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I have used Adobe on and off over the yeas. My son, uses it daily for work. Needless to say, we’ve both been frustrated with them. So much so, that with my last comments to him, he suggested using Affinity software. It is a purchase, not a subscription and offers a suite with a Designer, Photo and Publisher option that rivals if not outshines Adobe. My son says that they have not bloated the software and continue to enhance it without making you pay for the updates. I purchased the Black Friday deal – all three of the programs for ~$80. Or try any one of them for ~$30. AND they are cross platform: Windows, Mac and iOS. It may not be for everyone, but I can say that after just a few projects in the Affinity suite, I’ll never use Adobe again.

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Jons, Myst, Spiral, Cybertooth, GeeBeeDee, rbailin, Norio, analytic

Thanks PKCano,

That is a great help. Looks like it’s time trade in the old iPad for a new mini iPad. That’s what I’ll tell the wife. It can be my Christmas present from her. Something to think about anyway.

I’ve been told I would benefit from hearing aids but I’m not an iPhone user. So, I have a few questions about the new AirPods Pro with the hearing aid feature. I do use a MacBook Pro and have an older used iPhone (given to me) and an iPad as well. These are used for testing apps, but it is not the phone I carry around, nor do I bring the iPad everywhere I go. The phone I use is an Android – Pixel 7.

If I purchased the AirPods Pro 2, and get the update for the hearing help, via my Mac, will they continue to work if I don’t have an iPhone in range or being linked an iPhone?

Also, can Apple AirPods be paired via the Bluetooth with an Android phone?

If it comes down to it, it would still be cheaper to buy a new mini iPad and the Airppods than to pay for hearing aids, but I wonder, do I have to have a late model iOS product and also carry it around?

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Lance,

This is a great walk-through…if you are setting up a computer. What if you got snagged or, as in my case, thought you were using a local account only to find out it was a MS account. I was “forced” to change / update my log in password because it expired. WHAT? I thought I had a local account and this shouldn’t have happen. For the last few months now I have been frustrated that my log in shows an icon from a MS login for something like a Steam account game I used.

Can you show us how to change a personal computer using MS account to or, in my case, back to local account? And do it in a way that won’t cause you to lose anything? IE: installed programs, access to links, and local shares – like printers. I would bet there are a lot of home users like me that would love to “go back” but prefer not to have to go through the whole windows setup to do it.

Look forward to hearing if this is even possible.

Best,

DNev

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Steve, rc primak, exjnb2ny, Fred R, DLivesInTexas

Second the Moneydance option. I also got fed up with Quicken about the time you renewed in 2015.  Moneydance and theirs support have been a great replacement. One of the biggest or best things about it is that I no longer have to put my account information on somebody else’s server. It’s all local base software. The moderate subscription fee for auto downloading my bank account info is worth it.

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Duggem, bwsantana, windbg, milleron

First off I’d like to learn more about the post that “added is to use a digital electrical timer to keep my external USB drive for backup offline until the scheduled backup time.” If anyone knows more about that please reply.

Summarizing: I use Karen’s Replicator for backups. [Windows only – I think]

I’m on a simple home network with 4 PC’s. I’m not real geeky but set up my main PC with a SSD for the OS and then a couple of platter drives for my data. I save all data to one drive and then back up daily using Karen’s replicator to a second drive in the PC. In addition to that I use Karen’s Replicator to back up weekly to a NAS drive (6 TB) that also creates its own backups.

Karen’s Replicator is simple and reliable. It offers as many backup jobs as you want to schedule (I currently have 6). It will back up as often as you like from every minute, hour, day, week or month. It will let you back up a complete drive or just one folder or even file. I’ve also got a few files that back up to online storage by copying them to my Google Folder.

Best of all it’s free but donations are accepted. Karen was a great asset to the computer world. Sadly she passed away a few years ago but there is a group keeping her software alive. The Replicator software was updated Feb. 2019. Check out Karen’s Power Tools [https://www.karenware.com/] for more information. Here’s a link to her Replicator program.