Turbo Taxing

I love tax time.

Bullsh*t! I hate it. The only thing i DO like about it is that they are quickly going to the e-file. That make things so much faster and your refund goes directly into your bank.

At least I thought.

Watched on TV where Turbo Tax would allow you to file your taxes for free. My first thought was for free? Nothing today is free. So I learned, see later. I had bought Turbo Tax once before and got sucked into all the hype of "We'll get you the biggest refund". So after shelling out $30 (some years ago) took it home loaded the software and started up the program. I had already did my taxes my way and knew what I would get back. It went through the W-2's, Fed taxes, la la la and all that. Got to the end and let the program compute my refund. Amazing. The same amount that I had came up with but now I've wasted $30 on this POS software program that didn't do squat. Never again I thought. So I thought.

Flash ahead to today. The dear wifey says "why not use Turbo Tax they advertise it's free?".......Pause for my thinking.....Came up with, WTH I'll give it a try. Again, I had already done the math and figured out what we would get back doing it my way but thought I'd give it another try. Not gonna cost me anything right? Right? It's Free! Went to their web site and entered my log in and passwords and started off. The free version only applys to Federal tax returns, state filing costs $27. Illinois lets you file for free, why the charge? My first red flag was that right after I signed up, they were offering me the paid version, Just in case I was feeling guilty about them doing this for free. Next flag came up while entering my W-2. After entering my employers fed ID, TT alerted me that they "found" my W2 and if I signed up for the paid version, they would enter that information for me. Think not. For $39 I can enter a LOT of data myself. Went through the whole nine yards again about donations, deductions and all that. Next flag came when it asked for your state info. Was a little hesitant but entered it anyway thinking I would print it out and e-file it myself. Not paying for something I can do for free right? That's what I thought.

After checking, re-checking and more questions, here comes my refund total. WOW. Imaging that. Me and turbo tax have the same number ........again. Now I'm not bragging here, I am NO tax wizard but I can follow instructions. If there are no deductions, doesn't pay to buy software no matter how much hype you hear.

So I finally got to the end, after several more attempts to maybe see if I was generous enough to fork over some cash to pay for this Free service, and there it was. At the end, when your just ready to e-file, you have two choices. First is to file by mail or e-file federal for free. Second choice is to pay $27 dollars and e-file state or Pay now and file state later. Hummmmm. So since they have done your state, they think you should pay for it either way. I say BS. Backtracked into the program and found where you can delete your state tax information. After that, went to the end and tried again and waa-laa. It's now free and only federal but Illinois e-file is so simple once you have the federal done. Or I thought.

So TT files my federal tax return........ electronically.....within seconds.....over a secure internet connection. Great. Why not print a copy for my files and for help on my IL tax return. Uh Huh.

Hit the print button and waited FOREVER. I mean like I was smoking some ribs and turkey outside and left to pull the ribs off. Cleaned up the mess, covered the ribs and put them out to cool and came back to the computer and huh. Still not printed. So I opened a new window and started on my IL e-file. Went thru the whole form, filed and printed a copy for myself before going back to TT, and still not printing.

Let's just say I printed out the email confermation I recieved from TT, I have no copy of the tax form I filed and I will NOT be paying for tax software again !

Hot Laptop

After packing my HP back to the service center for the second time, I was forced to drag out my Acer laptop that I ditched for the HP. It was getting real hot and had the BSOD come on at random. Never spent any time fixing it...... until now.

One problem was the tremendous amount of heat that came out the fan exit shortly after starting it. Had taken back cover and blown out the screen and that area before but read about a guy who took it one step further and took off the fan cover.

Tried that with mine and discovered a t-shirt and a pair of socks lodged in mine. Took some canned air and blew it out and the overheating problem disappeared.

Imaging that.

As far as the BSOD, it would never run chkdsk, never Virus scan and randomly slow down or lock up. Once you canceled the chkdsk at start-up it would run for a undetermined amount of time before you would have to restart it.

Again, found a guy who removed his hard drive and hooked it up to his desktop and ran the dskchk off of his desktop. Since it was not the primary hard drive it worked. Ran that and then ran defrag after that and this thing is haulin' ass now.

HP 'puter problems

Been without my HP laptop since last week.

Last Friday my HP laptop screen went haywire on me. Started having candy stripe baby blue lines in the background where there should have been only white. Also noticed on a black background, there was lightning looking red lines randomly streaking thru the screen.

Emailed HP thru their support website letting them know I had a problem.

I received a reply back in less than a hour and then described more in detail what exactly what was going on. Tech sent me a reply in about 20 minutes telling me that it would have to go back for repair. I then wondered if I would see it before the new year.

The box arrived 12.9 at 12:06 pm. Fex Ex surprisingly delivered it on my lunch hour (more on this latter). I gathered my puter and returned to work as it uses Fed Ex to ship packages out. It was picked up at 4:19 PM that same day. I received email latter that night from HP telling me that my return box had been shipped and gave a link to Fed Ex showing the delivery tracking. Pretty cool. It was returned by 2 day delivery so my hopes were not high of them getting it before Friday.

Checked my email at lunch Friday 12.11 and got another email that HP had received the laptop at 6:55AM. WOW. Still my hopes were not high of receiving any news before Monday.

Later Friday night checked email again and HP had repaired the laptop and shipped it back out at 1:58 that afternoon. Holy Crap that was fast! Also checked again Sunday while watching football and it was sitting in Memphis TN. Didn't think it would go too far during the weekend and was expecting it Tuesday 12.15.

Coming home from work Monday, I saw that Fed Ex had attempted to deliver it @ 11:22am. Who the heck is home at 11:22 in the morning? Yes, I was excited about getting it back, but was not going to take off work to receive it! Entered Door Tag number into Fed Ex web site and it had all the info right there. At 2:45 it was sitting at the main terminal. Swung by and picked it up, took it home and tested it out. Screen and everything was fixed as promised! All under warrenty.

Have to give HP a A+ for customer support, repair, communication and speed.

Also have to give Fed Ex a A+ for tracking and speed. (need to work on the delivery times tho)!