Word software

Legal nurse consultants live in a Word, Word, Word, Word world. There are other word-processing programs, there are open-source programs and there’s even Google Docs for those of you who live in the cloud (and Word for Mac for those who can’t use real computers). But for main stream, main street, main line Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, there’s Word. If it doesn’t come preloaded on our computer we rush out to buy it. Why? Not because we want it, but because we need it.

In my all-too-many years of personal (and impersonal) computer use, I’ve had love affairs with Multi-Mate^®, WordStar^®, WordPerfect^® and a few other not-so-worthy predecessors to Word. But today, I’m a one word-processor man. It truly is a Word, Word, Word, Word world. That being said, we’ve got to make the best of our relationship with Word. Like any relationship, Word can be sweet at times, infuriating at other times but in the end, it’s still there for us – at home and at work. In fact, Word is probably the only word-processing program you need for your legal nurse consulting business.

This Tuesday Tech Tip is dedicated to the word-processor CLNC^® consultants love to hate and hate to love.

Tech Tip #1

Do you ever wish you could change that darn default file save location? You know, the place on your computer where Word wants to put all your documents whenever you hit the Save button? Well, my CLNC^® amigos, with just a few quick clicks of your mouse you can. Here’s how (this works in all Office 2007 programs as well): start by clicking that beautiful Pearl or Office button in the top left of your screen. Next, click Word Options, then Save. You’ll get a screen with a variety of options (including a choice of the Word document formats you can use to save your documents). Look for the “browse” selection next to “Default file location.” By clicking browse, you can navigate to the initial folder where you want to save your Word documents.

I have a directory called WordDocs under which I have all my other subdirectories such as TechTips, LegalDocs, Letterhead, etc. in which I store those relevant documents. Whenever I hit the Save button, up pops a screen asking me for a document name and giving me a list of subdirectories in which I can stash the newly created document. Whenever I click Open, it automatically opens to my WordDocs directory and I can choose where I want to go. You can do this in the other Office 2007 applications too, but in Excel and PowerPoint the programmers went on break and never put in the browse button so you have to cut and paste your new default file path after navigating to it in Windows Explorer (or you could just type it in).

Tech Tip #2

Not every legal nurse consultant or attorney rushed out and bought new software or a new computer loaded with Office 2007 when it first came out. Believe it or not, more than a few schlubs out there are still using Word 2003 and this includes major law offices! If all your attorney-clients haven’t yet ponied up for the latest and greatest, you can still create your way-cool Word 2007 .docx documents and then save them in earlier versions of Word with a few clicks of your magic mouse!

If you don’t want to use the new .docx format with all its imbedded wizardry simply repeat the steps above, but instead of picking the browse button, click the dropdown next to “Save files in this format” and pick Word 97-2003. This will make your version of Word automatically save any and all your documents in the earlier version (until you change it back).

Tech Tip #3

If you have just one attorney-client who’s still typing it old school with Word 97-2003 and want to save documents (especially after you’ve created and formatted them for that particular, schlemiel in the older format), then after you’ve saved your document as a .docx and are sure it’s final, you can “save it down.” Start with the document open in Word 2007, then click on the Pearl, Save As and click on the dropdown next to Save as Type and pick the format you want to use. It will create a duplicate document in the format you select. For those law firms still using WordPerfect^® you can save as rich text format (.rtf) which will open easily in WordPerfect. Remember, you’ll now have two documents in your files – one ending in .docx and another by the same name ending in .doc or .rtf. Having multiple copies of the same document may cause some confusion later so be prepared to store them in subfolders and always, always make sure you keep track of both. Remember too that if you edit one document, you need to save it in both formats.

Tech Tip #4

Did you know you can encrypt and password protect your Word documents? If you haven’t yet purchased or obtained Zip or StuffIt software, you can use Word 2007′s built-in encryption tools. When your file is final, save it one last time then click the Pearl, next click Prepare, then Encrypt Document. You’ll need to type in a password that’s at least 8-10 characters long (and use my password tips). Click on OK and reenter the password (if you can remember it). Now you can feel free to attach and email that legal nurse consulting work product document to anyone of your choosing and Word’s 128-bit AES (advanced encryption standard) will protect that document from pretty much everybody. Now, when you give each attorney-client you work with their own password, you can safely transmit documents back and forth (just keep a paper logbook of passwords in case you forget them).

