traderpats

I've been using Allways Sync for the last few years to backup to multiple drives with, after set-up, one click. It's pretty straight forward. I keep all my documents in "My Docs" which includes inspection reports, pics, emails, etc. It backs up to an internal drive and an external firewire drive. I currently have it set up to back up report files, then emails, then a few other things to "My Docs" then to back up that folder to the other drives. Oh yeah, it's free too unless you have massive amounts of data to backup. Link: http://allwaysync.com/

Agree that the life of the CFLs isn't anywhere near as long as was advertised. I'm still on the fence as to whether they're even worth it or not. Experienced pretty much that same short product life as some had already noted here. I hope the quality of the CFLs gets better or I'm not going to waste my money. It ain't green if you have to buy just as many CFLs as the old ones.

Sadly this is a clear example of the ethics of too many in the RE industry and the ignorance (or corruption) of the legislatures. Anyone that is familiar with the issues involved, (HI and RE) know damn well these types of laws are not good for the consumer. If passed the board will slowly weed out the best inspectors and those left would be catering to the agents. This of course would be detrimental for those same clients that the agents profess to having a fiduciary duty. When issues do arise the HI and buyer will end up paying out of their pockets while those same agents are more readily able to line their own. Bad deal anyway you look at it. FWIW - We sold our own home last year. The paperwork was readily obtained from one of those Sale By Owner stores. The forms were easy to understand and straight forward. I thought something had to be missing. The title company, (who really does most of the paperwork), assured me it was all fine. The sale went through without any problems. NOT worth the 6% - 7% we were quoted. If it's a simple sale consider buying a book on the subject and save yourself 10's of thousands. Even with having an attorney review the paperwork you'll come out way ahead.

You might try installing a Linux distro called Ubuntu. It works great with older hardware as well as the newest multi-core chips. There is a learning curve but the OS is VERY resource friendly. There are a ton of free programs available for just about anything you want to do. I've used Open Office for the last six months and I see no reason to spend $100's of dollars on MS equivalents. If you want a machine to just surf, email, word process and is also very virus resistant that would be the way to go. If a piece of hardware is not supported there's a great online community there too. I don't run any AV or spyware on my Ubuntu computer and haven't had any problems whatsoever.

How about running a virtual machine on your Mac? Check out VMware or similar company. You would have the expense of buying xp but it would allow you to run any Window$ programs. With a dual-core cpu and say 4gb of ram you should be just fine.

Chris is exactly right however the Oregon SOP also affords the inspector a great amount of leeway. One example is the requirement to state how habitability is affected. That is such a vague term - attorney bait. I argued against its inclusion to the HIAC. Well it passed anyway and only afterwards did the committee try to define what it meant. (?) To be fair they did do a lot of work but a few gems like this still made it through. I simple wrote into my contract specific disclaimers which negated the "habitability" issue and other ill-defined terms or requirements. Oregon SOP says that if the inspection is going to deviate from the Oregon mandated requirements it must be clearly stated in your contract specifically where it will deviate. Easy enough if within reason.