I decided not to upgrade to Windows 8 at this moment

Microsoft has just launched Windows 8 operating system recently, and is now given an offer for existing Windows users to upgrade to Windows 8 Professional at the price of US$39.99 (download from Internet) or US$69.99 (purchase the DVD media). This offer period is until end of January 2013.

My Dell Studio XPS computer with Dell SX2210T multi-touch LCD monitor is running on Windows 7 Home Premium.

I have just gone to this website of Microsoft to download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant tool to check if it's worth for my computer to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro by accceting this US$33.99 offer.

On that website, just click on the "Download Pro for $39.99 ERP" button to download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant for free. Don't worry, there will be a few steps to go through before you actually need to pay the money and get the Windows 8 Pro. You can just run the assessment with the tool first without need to pay anything.

The assessment result for my PC seems to be quite discouraging.

I am informed that:

• There will be no DVD player software in Windows 8 Pro. You will need to either install a 3rd party DVD player application or to buy Windows Media Center at a separate price.
• Sidebar gadgets are not supported in Windows 8. This seems to be a bad news for AddGadgets.com who produced nice gadgets such as All CPU Meter, Network Meter, Drives Meter, GPU Meter, etc.
• Windows Media Center that is included in Windows 7 Home Premium and above, need to be purchased separately for Windows 8 at US$9.99. I heard that Microsoft is offering this for free download to Windows 8 Pro now until end of January 2013.
• My Dell SX2210T multi-touch LCD monitor seems not fully supported by Windows 8
• There are quite some applications unable to run in Windows 8, including any component of Microsoft Office 2003 or earlier (including MS Project 2003, MS Visio 2003, etc.), Oracle VM Virtualbox, etc.

As such, I don't feel having the desire to upgrade to Windows 8 now.

PTARAS and FAVCO: the 2 well-performing counters in construction support industry

In my current stock investment portfolio, there are 2 well-performing counters in construction support industry, both having forward PE ratio below 5. Despite the recent KLSE market slowdown, I still hold on to them and will consider to contrarily increase my position should their price drop following the market sentiment.

Both of them have healthy order book, consistent earning growth, and their business are very unlikely to be affected by the outcome of the upcoming general election of Malaysia.

The main business of Pintaras Jaya (PTARAS, 9598) is piling & foundation systems, civil engineering and superstructure building. In 1999, it acquired Prima Packaging which manufactures metal pails & cans as container for paint, chemical, lacquer, motor oil, ink, food, etc.

One of the attractive points of PTARAS is it managed to obtain high profit margin from its business.

PTARAS is cash rich with zero debt, and they have engaged with 3 fund managers to invest a large portion of their cash reserved into the share market. The 3 fund managers are: Kumpulan Sentiasa Cemerlang, Singular Asset Management, and Pheim Asset Management. This should be a better option than keeping the cash in bank and earning the low interest rate, as long term return of well-managed stocks is expected to be better than bank interest. However, certain people might not like this, as its investment gain/lost will fluctuate its earning figure in financial reports.

PTARAS is trading around its NTA of RM3.14 now. It has declared a final dividend of 12.5 sen single tier in respect to its last financial year, which will gone ex on 27 December 2012 and payable on 15 January 2013.

Favelle Favco (FAVCO, 7229) was an Australian company, bought over by Muhibbah Engineering (MUHIBBAH, 5703) in 1995 and becomes a subsidiary of the later since then.

FAVCO's business involve in the designing, manufacturing, supplying, servicing, trading and renting of tower cranes, offshore cranes, crawler cranes, wharf cranes and marine winches.

FAVCO has manufacturing facilities in Malaysia, Denmark, USA and Australia. They have own marketing arms in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, UK, UAE, etc. as well as a strong dealer network around the world. In fact, 90% of the world's 13 tallest buildings had used Favco's tower cranes during their construction.

As at 21 November 2012, FAVCO's outstanding order book stood at RM746.1 million, of which majority is from the oil and gas cranes for the offshore oil and gas exploration and production activities. Remaining are from the shipyard, construction and wind turbine industry. This will keep them busy for the whole year of 2013.

FAVCO's D/E ratio has been declining from year to year. The D/E for FY2011 is at healthy level of 22%, and it is in a cash surplus position. Its net profit margin has been kept on improving over the past few years from 4.17% in FY2007 to 9.87% in FY2011.

It seems that the stock price of FAVCO has been laggard behind its strong fundamental and business performance, probably caused by its parent MUHIBBAH which has some issue in its Asia Petroleum Hub (APH) project. Anyhow, the problem with MUHIBBAH should not affect the fundamental and business of FAVCO at the time being.

MUHIBBAH has just sold a crane fabrication yard in Australia to FAVCO recently, which I see is positive to FAVCO future financial.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Check and monitor Celcom Mobile Internet data plan usage

Celcom Mobile Internet data plan is currently packaged as follow:

• mLite (300MB/month)
• mBasic (1GB/month)
• mAdvance (3GB/month)
• mPro (5GB/month)

If you exceed your monthly quota usage of your plan, Celcom will probably throttle your mobile Internet to a very low speed, unless you purhcase additional quota with them.

How to check and monitor your daily and monthly mobile broadband usage, so that you can subscribe to the right plan, without need to pay more (for too much unused quota) to Celcom?

If you are using the data plan with Android smartphone, you can install an app called 3G Watchdog in your phone to monitor your Internet data usage on your side. 3G Watchdog even comes with a widget to report your Internet data actual and predicted usage on your phone's screen.

However, what really matters is not the record on your side, but the record with your mobile operator, as that will be used in your billing and also throttling.

One easy way to check your Celcom Broadband usage status is to send an SMS from your smartphone using its data plan to 22188 with content "VOL STATUS".

Another way which will give you more details is to get the infor from Celcom Online Customer Service (OCS) website.

After login to the Celcom OCS website, drop down the "My Account" menu and select "Fair Usage Policy". Then, click the "Check Usage" button.

You can note that in case you need to purchase for additional quota for your Internet data usage, there is a button to do so.

After clicking the "Check Usage" button, you will need to provide a start date and end date for the checking, which I think should be optional but the website makes it mandatory. Why can't the checking be on the latest month if user doesn't select the date range?

Then, you will get your Celcom data plan info for each billing month within your checking date range. Information includes the billing cycle start date and end date (which you should set into your 3G Watchdog setting accordingly), allocated volume for your package, volume used (this is the important data that we are checking on), subscribed speed (the maximum Internet download speed you can get from your package).

If your Internet has been throttled, you will also see the throttling information there. If you purchased additional quota, the purchased volume is also shown there.

Click on the figure in the Volume Used colume, you can check on your daily recorded usage.

Note that Celcom can actually track your usage down into categories such as file sharing, web browsing, email, messaging and misc.

You will notice that the daily volume recorded by Celcom will be slightly different from the daily volume recorded by your 3G Watchdog app. Anyhow, the variance should not be too wide apart.