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

Three weeks ago I bought and installed a larger, faster hard (disk) drive for my laptop. The old drive sat safely locked in a desk drawer waiting for disposal until last Friday. That evening I took it home and hammered it to death in the street while one of the neighbor’s kids watched.

Not all legal nurse consultants have the energy or inclination to take their tech support issues out on an innocent hard drive. Other than taking it for a one-way boat ride in your cousin’s sailboat, how do you dispose of an old computer or drive?

We all store so much information on our computers that it can be scary when it’s time to dispose of the old one. Whenever you give (or throw) away a computer, the entire history of that computer and its users goes with it. Bank records, case reports, photographs, passwords and even military secrets are all-too-often still present on a computer that’s been disposed of improperly. Even legal nurse consulting files and folders can be easily recovered by anyone running readily-available software. Files that have been partially overwritten can be recovered and repaired, depending upon the extent of their “destruction.”

What steps do you need to take before disposing of your old computer? Unless you physically destroy the hard drive, (please don’t drop it in the ocean!) it will always be possible to recover some data from it. If you are giving the computer away, whether to a charity, friend or even to a recycling agency, we recommend that at the very minimum you take the following actions:

1. Delete all documents, mail messages and data files.
2. Uninstall any programs, applications or other software that is licensed to you personally.
3. “Sanitize” or “scrub” the remaining empty space on the system’s hard drive.
4. Reinstall the Windows operating system or give the next owner the “system restore” CDs to either reinstall the Windows operating system or to return the computer to its original configuration (if you’re simply disposing of the system there is no need to restore it).

If you do not want to do this yourself, there are independent companies that will dispose of your computer, either for free or for a small fee. Before you trust your old computer to one of these companies, make sure you ask the right questions. Determine how they will ensure that your data has been “scrubbed clean.” Are they scrubbing or degaussing? Ask how or where they actually dispose of the computer. They may be shipping it overseas for sale, they may be “parting it out,” donating to charities or even attempting to recover data themselves as an illegitimate side business. Check to see if they’re registered with the Better Business Bureau. Since you don’t know where it’s going to go, it’s always preferable to “wipe” your computer down to nothing and then “restore” it yourself prior to giving it away.

If you choose to “scrub” your old hard drive yourself there is software available that does a very good job. Not only can it scrub your data, some of these programs can achieve “governmental” levels of data security. These programs work by overwriting the portions of your hard drive containing either nonessential data or the entire hard drive. Depending upon the level of data “destruction” you choose, they may overwrite with a series of ones or zeros in a specific pattern, and will do so over a series of “passes” changing and then repeating the pattern each time. The more passes, the more complete the destruction. This writing and rewriting ensures that computer files previously stored on your hard drive are eventually overwritten with data, even down to the smallest portion of the file, rendering that data impossible to recover.

This software is cheap, relatively easy to use and readily available. One program from a reputable company is cyberCide. The software will help you create a bootable CD which will be placed in the computer’s CD drive while the computer is turned “off.” The computer will then be turned “on” and you’ll follow the on-screen instructions to clean the computer. Don’t expect this to be a fast process. The larger your computer’s hard drive the longer the “scrub” will take.

As a savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, when disposing of any computer you want to be sure that all data has been destroyed prior to disposal. It’ll take longer to remedy any issues that may arise if a bad guy gets your data than it will for you to take the proper steps to destroy it.

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

A couple of Thursdays ago, I posted a blog about my birthday (thanx again everyone). Then Vickie had a birthday and today I’d like to remind everyone of two more birthdays – both are about half my age and both are almost as important as mine. They’re the birthdays of whats, not whos. You either love or hate (or both at once) these whats.

On November 10th of last year, Microsoft^® Windows^® turned 25! Happy belated birthday, Windows. I’m sorry I didn’t send a card but I forgot while waiting to reboot (again). This year, coincidentally on my birthday (January 22 in case you want to mark your calendar), Apple, Inc.’s Macintosh^® computer, turned 25 too! Happy belated birthday, Mac^®, I’m sorry I didn’t send a card but I was loading the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack onto my iPod^®.

Windows was really created in 1983, it wasn’t until 1985 that Windows 1.0 came around as a new product. My first experience was Windows 3.1, back in the early 90s. I remember moving very reluctantly from my trusty DOS version of Automenu to the scary Windows GUI (graphical user interface). It was so traumatic that I needed a techie friend to come over, install it on Vickie’s and my computers and teach us to use it.

