Firefox

I’ve got a confession to make. I love unique applications, so long as they aren’t malware (Remember the flying toasters screen saver?). I’ve updated my Windows^® XP machine to mimic Apple’s^® Dock and added emulations that give me some Windows 7 functionality. I’ve loaded add-ons to my Firefox^® web browser that tell me the weather, allow me to share websites on Delicious, trust a site or not with WOT, save a site with iCyte and use a cool program I’ve never shared with anyone else called FireShot to snag images of websites that even include Flash^® animations. In short, I could be a tech support nightmare, but I’m not because I only download my tools from well-known sites (like CNET.com) and only after I investigate their reputations on the web at large.

It’s with this love of quirky apps in mind that today’s Tech Tip is written. If you’re a hard-working Certified Legal Nurse Consultant you may not lift your head from your work for hours at a time. In fact, I’ve seen Vickie go an entire day without looking out a window because she’s fully engaged in a project. I’ll even confess that sometimes I get like that.

As CLNC^® consultants, you know what I mean – you get so caught up in writing a report or doing research for your favorite attorney-client that you forget to eat lunch, go to the restroom and do anything except grab another cup of your favorite caffeine-containing beverage (hot or cold). Or maybe your office is a cubicle, or in a room that doesn’t have a window to the world or perhaps you’re just so caught up in Second Life, Farmland or Spacebook that you forget what’s going on in your real life or at least out there in the great wide open.

Well for those of you who need a reality check, reality reinforcement or just don’t have a window handy, check out a program called “YoWindow.” This is an easy-to-use screensaver that will show you the weather outside your own window (or at any other location in the world you choose) in real time. It sets the weather against a rather bucolic farm scene and realistically renders snow, rain, night and day, etc. and even reflects the season! Here’s the weather in Houston when I wrote this blog:

This is one fun little weather tool that is almost as cool as the “1-ClickWeather” Firefox add-on from Weather.com (which I really like).

YoWindow even allows you to scroll forward and see the forecast so you’ll know if you need to take an umbrella to an interview with your hot attorney-prospect when you go to show how your legal nurse consulting business can help him win his cases.

I’m an old-school tech-type and tend to use the Windows “Starfield” for my screensaver because it doesn’t put a strain on my processor or video card like some of the 3D screensavers used to (such as the floating, rotating, reflective “3D Text” saying “Tom Rocks!” that I put on Vick’s laptop this morning). YoWindow is different in that it seems to be fairly simple, if you’ve got a decent computer the clouds and weeds will blow in the wind and the effects will render nicely. The developers promise more backgrounds in the future but in the meantime you can substitute your own photo or background of your choice and the weather will lay over it.

If you want a quick weather app, YoWindow is fun and easy to install and use. Give it a try.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant has experienced the joy of finding a website with the exact material they need for the report they’re working on for their attorney-client. Those same CLNC^® consultants have experienced the frustration of clicking on the bookmark for that webpage and seeing a “page not found” error message. How do you find that webpage once it’s lost in the Internet? Easy, there’s a free service called “iCyte^®” and it does a great job of saving a webpage so you can view it later, even if it’s removed or changed.

Simply visit iCyte.com, register for your free account and get started. It lets you “freeze” a copy of just about any webpage, and then it stores that “page” for you as a “project” on the iCyte system so that you can access that saved “original” page at any later time. You can even compare the past and current versions of the saved pages to see if there are any changes since you last visited.

Here’s the best part for savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. If you’re using the Firefox^® browser, it has an add-on that allows you to highlight text on the page! Also, you can annotate the stored sites you saved as well as tag them and use iCyte’s free-form notes field to write comments about a page.

If you’re working with legal nurse consulting subcontractors, you can “invite” them to join your projects. This allows them to view and comment on them also. It’s an efficient way to review or add to your CLNC^® subcontractors’ citations.

