A forum for Hawaii's
business community to discuss
current events and issues
» Family estate friction » Cameras and iPods and Palms » Wireless data cards
BACK TO TOP |
KIP AOKI / KAOKI@STARBULLETIN.COM Prevent family friction
We all think our families can get along, when it really matters. We think that family frictions will fade into the background and we can pull together. However, sometimes family frictions erupt at the death of a parent or grandparent and can result in challenges to the estate plan. This can even happen to the best of us.
Donald S. Russell Sr. was a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit at his death in 1998 at age 92. He had previously served as a United States senator and governor of South Carolina. Russell had an estate plan and had revised it frequently. His final documents were executed in 1996 and amended several times, including the final amendment just two days before his death. Russell left an estate valued at approximately $33 million. A family dispute erupted, resulting in litigation reaching the Supreme Court of South Carolina.
Prior to his death, Russell had allowed some of his family, the Williams children, to live with him for many years and had allowed them to become, in the words of the South Carolina Supreme Court, "churlish, spoiled children, who took advantage of [his] generosity." It was clear that Russell was competent at all times. However, there were allegations that some of the family exerted undue influence on Russell that caused him to favor them.
The court in the Russell case found that there was no undue influence because he could interact with others without their interference, he was able to conduct his own business, and he met with his lawyer alone.
While family disputes happen even to the best among us, there are steps you can take to reduce the chances that the dispute will result in litigation and that your wishes will be upheld if it does. First, as in the Russell case, if there is any question of your being unduly influenced, meet with your estate planning attorney out of the presence of your beneficiaries. Second, if you suspect there may be conflict, you can include a "no contest" clause in your estate planning documents. Such a clause disinherits anyone who challenges your documents. Third, you can include a mediation or arbitration clause in your documents. Such a clause can allow a third party to assist or decide the issues raised rather than letting the dispute get out of hand and go to court. This keeps the matter private and is less expensive.
Each family is different and what works to prevent dispute in one family may not work in another situation. A qualified estate planning attorney has experience in working with clients to help them avoid family disputes and ensuring that the client's wishes are upheld after their death.
Attorneys Judith Sterling and Michelle Tucker are partners in the Honolulu law firm of Sterling & Tucker. Reach them through www.sterlingandtucker.com or www.hawaiielderlaw.com, or by calling 531-5391.
BACK TO TOP |
Cameras and iPods
and Palms, oh my
In our last installment, we looked at relatively inexpensive high tech gifts. This week we'll up the ante and look at pricier options -- $150 and up. The main criterion is that there be a link between the gifts and your PC.
Let's start with digital cameras. Prices continue to drop and the sweet spot nowadays seems to be the $300 to $400 range, which combines value and features. For that price you're going to get (at least) 3.2-megapixel resolution (which will allow for quality 8-by-10 prints), a comprehensive selection of shooting modes (evening, sports, etc), a 3X zoom lens, a 1.5-inch color screen on the back, a self-timer, a flash, a TV connection, digital movie capability and the option to add voice annotations to photos.
Here's a wish list you might consider. (All prices are under $400). I've included excerpts from reviews found at steves-digicams.com, an independent digital camera review site that I find invaluable.
The new Stylus Digital 300 from Olympus is an elegant, point and shoot camera that is ultra-compact, weather resistant and easy to use.
Loaded with features and simple to operate, Kodak's EasyShare DX4530 zoom digital camera is one of the most affordable 5-megapixel cameras on the market.
Sony's DSC-P72 Cyber-shot is a point-and-shoot, 3.2 megapixel digital still camera comes with a 3x optical zoom and two 2100mAH rechargeable nickel metal hydride AA batteries and a charger.
Cannon's PowerShot SD 100 is incredibly compact and light. You can also get a waterproof housing for it that allows photographs to be taken up to 130 feet underwater.
For the past few years the iPod (www.apple.com/ipod/) has defined "cool" in the MP3 world. Essentially it allows you to take your entire music collection wherever you go. It comes with 10GB, 20GB or a 40GB hard drive, big enough to hold 10,000 songs. The newer, slimmer iteration is lighter than 2 CDs and, in addition to MP3 files, can store thousands of digital photos and even works as a voice recorder. Mac and Windows versions are available. Prices start at $299.
There are of course competitors to the iPod. Rio's new Nitrus (www.rioaudio.com) is smaller and lighter than the iPod. It was designed for Windows PCs, boasts a longer battery life and uses a USB 2.0 connection. Nitrus' reportedly has great sound quality and excellent music-management software. It costs about the same as the 10GB iPod, but the small hard drive holds only 1.5 gigabytes worth of tunes (about 375 songs). Price is $219.
Camera phones have been hot in Asia but they are just getting off the ground in this country and it seems inevitable that in the not too distant future all cell phones will have built-in digital cameras. Verizon Wireless (verizonwireless.com) LG's VX6000 is not going to replace a dedicated digital camera but it does have camera features such as shooting modes and even a zoom. It's small, lightweight and features a dual-band CDMA technology with talk time up to three hours unless you take a lot of pictures. Price is about $150.
If you're into color printing and need professional-looking documents, check out Samsung's (www.samsung.com) new CLP-500 laser printer, which provides both color and black and white. Most color laser printers are in the $1,000-plus range but the CLP-500 goes for $699. It can print color documents at a rate of five pages per minute or 20 pages a minute black-and-white.