Next we graduated to Windows 95, then moved up to the popular blue screen of death known as Windows 98. Believe it or not, I still have two laptops running Windows 98! I keep them to run some older programs I just can’t live without (no, one is not Pong). We passed through a couple of server versions and I advanced the users in Vickie’s growing company right past Windows 2000 to the best OS I’ve ever used, Windows XP. Now we have the SP2 version of Vista out (which shows it really is a good OS if you have enough computer power) and Microsoft is set to release Windows 7. All the reviews I’ve seen of Windows 7 say it will (eventually) knock our socks off (even though it’s really just SP3 of Vista).

Although Apple was started way back in the ‘70s, 1984 was the public introduction of the first Macintosh computer (which was the first computer to use a GUI as well as a mouse). Remember the cool “1984″ commercial that ran during Super Bowl^® XVIII? Most of you know I’m not a Mac user (although I did check my email on a Macbook Pro^® in the Apple store in Tokyo last year) so I have no history with them. I will tell you that I believe they’re some of the best computers built and have the best operating system on the market.

Today, technology has given Certified Legal Nurse Consultants many more choices than we had in the 80s and 90s. There are advantages to both systems and with the vast array of software available (like Windows for Mac) there’s nothing stopping you from using a Mac in your legal nurse consulting business. You won’t find Macs in too many big law firms but you’ll probably find them with solo practitioners and possibly small firms. Whichever OS you choose for your business or next computer upgrade, you’ll be in good shape tech-wise. Things will just continue to get better. You can look as cool as you want in Starbucks^® or for your kids – there’s nothing holding you back! One last thing – there are Mac viruses out there (contrary to popular belief), if you’re a Mac user check out this article.

A lot of things have come and gone since 1983/1984, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Cabbage Patch Kids included. We’ve experienced the frustration and fun (hah) of Windows and Macs for over 25 years. Can you think of many other products, especially in the personal computing field, that have lasted that long while improving themselves? If you do, let me know.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Much of the software out there is so ridiculously expensive that it makes it nearly impossible for most people to get started with even basic computer tasks. Take for example an RN starting a part-time business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Purchasing MS Office, antivirus software and basic graphic editing tools can easily exceed a $1,000 price tag.

I’m going to show you how you can get by on a zero dollar budget and still have access to amazingly powerful tools.

Office Suite

The most popular suite is Microsoft^® Office and not surprisingly it is also the most expensive. We have several free alternatives here. The most powerful in my opinion are the free online office tools from Google^TM known as Google Documents. Google Doc’s gives you access to word processing, spreadsheets and presentations (in essence replacing Word, Excel^® and PowerPoint^®). My next favorite office suite of applications is another freebie known as OpenOffice. It completely replaces Microsoft^® Office and will save you hundreds of dollars.

Email

Email is a big one. I hate seeing people use the email addresses their web service providers give them. Surely most don’t know better but the reason they are given those addresses is so that they cannot cancel their Internet service (or change it) without losing that email address. Anyone who has changed their phone number or email address in the past knows how big a hassle this is. So go to Gmail^TM and get an account. They usually have better spam filtering and antivirus tools than your Internet provider. You can also incorporate Google Calendar to manage your schedule.

To manage your emails, you should download Thunderbird. This will act like MS Outlook^® and let you download and manage your emails when not connected to the Internet (like when on a flight or out of a wireless network range).

AntiVirus

Norton and McAfee^® are very expensive but unfortunately, there is no way to avoid anti-virus software. Fortunately there is a free alternative known as AVGFree from a company called GriSoft. I have no problems with it and it runs just as well as Norton and McAfee^® in my opinion.

Graphic Editor

Checkout a free online piece of software called SplashUp. It is a highly stripped down version of Photoshop^® (and based on flash) but it allows for some fairly advanced photo manipulation including blending effects, layering and filters. It even ties into some of the online photo storage databases like Flickr^® and Picasa^TM. You can also find free stock images to use for your website or other marketing materials at Bad Neighborhood.

Pretty cool, right? Well…at least to the people who haven’t already shelled out $1,000 for the software they now know how to get for free.

Guest Blogger Profile

Brian Horn is an Internet marketing consultant who specializes in search engine marketing, site optimization, social media marketing, link building and web data analytics. Brian has consulted with Vickie Milazzo Institute for over three years.