The iCyte service is a great addition to any legal nurse consultant’s useful collection of website tools. Try it today!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I don’t know about your husband (or wife), but mine is a creature of habits. Some good, some bad and some just…

For all his tech-tippyness, he even has a bad tech habit and I have his personal permission to share this one with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (Tom, I owe you one!). Here goes: any time Tom starts searching, no matter where he is on the information superhighway at the time, he’ll go straight to either Google^® or Yahoo!^® to start his search. To get there he’ll open a new tab on whichever browser he’s got open and click “Home.” On Firefox^® it’s his customized Yahoo! homepage, on Internet Explorer^® 8 it’s his customized Google homepage and I have no idea what’s on his Safari^® page. Once the customized page has loaded, he starts getting ready to search.

Now, I’ve watched him do this. He doesn’t go straight to the search box and start typing, first he’ll scan that customized page of RSS news feeds, etc. for current updates, weather alerts, checks on how the Dow is doing and then when he’s satisfied that all is well with the world, he begins searching. By this time he’s lost at least two minutes and those minutes build up over a day, a week and a year. Every minute he’s assuring all is right with the world is one he could be spending on the ironing (Just kidding – it’s actually washing the dishes!). In all fairness, he does keep me updated on what’s going on in the world – but at a cost to his efficiency.

One of the things working in the ICU as an RN taught me is economy of movement. When you’re coding or resuscitating a patient you don’t want to be taking three steps to do something you can do in one or two. Seconds count when lives are in the balance. I try to apply economy of movement to my workday to keep me focused on the big things. I could end up needing to work all day every day if I’m inefficient, and that would interfere with my vacation plans!

That’s why when I search the Internet, no matter what webpage I’m on, I go straight to the search box built into the top of my web browser. Tom converted me to Firefox and I love to search right from the browser. If I’m ready to leave the page I’m on, I’ll just type my search term in the built-in search box and “Google” away. If I want to stay on the page I’m on and am just doing some fact checking, I’ll simply click open a new blank tab (Ctrl + t) and search away still using that built-in box. Firefox allows me to select the search engine I want to use:

IE8 picks Bing^®/Live search as its default and I’d have to ask Tom how to change that so I’ve left it on Bing:

I do recommend that you customize your iGoogle^® homepage and Yahoo! homepage to add RSS feeds relevant to your legal nurse consulting business. I also recommend that you search from “inside the box” to stay efficient and free of distractions.

Keep on searching – efficiently.

Success Is Inside!

One thing I know for sure about Certified Legal Nurse Consultants is that they all use different web browsers and different versions of those browsers. I like to keep up to date in my software and have blogged on the importance of updating the software on your legal nurse consulting business and home computers using automatic settings where possible. But once you’re a CLNC^® consultant out on the information superhighway doing research for an attorney-client, how do you know which websites are safe and which are insidious purveyors of malware? You don’t. Not, at least without some outside help.

My customized Firefox^® browser will often warn me of bad or suspect sites while doing a Yahoo!^® search (yes, I’m a Yahooholian versus a Googallion).

For legal nurse consultants who’d like a little more advice on which sites are possibly good or bad, you may wish to consider downloading the WOT – Safe Browsing Tool from WOT Services. Web of Trust (WOT) relies on its member community to rate websites based on the individual user’s experience. You can find the FireFox add-on as a download here and the Internet Explorer^® (version 6.0 and higher) download here. If you’re a Safari or Opera user, there’s no add-on available but there is a cool bookmarklet you can get here. Drag the link to your bookmarks in Opera/Safari (then rename it something like “WOT”) and when you’re visiting a website, you can click the WOT bookmarklet and it will display the site’s rating in a pop-up. Clicking on the bookmarklet again will close the window.

This is a cool add-on. Once you’ve installed it, register for membership in the WOT community and you too can start rating websites and helping keep the web safe for surfing.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I’d like to begin today’s blog by giving a birthday “Shout Out” to Vickie:

Happy Birthday Vick – with what’s in the works, I know 2010 will be your (our) best year ever! Thanx for sharing it with me (I’ve got one of your favorite bottles of wine to go with your favorite dessert tonight! Woo-hoo!).

