Firefox

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

If you’ve moved to Microsoft^® Office 2007 with its suite of upgrades, enhancements and head-banging, you’ve probably noticed the so-called “Ribbon.” This replaced all the good, old-fashioned, easy-to-use command buttons in Office 2003. I’ve been using this suite for about 10 months now and still misplace commands and I never remember where the darn “advanced options” can be found. If a techie is flummoxed, what’s a legal nurse consultant to do?

Well, fire up your favorite web browser and head on over to Microsoft’s excellent Get Started web page and check out the tutorials created for people just like us. Trust me – when it comes to software, you’re more like me than I am myself.

Look at Basic Ribbon Training. It will help you track down the commands that you can’t or won’t find on the new Ribbon. These are two terrific links and I keep them both bookmarked in my IE7 browser. I usually use the Firefox browser but found that for some strange reason Microsoft’s websites work best when using the Microsoft IE browser (something funny about that).

While I’m on the topic of Word 2007, do you ever use the little (?) help symbol up in the top right hand corner of your Office 2007 programs? This replaced the “Help” button and the “Type a question for help” box that was found in Word and some of the other Office 2003 programs. It’s a pretty good tool, but as many times as I’ve used this to search for a solution, I don’t always find what I want right away.

Here’s an example. When I insert a headshot of Vickie into a Word 2007 document, all I see is an empty box (in Windows-speak a “placeholder”) – not the photo.

Now, I’d really like to see this photo of Vickie so I can figure out how to wrap the text around it to make best use of the space on the page. When all I see is an empty box, it’s not much help. I can’t use any of the cool feathering tools, etc. on this darn box.

So I did an online search by typing in “I can’t see my inserted photos in Word 2007″ and I got some good leads, one of which told me to “Open the advanced tab under Images and un-click show placeholders.” The perfect answer right? Except in 2007 there is no “advanced tab” under the Image tab!

Giving up on that, I decided to use the built-in Windows help function. I clicked the little (?) and typed “show placeholders.” I got nothing. I typed “view placeholders” – got nothing, typed “view images” – got nothing. I finally remembered the Windows bar doesn’t say “images,” it says “pictures.” I typed “show picture placeholders” and I got the answer to “Go into advanced options and remove the checkmark for ‘view picture placeholders.’” Gadzooks! That’s the answer. Now all I need to do is find the “advanced options” and I can fix my problem. It’s simple. Click “tools,” click “options” and darn. There are no “tools” or “options” in Word 2007. So it’s back to the online “Basic Ribbon Training” page to use the Find Word 2003 commands in Word 2007 link to find my “options” and “advanced options” (they’re at the bottom of the Ribbon under “Word Options”). Now I see how to play with my inserted headshot of Vickie (not image of Vickie, duh!).

You can download a free “Get Started” tab from Microsoft that you can install right onto the tool bar of your Office 2007 versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel. When you encounter a bump in the road or can’t find a command simply click the “Get Started” tab and you’re on your way!

The moral of this story isn’t to buy a Mac^® for your legal nurse consulting business – it’s if you’re searching for something in the Windows Help function, you should use Windows-speak to find it. The more you use the language of the software the more likely you will be to actually find a useful help answer! Something cool about the new online help function is that people can comment and add answers that truly help other people like me who are challenged by help.

So, like I said in the title – don’t be afraid to ask for help, just be careful how you do it.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

P.S. Please comment on your wild experiences riding the Ribbon.

We’re all looking for a few ways to save money – whether it’s the budget for our legal nurse consulting business or our family budget. This week’s Tech Tips will focus on some innovative ways to save money.

A recent headline in one of my tech journals exclaimed that Dell Computers has made over a million dollars (U.S.) from Twitter. Not being a Twitter subscriber, I was immediately curious how they could do this. It turns out it’s pretty simple. Dell has thirty different accounts on Twitter, each with a specific purpose. But if you subscribe to the Twitter stream for Dell Outlet you’ll get special offers on computers and other Dell products. That’s one way to get something useful out of Twitter. For those of us who aren’t “Tweets,” you can also use your blog reader to subscribe to a variety of Dell’s RSS Feeds that offer special deals, support and other information.

My mom was an inveterate coupon clipper (she also collected S&H Green Stamps if anyone remembers those). I have fond memories of her clipping through newspapers and magazines in search of 5 cents off this, 10 cents off that and driving across town to catch double coupon day at the Acme market. If you’ve ever used a shopping cart to check out after an Internet purchase (especially on Amazon.com), you’ll often see a box asking you for promotional claim codes. Ever wonder where everybody else but you gets these? It’s pretty simple – there are any number of websites on the Internet offering coupons (I’m trying to picture my mom and her scissors and a computer screen – too funny) but most are for groceries and other useless stuff.

One truly good site is RetailMeNot.com. This site allows you to search for coupons for a variety of items by category and instead of toothpaste, it offers technology. You can actually search for computers, software, consumer electronics and more. Once you get into the computers category, you’ll find a searchable listing of coupons by manufacturer and by reseller. If you’re willing to spend some time searching you’ll find some great bargains here (I repeat: if you’re willing to spend some time searching). Some of these aren’t really coupons and will point you to special offers by web merchants that you may not have found on your own. They also rate “unreliable” coupons to help keep you from getting outfoxed. Good luck!

My last tip on saving money – other than Mozilla Firefox with its really cool add-ons, Thunderbird for email and most Google Apps – don’t download free software off the Internet. If you must, do a simple Google search for that software and include the words “bugs, complaints, issues, malware” in your search. This is a pretty good way to see if what you’re about to download is freeware or malware. At the risk of painting my pixels with too broad a brush, lots of free software is really malware. You don’t want malware on your computer and the best way to get it is to download a cool cursor, load an off-brand “required player” for a video or song, or sign up for a free virus scan at a website you’ve never heard of before. Free can cost you a lot of money and time when you get your identity hacked or have to dial 1.800.Call.A.Geek or haul your computer off to get it cleaned and vaccinated.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom