Update for October 20, 2009

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S. 1776 – The Medicare Physician Payment Bill

The bill lingers in the Senate awaiting a vote. 

Sen. Lincoln has submitted an amendment (SA2693) but the only comments I found on it were in the Congressional Record, as follows: “SA 2693. Mrs. LINCOLN submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 1776, to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for the update under the Medicare physician fee schedule for years beginning with 2010 and to sunset the application of the sustainable growth rate formula, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table.”  and “Paragraph (3) of section 115(a) of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (12 U.S.C. 5225) is amended by striking “$1,244,000,000” and inserting “$251,244,000,000”.”  Good Grief! to quote a famous cartoon character.  This appears to be some sort of technical correction rather than a change to intent of the bill itself.

Of course, there is this from The Hill website:  “Reid Offers Doctors a Deal” (excerpt below)

“The White House and Democratic leaders are offering doctors a deal: They’ll freeze cuts in Medicare payments to doctors in exchange for doctors’ support of healthcare reform.

At a meeting on Capitol Hill last week with nearly a dozen doctors groups, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the Senate would take up separate legislation to halt scheduled Medicare cuts in doctor payments over the next 10 years. In return, Reid made it clear that he expected their support for the broader healthcare bill, according to four sources in the meeting.”

Yes, these two items (S. 1776 and the “Doctor Deal”) are directly related.  Again, so much for open and transparent government.

Buying Windows 7

I found a listing on Amazon.com for the “Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack (3-User)” for $149.95 (free shipping, no tax).  That’s less than $50 per PC if you have 3 PCs, and less than $75 if you have two.  Since a single PC upgrade is $119.99 by itself this seems like a pretty good deal if you’ve got more than one PC not taken advantage of any of the other deals.  If you can shop at the military exchange the same products, for the same prices, are available thru the on-line store (and probably in the brick/mortar store on Thursday).  BTW, the Family Pack is listed as “while supplies last” whatever that means.

My Personal Windows 7 Upgrade Experience

October 20th.  Ran into my first apparent glitch today and the product is not yet in my hands!

I went to the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (W7UA) website and downloaded and ran the most current version of the Advisor, version 1.0, on my 6 year old Dell desktop.  The W7UA is no longer listed as beta and seems to run a more comprehensive scan of the PC with amore comprehensive report that includes both an analysis for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the new OS.  I saved the file (W7UA creates a report that opens in a web browser) and dated that version today, October 20th.  Previously I saved a version on October 9th when I last ran the beta version of the advisor.  By comparison, that report was 4 pages long and the newest one was 10 pages (5 for the 32 bit version and 5 for the 64 bit version).  Lesson learned:  go and fetch the latest version of the Upgrade Advisor before you start the upgrade itself.  I plan to download and run it again before I actually do the deed

I saw that in the 10-9 report my video card was listed as being able to run “Windows Aero” (the fancy graphical interface) but the most recent report stated that “The current graphics adapter won’t support the Windows Aero interface.”  Uh-oh!  Maybe not so good.  So, I went to the NVidia website (my graphics adapter is a GeForce 6800 with 256MB of RAM) and looked for the latest driver software.  It turns out that I am running the latest version – for Windows XP.  There is a different version, albeit the same version number, for Vista and Win7.  I wonder if this is the problem or if I will be forced to purchase a new graphics adapter.  I did poke around in the NVidia website to see if there was a list of Win7 compliant adapters and found mine listed on such a list.  But, there was not further detail such as “Runs OK but won’t support Aero interface.”

But wait!  There’s more to this story.  While finishing my comparison of the two reports I notice in the hardware section of both reports that the NVidia GeForce 6800 is “…compatible with Windows 7.”  So, is the issue in the driver?  That is, do I need to be running the Vista/Win7 driver to make all things well?  Don’t know until I try as I cannot load this driver on my XP machine.  It was also interesting to observe that the NVidia Drivers are listed as also earning MS’s “Compatible with Win7” status.  (Confused yet?  So am I; however, given that the video drivers are listed as good and the video hardware is listed as good I’m guessing there’s it’s the latest version of the software, as mentioned above, that is the problem.)  More on this topic when I actually do the upgrade.

All the other items on the list are good to go and the new report provides a more comprehensive software list than the beta version did although it does not list all the software I am running.  Some items to now:

• It was nice to know that the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor itself has earned the “Compatible with Windows 7 logo.” 
• Some older, and frankly unused, items of software are listed as “Known Issues: You may experience issues running this program on Windows 7”).
• A few are listed as “We don’t have compatibility information about this version of the program” but there’s a notation that an update is available. 
• One, Microsoft ActiveSync version 4.5 is listed as “Not compatible: This version of the program will not work on Windows 7.”  This is the software I used to use to sync my Windows Smartphone to my computer.  Since I de-commissioned my Smartphone (another story) I don’t need this software.  There is a newer version for Win7 if you are using the same software for a Windows Smartphone.

I’m going to check my XP laptop using the W7UA and see what discrepancies, if any there are with that system as it’s my test machine for the Win7 upgrade.  I’ve also downloaded the latest version of the “Windows Easy Transfer Wizard for Windows XP (32 bit) to Windows 7” so I’m ready to install that when needed.  If you are not sure what that is and why it’s needed, here’s what the download website says:  “This software installs Windows Easy Transfer on a computer running the 32-bit version of Windows XP so you can copy your files, photos, music, e-mail, settings, and more to a computer running Windows 7.”  According to the literature I’ve read so far, it’s not perfect but it’s better than a manual install of all the settings.  Another alternative is Laplink’s “PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant” which apparently also has some warts but does work a bit better than the MS version as it also moves programs.  And, it’s available until October 22nd for $15.00 (on-line download), 50% off the regular price.  I read an article on ZDNet that mentioned this product that leads me to believe my ‘upgrade experience’ will be better for this small investment.  I’ll let you know.

 

The Last Word

Is the News Broken?  Read this article and judge for yourself.

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