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, let’s start techin’! Many, if not all of you, are automatically updating the Windows^® operating system using the “Automatic Updates” function (or you’ve bookmarked the Windows Update webpage) for your home and legal nurse consulting business computers. That’s great for Windows but we all have a lot of other programs on our systems – many of which need updating too.

Some of the biggest offenders are those cool programs from Adobe^® that we all love. You know which ones I mean – Flash^®, Shockwave^® and even Acrobat^® – all are security risks from time to time. How do you stay up to date on these? Well, Adobe is finally taking steps to update some of its programs automatically – read this article – but not until April 13! In the meantime, my CLNC^® amigos, you’ll need to visit Adobe’s Security Center to see the list of “buggy” programs and Adobe’s recommended steps for dealing with them. It may involve determining which version of each program you have and uninstalling it or it could be as simple as downloading the newest version. In any event, you should visit this page on a regular basis. You can also sign up for security alerts here so that Adobe can tell you when there’s a new patch, etc. available.

If, like many Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, you’re using the Firefox^® web browser as an alternative to Internet Explorer^® you’ll need to keep on top of updates too. Open up your Firefox browser, left click “Tools,” then left click “Options,” then click “Advanced” and finally click the “Updates” tab. Make sure the boxes next to “Firefox” and “Installed Add-ons” are checked and close those boxes being sure to save your changes. This way you’ll be automatically notified each time Mozilla updates Firefox or one of your add-ons is updated. You should also take a minute to visit Mozilla’s Plugin Check page to be sure all your Firefox plugins are up-to-date.

I know it’s a lot of work, but you need to keep on top of your updates. They’re not going to do it by themselves (yet).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I’ve blogged and blogged about the usefulness of the Adobe^® PDF (portable document format) file format and its usefulness to legal nurse consultants. For the longest time these files were pretty much free from attack by hackers and other malfeasors. Well, that’s all changed and Adobe Reader and Acrobat are now under attack. If you haven’t switched to one of the free or alternative PDF reader/creators, it’s time to take at least one step to help protect yourself from the hackers.

If you’re running Adobe versions 8 or higher, you’ll need to open your Adobe Reader or Adobe Professional, click Edit, Preferences and JavaScript. When you see the selection screen make sure that Enable Acrobat Javascript is unchecked (not selected) then click OK. This will protect you from at least one vulnerability that might allow a bad guy to take over your computer after you read a maliciously infected PDF.

Even after doing the above, whatever version of Adobe you’re running, you should use the “check for updates” function at least weekly and always make sure you’re on the latest Adobe build (8.1.4, 7.1.1, 9.1 and higher have security patches built in). Other alternative PDF reading/creating software programs have their own bugs, so it’s best to research them before selecting one for use in your legal nurse consulting business.

While we’re on the subject of Adobe, that brings up a reason to switch to the Firefox^® browser. Adobe’s popular Flash Player versions 9 and 10 have a vulnerability that only affects Internet Explorer^® (IE) users, not Firefox. Adobe should release a patch soon, but in the meantime – keep on using your Firefox browser instead of IE and if you’re using Flash Player make sure you check for updates on a regular basis.

As long as we’re talking Firefox – all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should be using at least version 3.5.0 and preferably the most current 3.5.1. Make sure you go into Tools, Options, Advanced then Updates and make sure your Firefox is set to automatically check for updates. You can also force an update check by clicking Help and then Check for Updates.

Once you’ve downloaded the most current version, take the time to install a spell-checking feature to your Firefox forms completer function. To do so, start with the listing of Firefox filters and functions. Open Firefox and type about:config into the address box and then click the box that says “I’ll be careful.” Type spellcheck into the filter box and hit enter. If you right click layout.spellcheckDefault, click Modify and change the value to 2, once you restart Firefox the spell-checking function should work in most online forms.

Finally, did you know that you can duplicate an open Firefox tab by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging that tab onto a blank tab? This is a great tool when you’ve opened a page in your search results on Yahoo! or Google and want to go back to the original search results page. Any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who’s not using iGoogle’s “Open search results in a new browser window” will certainly appreciate this Firefox function. Try it. If you have any other Firefox tips, I’d love to hear them.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Any legal nurse consultant who owns a computer running the wonderful Windows^® operating system (OS), has, at some point been faced with the little pop-up that tells you something to the effect that “high-priority updates are available for your computer, would you like to download and install them now?” My answer is a whole-heartedly qualified “Yes! I sure would in certain situations.”

