Vista

Good question, Tech Tipper Tom! Do you need to encrypt my legal nurse consulting business data to keep it away from prying eyes? My answer is “That depends.” If you’re using a desktop system for your legal nurse consulting business and there’s no one around but your immediate family, and if you believe you can trust them, there is no reason to encrypt the hard drive on your PC. But, if you share a desktop with your spouse and children and they have a habit of getting malware infestations, you may want to encrypt the data. If you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who uses a laptop computer only and who keeps the data on the local drive of that computer (versus on an external hard drive or server in your office) and who also travels with that computer or shares it – you may want to encrypt your data. The way I see it, even paranoids have real enemies, so if you feel you have the need to encrypt your data, you should. If you’re like me and are rolling your eyes at the thought, you don’t.

As a CLNC^® consultant who chooses to keep your information from the eyes of Internet villains and you’re running the “ultimate versions” of Windows^® Vista or Windows 7, you can use Microsoft’s BitLocker to encrypt your data. Those legal nurse consultants running XP or older versions can use a program such as TrueCrypt, a free download, to encrypt your drive or a portion thereof.

No matter what program or method you use to encrypt your data, you’ll need to keep your password or encryption key in a safe, easy-to-get-to place in order to access your files. Otherwise, you’ll be just like any other hacker trying to get to them and, if you used a strong password or effective key, you may never be able to “crack it.” If you go the encryption route, take measures to protect your password/key.

If you’re not up for learning to use an encryption program, the next best thing is to toughen up your password to the point that even you have trouble remembering it. You could try setting a BIOS password but any proper villain with access to your motherboard can reset the BIOS and bypass that security measure. In my recommendation, strong passwords are the best defense.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Okay my CLNC^® amigos, I’m going to try something never done before in the history of my Tuesday Tech Tips. No, it’s not going to be something anatomically impossible, instead I’m going to actively solicit the opinions of all my readers (hope you’re here today, Mom) on the Windows 7 operating system.

I want to hear from the following groups of CLNC^® consultants, nurses and/or geeks:

• People who upgraded to Windows 7 from XP on an existing machine.
• People who upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista (tell me your Vista version) on an existing machine.
• People who upgraded from 32-bit to 64-bit systems (you know who you are) at the same time as one of the above.
• People who bought a new machine with Windows 7 preinstalled.

I want to know how the upgrades went and whether you think it was worth it. Tell me what you think about the new operating system and, whether or not, in your learned opinion, it is or isn’t a better version than XP or Vista. Be honest in expressing what you think, tell me how you’re using it and whether it’s making a difference in your legal nurse consulting business.

There are a few rules:

1. No profanity.
2. Comments must contain at least five words of more than four letters each and those words must be in the Oxford English Dictionary (abridged).

Comments may not consist solely of symbols (like in the comic strips – #!*@# OSX).

3. Anonymous comments will be allowed but, to keep the level of discourse civil, comments with names will be given preference in posting.
   
   As far as I know, Bill Gates isn’t reading my Tuesday Tech Tips (he should) so you shouldn’t have to worry about him hunting you down and wiping your system if you say something he wouldn’t want to hear.
4. Mac users will be allowed to submit an opinion which will be fairly reviewed, then ignored prior to being deleted.
5. You must have used your own copy of Windows 7. I don’t want to hear that the second cousin of a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant subcontractor you work with has a friend who’s dating someone whose roommate tried it in a kiosk at the mall.
6. If you’re willing, you can also let me know what kind of computer you’re running it on (laptop or desktop) and any details (processor speed, RAM, etc.) you want to share.
7. If in doubt about your response, see Rule #1 again.

Here’s your chance to help the rest of the legal nurse consulting community make their own upgrade decisions about Windows 7. If you have any great user tips you want to share, this is the time to do that too.

I personally know three CLNC^® consultants who have Windows 7 so I’m expecting to hear from each of you.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Windows^® 7 came out last week and the Windows world is buzzing about its cool new features. Some of these features are familiar to Windows Vista^® users and are slightly upgraded. Other features are new and will be useful to legal nurse consultants while some are just cool. The new Win7 delivers a lot of highly technical upgrades and security upgrades plus one really cool upgrade – the ability to create “Libraries” which are collections of files of the same type, no matter what directories they’re stored in on your hard drive (it shows all your photos – no matter where stored). Let’s take a quick look at the coolest upgrades I’m excited about and how the average Windows XP^® or Windows Vista user can get them without suffering through the upgrade to Win7.