Brian also speaks at seminars and conferences throughout the U.S. and Canada on how to use the Internet to improve business.

Vickie,

As a busy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with a number of attorney-clients, I’ve been wondering, what kind of personal information management (PIM) software should I be using?

Monica R., RN, CLNC

Hi Monica,

That’s a great question. PIM software, depending upon the complexity, can do something as simple as manage your contacts and address book, calendar and even, on higher-end systems, keep track of your marketing efforts and client communications.

To answer your question I consulted with Tom, our tech expert. His response was pretty complex getting into things like databases and the kind of tech-talk that techies do – just because they can. He also did some pretty good research. (Give a man a fish and you feed him dinner. Give him an Internet connection and you lose him for hours.) Rather than give you Tom’s answer (and bore you to near-death) let me distill what I think he said leaving out the gigabytes, megabytes and overbytes.

ACT! and Goldmine used to be pretty good, fast and simple-to-use programs and were the leaders in the PIM field. Goldmine’s personal edition has been discontinued and in its last iteration ACT! added a SQL (pronounced Sea-Quill) database (you don’t need to know what that is) to help keep track of the immense amount of data it generates and handles. This has apparently slowed it down to the point where you need two things to use it – a fast computer and some good computer skills (more than switching it on and off).

In other words some pretty good programs aren’t nearly as pretty or as good anymore. Tom also gave me some SaaS (more than his usual) which means, “Software as a Service,” ideas – this is where the actual software is hosted somewhere in the vast reaches of the Internet and you access it from anywhere. Salesforce.com, uReach^® and Google’s combination of applications are online only. Tom doesn’t recommend investing data in the “cloud” or with an Internet company that may not be there tomorrow (I keep telling him Google is safe). If you keep good back-ups you should be okay. Besides, that’s where all our data will be one day (go ahead and quote me).

What do I choose as a PIM? Well, I used to love the Palm Desktop (Tom says you can still download it for free from Palm, but check the license first.) before I started using Microsoft Outlook 2007. There’s a new Business Contact Manager for Outlook that will do everything the older PIMs do. We haven’t tried it yet but one of our vendors told me it was pretty good. We also have an enterprise-level CRM system that’s way too complex for most individuals (Tom’s words not mine).

My best advice for a legal nurse consultant? Save your money. Until you get over 50 attorney-clients I don’t believe you need to invest the time or money in buying, learning and programming a PIM. Outlook was free with our other software so why spend more money? We surveyed Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and the overwhelming response was that 80% of their revenues come from two to five of their attorney-clients. Don’t buy the geek software until you need it. Save yourself the aggravation and put the time and money into your CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

Vickie

Even techies make New Year’s Resolutions and promises to themselves. Some even involve important things. My #1 resolution for 2009 – Install and learn Dragon NaturallySpeaking software (the cheap $76.99 Standard Edition). I’ve talked to way too many people who love this software to keep ignoring it. If you’re like me and can think faster than you can type, this is a tool to try.

I know many legal nurse consultants who end up spending more time concentrating on typing (dare I say pecking) their CLNC reports and end up losing those important thoughts before they can get them on paper. Typing wasn’t taught in nursing school, so chances are you’re not going to win any typing contests at 30 words per minute. The average person speaks at about 120 words per minute (those of you who know me figure I’m slightly above that) but I can’t type that fast (well, I can, but with 0% accuracy). This changes the equation.

The demo I saw just blew me away. Once you get used to this software you’ll be dictating all your reports, letters to your attorney-clients, grocery lists, to-dos and to-don’ts. I’m planning on installing this on Vickie’s computer in January. If Vickie can do it, you can do it. I’ll be giving you an update on how well it works and how easy it is to train your computer to recognize your speech patterns.

Be aware this program only works on 32-bit systems (not newer 64-bit systems). So before you buy, on your Windows-based machine: Open the Start menu. Click on Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, then System Information. After the System Summary screen fills look on the right side of the screen for “System Type.” If it shows “x86-based PC” you have a 32-bit computer. If it shows “x64-based PC” you have a 64-bit computer. You can also look at the operating system line – if you are running 64-bit XP it will tell you. Another alternative method is to click the Start button, click on Control Panel, click on System and Maintenance, and then click on System. Under System, you can view the system type – it will tell you if you are running a 64-bit system.

Check back in about six Tuesdays!

Tom