I live behind a firewall, I’ve got eight real servers, a couple of virtual ones and any number of different “legacy” (geek-speak for older) programs running across 25+ computers at any given time. Before I can do an OS update or upgrade, I’ve got to make sure it doesn’t “break” anything (geek-speak for causing an older program to no longer run correctly) causing your users, then you, much pain and grief. This update/upgrade issue is compounded by our numerous websites designed to be viewed with various versions of any number of different browsers (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.) running different web services to collect and transfer data. So, when Windows asks me if I want to add a new service pack to my XP operating system, or high-priority updates to my Office programs or even to upgrade to a new level of Internet Explorer, I have to step back and think about it.

However, if I was a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant running Windows XP or Windows Vista and the Office family of productivity software (talk about an oxymoron!), I’d have a different answer. As an individual user not connected into any “legacy” software and whose system is working with existing printers, scanners, etc., I would install every service pack for Windows XP and Vista that comes down the line. Service packs are upgrades to the operating system itself and usually contain fixes for other issues that have arisen since the last service pack. They’re designed to cure deficiencies in the original program and make it into something safer and more stable than the prior version. In Windows XP’s case service pack support has been discontinued and only high-priority updates will be issued in the future. Service packs are a way to upgrade to a newer and better version of your operating system (keep your Vista service packed up). If you’re worried that an existing program won’t run correctly after a patch, do a Google search before you download and install the latest version to see if the new service pack is contraindicated for your software. If not, go ahead, download and install that sucker.

Even Apple offers OS upgrades (and patches) designed for the same purpose. According to an article in The New York Times, researchers at Symantec found 26 vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X in 2008 versus 27 for Windows Vista. The takeaway? No matter what OS you’re using – keep it current.

High-priority updates are different than service packs. High-priority updates are just that – fixes for something Microsoft has deemed a high-priority problem. Believe me, if Microsoft thinks it’s high-priority, it is (or was six months ago when it was identified and Microsoft started working on a patch [geek-speak for "emergency fix"] for the issue). Download and install high-priority updates. Always. Period. End of story. Your computer won’t be completely safe, they never are, but it will be as safe as can be as long as it’s fully patched and packed up.

How do you go about setting this up? There are a couple of ways. The easiest is to go into your Windows Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel or Start, Control Panel depending upon what start menu you use) and adjust your Automatic Updates to download and install updates automatically. Then, every Wednesday night, or whatever time and date you set, your computer will contact Microsoft’s servers to check for updates and it will download and install the updates automatically. This is a great way for a CLNC^® consultant to keep his/her computer up-to-date.

If you don’t trust Microsoft to do this (and not everybody should), you can open Internet Explorer and go to windowsupdate.com and follow the instructions to check your computer against the lists of the most current service packs and updates. The computer will do so on its own, just give it permission to install the necessary applets and give it some time. Without releasing any private information to Microsoft, your computer will be checked and a list of “high-priority” and “available” updates will be generated for your computer. I usually select just the “high-priority updates” and then review the list to see what Microsoft feels is high-priority. You can deselect any that you don’t think you need, and then let the computer install them. Sometimes it takes a couple of reboots but I feel much safer afterwards.

If you have a company-issued computer or work for a company and access various programs through a virtual private network (VPN), you’ll want to check with the IT department to see what the company policies are on updates – automatic or otherwise – before you install anything. After all, you don’t want to be the one to “break” the system! Otherwise, if you’re using your own computer – go ahead and patch and pack it up!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

From the beginning – let me disclose a conflict of interest, I’m a Firefox user. I’ve flirted with Apple’s Safari but find it is too slow to render its pages, and it’s got the worst search function ever designed for looking for text on a web page (although it does tell you how many matches there are on a page). I’ve customized my Firefox browser to include my favorite blogs, news and RSS feeds and, even though it’s a little slow to open the first time you fire it up each day, I love the fact that I’m tuned in to the world every time I jump on the Net. It’s great the way I can do tabbed browsing, with a simple right-click opening pages from my Yahoo! searches in a new tab so I’m not clicking forward and back to get to my search results after a page pans out. It’s also cool to be able to look up forgotten passwords for websites that deleted my “cookies.”