I said this column was dedicated to $150 gifts and up but I'm making an exception with the Zire (www.palm.com), which is a new offering from Palm for $100. It's the latest incarnation of the plain vanilla Palm Pilot. It's nothing fancy -- no color screen or wireless access -- but it enables you to store about 6000 addresses and essentially offers the same specs as the Palm V, which cost about $300 just a few years ago. If it's time for that special someone to start getting their life order a $100 is not a lot to spend.
While we're talking cost-effective, consider a Wi-Fi router or access point (if you already have a router). The great thing about Wi-Fi is that it will accommodate your entire family's Internet access. No longer will the kids be fighting with grownups over who is going to get online. Wi-Fi will set your family free to log on anywhere in the house. We did it at our home and it's made life a lot easier. I don't think the brand of your router matters that much, but check out CNET for reviews to do your homework.
Kiman Wong, General Manager of Internet Services at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is an engineer by training and a full time computer geek by profession. Questions or comments should be addressed to kiman.wong@oceanic.com
BACK TO TOP |
Wireless data card can
go places Wi-Fi can't
One of the most popular topics for discussion lately has been wireless networking.
Most of the press, including our own, has talked about the wireless technology known as 802.11, or Wi-Fi.
The biggest catch to 802.11 wireless networking is that you must be physically located near someone who is providing the service. This could be in your office, the coffee shop, on campus, at the hotel, or at the airport. Chances are, the provider at the mainland airport is not the same as the provider in your local coffee shop. This usually means you have to go through a payment procedure, which can be tedious. Once you've paid, you might need to make technical adjustments to your laptop -- not all 802.11 networks work the same, despite what the tech industry likes to call "standards." Oftentimes, after you've paid, changed your network settings, and finally gotten online, the final boarding call is being made.
How do you get around this problem? Consider a wireless data card. Available from most major cell-phone carriers, including Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon, these cards basically provide a wireless connection to your computer -- think of it as a cellular modem.
Once installed, connections are established with a simple point and click. Although this technology has been around for a few years, its first incarnations were painfully slow. Improvements in the technology currently allow for a maximum throughput of 144kbps, which rivals DSL speeds.
The beauty of this technology is that you can get online anywhere you can make or receive cell phone calls. No credit card payments, no technical settings to change, ubiquitous access, combined billing with your cell-phone service, what's not to like?
Well, speed, for one. As you may have noticed, they always stipulate "maximum speed." Even the providers come clean, usually stating "average speeds" are more like 40 to 70 kbps, or slightly faster than the fastest dial-up access.
Of course, cost is always an issue. Most vendors charge based on the amount of data you transfer. As anyone with a cell phone knows, all vendors have caveats, requirements, commitments and other "features" of their respective plans. Business customers can usually negotiate tailored plans. Suffice to say that wireless data service can be had for as little as $20 a month (per card), but expect to pay between $30 and $60 a month for average use and $80 or more for heavy use.
To test out this technology, we used Sprint's Airprime PC3200 PCS Connection Card. This is a data-only card. It's also a PC Type II card, which basically means it can fit into any laptop except very old ones.
This is nitpicky, but the first thing I noticed was the design of the card. The antenna is fixed to the card; as a result, it's about an inch longer than standard PC cards. I don't like this because I have to take the card out of my laptop to put it in my laptop bag, and I can't secure the card in the pouch in my laptop bag made specifically for PC cards.
We installed the card on a Compaq Evo laptop running Windows XP. The software installation was a little trickier than we thought it would be. Of course, some of this was due to the installation of VPN client software, which usually requires a technician to perform anyway.
Once installed, the card worked like a charm. Connection (and disconnection) is easily accomplished. Access to the Internet and our own network behaved exactly as expected. We tested the card across the island of Oahu -- Aiea, Wahiawa, Salt Lake, Kaneohe, and of course, our offices on Kapiolani. We even took the card on a road trip across H-3, from Aiea to Kaneohe. The connection remained solid throughout and we were able to get e-mail and surf the Internet continuously. We even maintained connectivity through the tunnel.
We also took the card to Kauai. Although our testing was limited to Lihue Airport and downtown Lihue, we were able to connect at speeds comparable to what we saw on Oahu.
So what is the deal with speed anyway? As described above, vendors can be somewhat cagey about divulging actual throughput. The Sprint software, for example, does not describe the speed of the connection. Rather than run myriad tests that might be subjective anyway, I think it's safe to say that the speed was usually faster than 56k dial-up, but slower than my DSL connection at home (which is rated at 128kb upstream and 768kb downstream). In short, it seems as though Sprint's estimates are in line with our own experience.
What about security? According to Bryan Ito, Sprint's Data Sales Manager, and resident tech expert on the Channel 2 morning news, wireless data cards are inherently more secure than 802.11-based networks. Because these cards use the same infrastructure as regular digital (voice) cell service, all the major carriers have a huge interest in ensuring that your data can't be grabbed out of the air. Bryan told me he couldn't give me any more details, or he'd have to kill me.
Of course, there are other technological solutions, including wireless handheld devices such as iPaq, Palm, Treo, Blackberry, and others. I'm not a fan of these devices, but that's the subject of another column.
John Agsalud is the president of ISDI Technologies, Inc., a Honolulu-based IT consultancy, specializing in software development, systems integration, and outsourcing. He can be reached at jagsalud@isdi-hi.com or by calling 944 8742.
To participate in the Think Inc. discussion, e-mail your comments to business@starbulletin.com; fax them to 529-4750; or mail them to Think Inc., Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana, Honolulu, Hawaii 96813. Anonymous submissions will be discarded.