First, give yourself some CLNC^® “Snap.” If you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with a wide-screen monitor, Win7 has a feature called “Snap” which allows you to anchor an open window against the right or left side of the screen either by dragging it or hitting a combination of Windows keys and right or left arrows. The selected window will fill half the screen and leave room to open another window.

Anchor window to left with “Snap”

OldWin (Vista and XP) users can get a beta (meaning use at your own risk, unsupported, third-party program) version of this from AeroSnap. I love this because it eliminates the tedious process of resizing a window by hand (plus it’s neat). It works on my dual screens just as well as wide screens and is really handy on my laptop while I’m traveling. You’ll like it too. Remember to right click on the AeroSnap icon and click in the box next to Start with Windows. That way it’ll always be there for you.

Next, since CLNC^® consultants like to shake things up, you can bring this concept to your screen. In Win7 you can grab an active window by the blue bar (with your left mouse button), double click it, then shake it back and forth to make all the other open windows minimize themselves to the taskbar. Repeating the motion will restore all the windows. We all know we can click the little “Show Desktop” button to minimize all our windows, but then we’ve got to fish around and restore the one we want. Aero Shake from lifehacker allows those of us using the OldWin to have Win7 convenience. Way cool.

You can clear up the system tray in the bottom right side of your taskbar by hiding inactive icons. Between my Quick Launch bar, the list of open windows and system tray icons, the taskbar at the bottom of my screen gets pretty cluttered. Win7 allows you to selectively hide your unused system tray icons – OldWin users can do this too. Right click on any clear part of your taskbar. In the first pop-up make sure Hide Inactive Icons is checked, then click Customize to get the Customize Notifications pop-up (in Vista you have to go to the Customize Notifications pop-up to see the “Hide” checkbox).

XP Start Menu Properties Screens

On the Customize Notifications pop-up you can select the behavior for different current icons (Hide when inactive, Always hide or Always show). Pick the behavior you want for each icon then hit OK on each pop-up to save your settings. Your taskbar will appear cleaner and you’ll have more room for active windows.

Finally legal nurse consultants can stop the fishing expeditions (between open window icons) by allowing preview thumbnails of your open windows in your taskbar. This one is for XP users only and emulates the Vista/Win7 rollover Thumbnails or pop-up Previews that allow you to see the contents of your open windows if you mouse over your taskbar icons.

Preview thumbnail

To get it, visit the “How-To Geek” site and look for the “Download Visual Tooltip 2.1” link. Follow that link, fish around a bit and you’ll find the link to download the zip file for Visual Tooltip. Download it, unzip it, double-click on the VisualToolTip.exe file to install it. You’ll find a little icon installed in your system tray that tells you it’s running. Go back to How-To Geek and follow the instructions to resize the previews (and make sure you check the “start with Windows” box).

Those were easy weren’t they? You’ve just previewed some of the cool new features in Win7 and found ways to add these to your current Windows version. Remember that you’re using these at your own risk. They are beta or unsupported products, but they sure are fun.

Win7 will be a darn good version of Windows once the second service pack comes out. Until then, or at least until you choose to upgrade from XP or Vista, any legal nurse consultant can add the cool new features of Win7 to her legal nurse consulting business by emulating some of its best tools and tricks.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Windows^® 7 will officially be released into the wild on October 22 and will be sold with new computers. If you’ll remember, Windows XP^® is no longer officially supported by Microsoft (although it will be available for limited purchases until 2010). People who are buying new computers with Windows Vista will be given the opportunity to make a free or low-cost upgrade. That’s the news.

Here’s the good news. Everything I’m reading, and everyone I’ve talked to who has run the final version of Windows 7 loves it. It has a few bugs but overall, it will be a vast upgrade improvement over Vista. (To be honest, Vista wasn’t really as bad as people like to think.) In fact, 7 is even better and more stable than XP. Some would say that it’s a worthy opponent to Mac’s Snow Leopard, but not being Mac-impaired, I can’t confirm that.