With my built-in bias, I downloaded and installed Internet Explorer (IE) 8. I’ve had IE7 installed for some time and have always found it a little clumsy. In fact, the only reason I have used it is to access the Windows^® Update website and keep my Windows XP OS and Office programs patched up. I didn’t like IE for general web surfing and had a latent fear of all its vulnerabilities I’m always reading about. Firefox seemed like the best way to practice “safe surfing.”

Now that Microsoft^® has released IE8, a number of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have asked me whether or not they should upgrade. My answer is an unqualified “yes.” IE8 is probably the best version of the IE browser that Microsoft has released. It’s supposedly safer than ever and when you open a new tab, instead of seeing a blank page, you can choose to open previously closed tabs as well as other options. It offers a so-called smart address bar feature (that I’ve turned off in Firefox and dislike in Safari) that offers sites from your browser’s history as you type in an address. It also has better options within the “delete browsing history” function that gives you better control over what data (even website-specific data) you want to keep or delete.

When you click on the “x” to close an individual page, it asks you if you want to close all tabs or just one. There’s a new filtering service you can select which will display a warning page prior to visiting any site that is deemed to contain malware or that might be a phishing site (security risks). Something really cool is that IE8 highlights the core domain name of the website you’re visiting to help you avoid sound-a-like or typosquatting sites. To help make this a safer browser than previous versions of IE some other security improvements have been added. On the negative side, IE8 may not display all websites the way they’ve been designed to be viewed – not everyone will catch this – but it offers a “compatibility mode” that will allow you to see a website to view the “broken” site correctly and it will remember those sites for you, switching in and out of compatibility mode automatically.

In short, any legal nurse consultant that uses IE on a regular basis should upgrade to IE8 and then keep an eye out for upcoming patches. I also recommend that you make sure you have all the current high-priority Windows updates installed prior to moving to IE8. The upgrade process is easy to download and install. It kept almost all the customizations to my iGoogle homepage (including my cool theme), RSS feeds, etc. This is a definite upgrade that I’m sure I’ll come to appreciate the more I use it and so will you.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Friday I came home from work, docked my computer, fired it up and went to check the movie times at the dollar theater for my big date with Vickie. Fired up Firefox – nothing. Opened up IE8 – nothing. Tried Safari – still nothing. Looked at the DSL modem and router – all seemed fine (all das blinkenlights vas blinken und flashen). My first reaction was that my end is working, it must be that the Internet is down.

Since I was in a hurry to catch up with Vickie for dinner and a movie I didn’t have time to adequately diagnose the problem. Now, I can go a month without cable television. I only watch “The Weather Channel” anyway (it brings my blood pressure down getting “Locals on the 8s”). But the prospect of a weekend without the Internet terrified me. How would I know what was on eBay, what the Octomom was up to and how was I going to download the latest LOLcat in my Fam-spam?

All through dinner and Star Trek I thought about the problem. Was it limited to my computer? Did I have a cable pulled out? Had I paid the bill? Was there any construction on the street yesterday that could have cut my lifeline to Google? Was the Internet really down (there wasn’t anything on the radio about it) or was it something even more sinister?

I put it out of my mind and managed to have a fitful night’s sleep. The next morning, after a cup of healthy green tea to stimulate my mental processes (well process anyway), I attacked the problem fresh. First, I rebooted my computer. Still nada. Second, I fired up Vickie’s computer and, while it was booting, checked all the cables running into my dock/port replicator – all were in place and my network connection light was blinking properly. Third, I looked in the system tray in the bottom right of my screen to see if my LAN (local area network) connection was functioning – LAN was okay.

Fourth, I checked Vickie’s computer – no Internet there either. Problem duplicated so I know it’s not isolated to my computer alone (good news – maybe).

Next I called AT&T to hear the Internet outage report. No problems in my local area. Even though AT&T gave me a clean bill of health, I called them back, punched through all the voice-prompt systems and finally talked to Elvis from Bangalore. Elvis (who’s actually a really nice guy in Toronto who can’t pronounce “Toronto” in Canadian), tells me that he is showing a strong signal going to my router. In other words, it’s not AT&T’s fault I can’t get online, it’s me.

“So,” I ask Elvis, “what’s the next logical step?” He tells me it’s easy – just reboot my modem and router and see if that’s the issue. That’s what I was hoping not to hear; that’s the dirty job, involving crawling under the desk through a passel of dust bunnies to check all the cables on my DSL modem and my router. Elvis wasn’t up to it (but he did offer to stay on the line until the issue was resolved) so someone else had to do it. Vickie was still downstairs drinking healthy green tea oblivious to the impending disaster that would befall us if I couldn’t get the Internet back on. The job fell to me. Everything else had tested negative, it was time to tuck my red cape into my shorts, take Elvis’s advice and pull the plugs.

First, I unplugged the router then unplugged the DSL modem. Das blinkenlights are no longer blinken. I waited a minute to allow any dynamic memory to clear itself out. Once everything was still (not blinken) I took a deep breath, plugged the DSL modem back in and let it fire up (start blinken). Then I plugged the router back in and let it acquire a signal from the modem (and start blinken). Next, still holding my breath, I walked back to my computer, fired up the browser and…Yahoo! It’s back! I started breathing again, thanked Elvis profusely and got on with my day. I also have a WAP – a wireless access point (to give me wireless in the backyard) plugged into the router so I rebooted that too just for good measure.

What’s the takeaway for the Certified Legal Nurse Consultant? When your Internet is unavailable, don’t call your computer manufacturer’s help line. Instead follow these steps:

1) If you have a second computer sharing your network, see if it can connect to the Internet (I know, I didn’t do that first).

2) Reboot your computer to make sure it’s picked up any connections.

3) Check your physical network connections (your LAN) to your computer (skip if you’re connecting wirelessly).

4) Call your Internet service provider (ISP) to see if there are any network outages affecting your area.

5) Reboot/restart your cable or DSL modem and any router/hubs and/or WAPs you have plugged into that modem.

Internet outages are rare – the issue is usually something simple, so attack the problem in a logical order and you should get a simple and fast resolution.

Here’s another takeaway – if you’ve gone to VoIP (voice over internet protocol) for your legal nurse consulting business your phone calls are going through your Internet connection. This means that when your Internet is down you’ll need a cell phone or a landline to report the problem!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

In my “PC to the Cleaners” thread, I’ve dusted you off, cleaned out your private data and today I’ll speed up your computer (at least infinitesimally). My final topic on cleaning is how to clean up (and out) your hard drive.

When you first buy a computer for your legal nurse consulting business, it runs so fast that we wonder why we struggled to live with our old computer. But what happens? The longer we use the “new” computer, the slower it gets. Why? The answer is simple – the more you work, the more data you store on the computer. The more data you store, the longer it takes to find the data you need.

First of all, think of an old vinyl record – 45, 33 or 78 rpm – whatever you grew up with. On a vinyl record, all of the data (the music) is in concentric tracks and you can immediately find a song by dropping the needle onto the correct track (anyone born after 1980 is probably lost by this point). At the risk of oversimplifying, think of your hard drive the same way. Your hard drive begins with its data in localized, easy-to-find places. As you use the computer and the hard drive spins, data is opened and saved into different spaces on the hard drive. Some portions of the data go into vacant spaces and some overwrites older data. At some point the “tracks of your data” are no longer in nice easy-to-find areas – they are spread out all over your hard drive. The more data on the drive, the longer it takes the computer to find and pull together the data when you open a file, photo or document.

