Monday, February 04, 2008

Linux Canadian Income Tax - Update 2

I am on a roll going through sites for Canadian Individual Income Tax Software. The next site I tried is TaxFreeway and it was very easy (one click) to see what is supported. On the down-side it is only Windows and Mac, but, I don't have to waste time trying to find that out. It is also only one click to find out an email address to send any questions to. This is a much easier site to navigate and keeps to the KISS principle of design.

The third site is Taxtron and like TaxFreeway it is a joy to navigate. The first page allows for individual or professional. The next page right up allows you to pick either Windows or Mac. I selected windows and went to the tech support option. They have a nice and short web based option to allow you to ask a questions. Again, this is a easily navigated site and in a few clicks I can find the information I am looking for.

The fourth (and last) site I looked at is UFile. Right at the bottom of the page is a contact option. When I go there I am presented with a online web form that will allow me to ask questions. Again, fast and easy to find how to ask them questions. Unfortunately it appears that they are Windows only, but, I could find that quickly and easily. In their FAQ area they are upfront in that they support only Windows at this time. This information took me only one minute to find. On the upside they do have an online version that appears to support Linux (using Mozilla based browsers).

Linux Canadian Income Tax - Update 1

Today I started to look to see if some of the makers of tax software support linux. I have spent the last 20 minutes trying to go through Intuit's site to see what O/S is supported. So far I have found absolutely nothing on what is supported, all of my links lead me in a circle and when I try to figure out how to send them a note asking a question I go into the same loop. Come on people, make it easy for us to send you a note asking a question and step firmly on the necks of the marketing people who seem to make the site into one huge advertisement.

When you have a clickable link for a contact give the person an option to at least fill in a web form with their question and how the company can reply back. If anyone is reading this from Intuit keep this in mind,
I write programs and online systems for a living and your site makes it impossible for an computer expert to find how to contact you.
If I have a problem with the site how is an average computer user going to navigate your site?

I finally found their online forums after 25 minutes of going in circles. I did a search for 'Linux' and the only thing I could find is that there is a QuickTaxWeb and not a native Linux version.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Adding new hardware - Update

After posting all of the things I did for installing the new PCI soundcard I figured I should put up a few screen prints showing the system and the configuration settings I used to make it work in LInux.

The first image on the right is a high level shot showing the version of KDE in use and the Linux kernel version.


The second screen print shows the KDE settings that I used. I let the system autodetect the card as I was using ALSA.









The third screen shows the overall hardware of the system. It autodetected the card as a 'Vortex'.








When I select the 'Vortex' you will see the settings in screen print 4.








Running the config option on this will show the settings I used for that card in screen 5.