Why am I suspicious?

Most expensive housing.

Convert Office 2007 files. Your friend sends you a file with an extension ending in X, e.g. PowerPoint.pptx. It's an Office 2007 file and you can't open it because you're still using the old, reliable Office 2003. Solution: Zamzar.com. It will convert your files for free to the old format.

Several readers emailed "you idiot. Microsoft has a compatibility pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007. And it's free. Download here. Several also said they were using Office 2007 and they were happy. One said I should switch to OpenOffice 3, which was free. And others said I should use Google Docs, which are also free.

Greatest Firefox add-on. Firefox is my browser of choice. It's faster, more stable and has a million add-ons, a handful of which are ultra-useful. My two favorites are Showcase and Screengrab.

How fast in your "high-speed" Internet connection? I asked some friends to check their speed on www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/. Here are the results.

You'll notice three things: Comcast is fast. DSL is slow. Verizon's wireless broadband is ultra-slow. Most of us have no choice, but there are some things you can do to speed up your connection:

1. If you're getting your Internet as part of your cable TV, make sure your cable is new and there are no joins between the outside and your modem.

2. Call your supplier and bitch. Sometimes they'll up your speed as a favor, and/or send a repairman.

3. Add more memory, clean up your computer.... Do all the things that make it run faster.

4. Get Verizon FiOS if you can. It's allegedly very fast. I don't know anyone who's got it. If you have it, run the test and let me know your results.

5. Don't use wireless -- if you can avoid it. Steve got an 81% higher download when he plugged directly in. His upload was the same.

I tried to test a Verizon BlackBerry, but it didn't have Flash and I couldn't load it.

Stop press: Dan Barfield emails me this morning: There are three versions of FIOS. I have the slowest one:

Download Speed: 4758 kbps
Upload Speed: 1843 kbps

Biggest accomplishment of the past week: Unsubscribing. I've reduced my volume of junk offers by simply hitting the "unsubscribe" button at the bottom. And -- good news -- it's working.

The creativity of New York State. It has a new tax. It's called the "Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax." I bet I'll have to pay it. What joy. More paperwork the State can lose.

Wimbledon 2009 Tennis TV Schedule. Everything is live, except on The Tennis Channel, which shows repeats. I think I finally got it right. (Last week I was publishing 2008's schedule.)

Late night.
According to a new report, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have greatly reduced their number of customer complaints. The automakers did this by greatly reducing their number of customers. -- Conan O'Brien

Hey, you know what is going on over in Iran with the election? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared himself a winner. Had a victory party. He came out at the victory party and he thanked the 148 percent of the people who voted for him. -- David Letterman

Need Samples
An old man goes to the doctor for his yearly physical, his wife tagging along. When the doctor enters the examination room, he tells the old man, "I need a urine sample, a stool sample and a sperm sample."

The old man, being hard of hearing, yells at his wife: "WHAT?"

"What's he want?"

His wife yells back, "He needs your underwear."

This column is about my personal search for the perfect investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor. I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas, concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address is . You can't click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role in choosing the Google ads on this site. Thus I cannot endorse, though some look interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Michael's business school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.