What makes up these large quantities of data? First of all there are all those legal nurse consulting reports, LOLcats, photos, slide shows of flowers, movies of people doing stupid things and other attachments stuck onto your old sent and received email (if you use Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express, etc. where copies of email are kept locally). There are also all sorts of old photos, files, file fragments, unused or partially uninstalled programs and other debris that have collected on your hard drive over time.

By cleaning out the junk or no longer needed files, you will free up hard drive or disk space you can then use to store new data. This speeds up the rate at which your computer accesses data (well not really, but it makes it easier for your computer to find so it seems quicker).

Simple things first: Go into your “sent” folder in your email program and delete any email more than 60 days old for personal email and 1 year for your CLNC^® business (or pick dates that work for you). Do the same for your received email and file attachments and dump anything you don’t need. If you can sort email by size (usually with a Size bar at the top of your email program’s window) go into the “sent” folder and click the Size bar until the largest email files are displayed first. Then delete any email with a large attachment (anything over 300 KB that you do not wish to save). If you want to keep an attachment, save it into the proper file on your hard drive (you’ve probably already done this and have a duplicate copy still attached to an email anyway).

Next, delete any unused or duplicate photographs, music, drawings, images or other files you have accumulated over the years. If you don’t feel comfortable deleting those photos from your 2001 summer vacation in Poughkeepsie (the photos you haven’t looked at since you came home) you can burn them to a CD/DVD or move them to a network storage device or portable hard drive, if you wish.

As you surf the Internet for information you need for your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting business, copies of all the web pages you visit are stored (cached) on your hard drive to make subsequent viewings faster. There’s no reason to keep these so you can set your web browser to clear the “cache” files on your web browser after every session and free up that disk space. Internet Explorer 6.0 and later can be set to do this automatically. Go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced Tab, under Security. Select the box next to Empty Temporary Internet Files Folder when browser is closed and click OK. If you are using the Firefox browser you can look under Tools, Options, Privacy and Private Data Settings.

When a Windows^® user deletes a file, photo, etc., it goes into the Recycle Bin on your desktop to give you a chance to recover it, in case you have second thoughts. On a regular basis you should empty those “trash” files from your Recycle Bin. This maximizes your hard drive free space by freeing Windows to overwrite those files and the space they used to occupy. The files aren’t really deleted – Windows just pretends it can’t see them so it shows them as “free” space and eventually overwrites them.

To speed up file access you can consolidate your files into the My Documents folder. Here you’ll find subfolders such as My Music and My Pictures and you can create additional folders for word processing documents, spreadsheets, etc. By consolidating, you’ll make files easier to find, and you may only need to back up the one folder rather than having to hunt all over your computer for files to back up. (You can then set your Microsoft^® Office programs to open into the correct “default” folder so you won’t have to fish around.)

To gain back even more hard drive space, delete the “shovelware” from your computer. This is what I call the preloaded, “limited time only,” or preview software the manufacturer dumps onto computers due to licensing deals. It also includes the stuff you’ll never use. To get rid of it, open the Control Panel, go to Add and Remove Programs and remove any program you’re not using and don’t plan to use. Be careful though – just because you don’t recognize a program doesn’t mean you don’t need it (or won’t need it).

As I said earlier as you continue to create and save your reports for your attorney-clients, and delete files, Windows fills the “deleted” spaces with newer files, often scattering files across your hard drive? This causes Windows to run slower as it searches your hard drive for those fragments and pulls them together into your file. If you run a defragmenting program on a regular basis it will reconsolidate your files and programs so Windows doesn’t have to look for them. It’s kind of like putting the record tracks I talked about above back into the correct order for each song. After you delete no longer needed programs and data, you should run a defragmenter.

Windows^® XP has a good built-in defragmenting program. Before you run it though, you should empty your Recycle Bin. Then run the defragger from the menu bar by clicking Start, then Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, then Disk Defragmenter and finally click Defragment. The program will start up, run and you will need to close it when complete.

I recommend defragging at least once a week. Any more often than that is simply compulsive. Any less than once a month is criminal. The key to keeping your computer running fast and smoothly is regular maintenance.

Keep on techin’,

Tom