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants may wonder if it’s time to upgrade to a new computer with Windows 7 or instead, suffer through the upgrade process on your existing system. I’d say that depends. If you’re running XP, I think I’d wait until you upgrade to a new computer. There’s no direct upgrade process from XP to Win7. You’ll need to backup your personal data, wipe your hard drives, load the Win7 operating system, reapply your data and finally reload all your programs from their original media or downloads. Any patches or software upgrades would need to be reapplied also. It’s a complicated, but not impossible, process. For this reason alone I recommend holding off until you buy a new computer.

If you are a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who is running Vista, the upgrade process is easier and you can upgrade directly to the equivalent version of Win7 while keeping all your files and programs in place. If you’re not happy with Vista, this is your chance to upgrade to something faster and more stable.

If you’re seriously thinking about the upgrade process, you’ll want to be sure that your hardware is robust enough to run Win7. Some of the biggest dissatisfactions with Vista resulted from users trying to run it on underpowered machines. Savvy legal nurse consultants will check their hardware before making the same mistake. If you’ve got a machine running Vista comfortably, you’ll probably be safe. No matter what computer you’re running you’ll need to have a DVD-RW (or CD/DVD-R) drive. For the rest of your hardware, these are the minimum specs (and experts tell us to double these numbers) you’ll need to successfully run Win7:

1. Older 32-bit PCs should have a minimum of 1GB of RAM (I’d install as much as the system will hold and recognize), at least 16GB of free space on your hard drive and a processor faster than 1GHz. Your graphics system should be DX9 graphics compatible with at least 128MB of memory (to best utilize the Aero interface).
2. New 64-bit PCs should have a minimum of 2GB of RAM (again I’d install as much as the system will hold and recognize) with at least 20GB of free space on your hard drive and also be DX9 graphics compatible.

If you don’t know how to tell whether or not you have a 32- or 64-bit PC, follow this link. A faster, but less accurate way is to see how much random access memory (RAM) you have. If you’re running 3GB or less, you probably have a 32-bit system. If you have more than 4GB, you’re running a 64-bit system. To see the amount of RAM you have installed (and recognized), right click on the My Computer icon on your Windows Desktop, left click Properties and then look at the General tab. If you have a 64-bit system, it will tell you, but if you have a 32-bit it will not!

The fastest way to find out if your existing computer can run Win7 is to download and run the free “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor” from Microsoft. Make sure your computer is connected to all your peripheral devices (and they’re turned on) when you run it. It should let you know what you will need to be aware of in the upgrade process. With my cough-cough, ahem-year-old Dell Latitude D820 configured with a 2.00 GHz Intel Pentium T2500 CPU, 3GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, it took about 5 minutes and only found a few issues that would need to be corrected prior to any upgrade. Microsoft also has a nifty help site to ease your way through the upgrade process.

If you decide to upgrade, Win7 comes in four consumer flavors, Starter (which will be found mostly on netbooks), Business (which handles remote connectivity), Home Premium (for average users) and Ultimate (for the geeks). You can explore them here, but Home Premium or Professional are the best choices for most Certified Legal Nurse Consultants.

Supposedly, Microsoft has expanded the security software and external hardware compatibility features of Win7 to avoid the issues they ran into with Vista. But I recommend you always search the Internet for information on particular programs before upgrading. For users with Win7 Professional and Ultimate, there’s also a cool XP mode that will allow those users to run applications that are XP but not Win7 compatible. I’ll get into features found in Win7 in a later blog. For today, I just want to let you know that Win 7 will be here before we know it.

As with any new operating system (or new car model for that matter), I wouldn’t rush out and buy it, or rush to upgrade to it, but once it’s here, we’ll be living with it for a long time. I’m going to wait and see how it shakes out before I make my decision.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Windows^® XP comes with a nifty indexing service that was designed to help speed up your searches for documents, folders and other files. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as well or as fast as it was designed. It actually slows your computer’s performance. Microsoft^® fixed the issue in Windows Vista^® but for those Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and people like me who are still using XP, you’ll have to take matters into your own hands to nix the index.

Here’s how you do it. First, open up your Control Panel and once it populates (geek-speak for the process of displaying all the icons) double-click Administrative Tools. Once that’s open double-click Services. It will open a new window called Services (Local). Expand that window to full screen so you can locate Indexing Services and double-click it. Change the drop-down next to Startup type from Automatic or Manual to Disabled. Click OK and then close all the windows. You might not notice it, but there will be an increase in your computer’s speed which means you’ll get more legal nurse consulting work product done faster – trust me on this one.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom