find a blog editor that allowed pasting of clipboard images and was not web based. And I also needed spell checking.

The Solution

There are many lists on the web which list such tools.

There are three tools that allow paste from the clipboard

• Windows Live Writer – This allowed easy paste from the clipboard and spell checking.
• BlogDesk – I haven’t tested this
• Microsoft Word– I’ve tried it and it works! Image pasting is easy and of course you get a spell checker.  If you go this route you can always use WordPress or other tools to tidy up the post.

Windows Live Writer is the most polished product and gets my vote. It also has more blog specific facilities than Microsoft Word.

Problems with Windows Live Writer

There are however a few problems with Windows Live Writer:

• Using the product creates multiple hits to your blog and so can screw up your statistics.
• Whilst you can add tags, you cannot retrieveve existing tags for a post.

Alternatives

In researching a suitable product I came across these alternatives. I’ve added my own entirely unscientific comments…

Microsoft has chosen to implement a system of voids. I can only assume they want to appeal to accountants who will be able to see any records that had been altered.

If anyone from Microsoft reads this I would ask them to consider these questions:

• Do accountants really value the system of voiding entries? Would they miss the absence of this feature?
• Their real customer (the one who pays the bill) is the end user. This system of voids is nothing but an absolute nuisance. There are no clear benefits for the end user. Surely Microsoft should meet end user needs?
• Other accounting systems do not use this approach – including Microsoft Money and MYOB – once popular in the UK. Why can’t MOA follow their approach?

Specific Problems

1. Checking invoices – You cannot correct even minor errors without causing a void record.

The only way to check a print preview for an invoice is to save the invoice. (This is ok and indeed other accounting systems have this approach). However as soon as you now preview or print the invoice, you get the message :

It is not possible to then go back to the original invoice and correct any errors. This in turn means that in order to make a correction the whole invoice is voided.

So any tiny error in an invoice will mean that your sequence of invoice numbers is screwed up with a void entry.

It is of course unnecessary. Microsoft could perfectly easily write the software so that reversal of errors is possible without causing a void.

2. Reports have spurious entries

The report below is an extract from an aged debtor report.

The two rows towards the end of the report showing $0 outstanding both relate to problems caused by voids.

In each case a customer payment was corrected (and became a void record) and the payment was then corrected by a further payment.

MOA does not seem able to recognise this situation and continues to show an outstanding balance of $0 – presumably for ever! I will add further entries as I come across further problems.

Please respond to this blog if you know of any further problems.

In conclusion

Microsoft Office Accounting is in many ways an outstanding product. For me this insistence on voids is the greatest failing in the product.

All seemed to go well. The upgrade itself requires a 250Meg + download so be prepared to be patient.

Along the way I received these messages:

1. From iTunes:

“iTunes could not connect to the iPhone “” because an invalid response was received from the device”

2. Repeated messages from Windows (Vista):

“Device Driver Software successfully installed”

3. From iTunes:

“The iPhone “myPhone” could not be activated because an unknown error occurred (0xE8000013). Please try again later.

I feared the worst but at first glance the iPhone is actually performing well with all its fancy new features.

About 5 minutes after installing the upgrade, O2 sent a message saying that picture messaging was not yet set up.

Then a further few minutes later I received a message saying picture messaging was set up.

So all is well! – The whole process took about 30 minutes.

For instance, a user with several employees cannot easily email payslips to all employees.

Even printing to pdf is tricky as the system prints payslips for all active employees to a single document.

We’ve found the only way round this is to select individuals separately in the Process Payroll dialogue. Then print pdf payslips individually to each employee – a real hassle.

I clicked Exit and chose the option to save the tabs. Then Wham all hell broke loose.

Three problems:

1. (Minor) Desktop background settings were lost leaving a black background.
2. (Major) Vista decided I needed to authenticate my copy of Windows.
3. (Very major) Windows Search failed to start.

I eventually overcame all three problems. The third caused the most difficulty (see separate Blog Entry).

Certainly Firefox seems faster for most web sites. But my fingers are badly burned and I will not be returning for some time.

Why I need Windows Search

Windows Search is an key part of the way I work.

It enables rapid search of

• Emails from within Outlook
• OneNote documents

Symptoms of the problem

These include:

• You cannot search for emails in outlook
• OneNote searching is slow.

What’s the cause

The Windows Search service has failed to start and this has generated the problem. You can see the status of the Windows Search service by entering ‘Services’ (no quote) in the Vista search bar.

When all is working ok you will see:

However if you have this problem you’ll not see “started”.

What we tried

We made these attempts to solve the problem. Most were based on searches of user groups

• Click Start (top left of services dialog box) – seems to start then gives an error (sometimes error code 2147218141). Looking at error logs you may see “Windows Search Service terminated unexpectedly”
• System Restore – no effect
• Ran Windows File Checker – no effect
• Ensured HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows
  Search\SetupCompletedSuccessfully set to 0 – no effect
• Tried various suggestions involving files gathrprm.txt and schema.txt – no effect

This worked !

Much to my surprise all was well after re-installing Windows Search 4. Use the link below to access the correct download.

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=940157

This only installs on Vista if you have successfully upgraded to SP1.

If this doesn’t work you may need to uninstall Vista Search 4 first.

You can do this by going to Windows Update…

• Select View Update History.
• Then click “Installed Updates”. This will take you updates that can be uninstalled.
• Select Windows Search 4 from the list and click uninstall:

search

On opening a pdf:

• The cursor frequently disappears
• Then only a hard reboot gets out of the problem.

This has caused hours of wasted time as many applications do not tolerate a forced shutdown.

We’ve moved to Foxit Reader. So far it seems fine – if there are problems I’ll update this blog.