Windows 8 is out and, like every other operating system released by Microsoft, people either love it, hate it or just keep on with their old Windows OS. Several Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have asked me whether or not they should upgrade their computers to Windows 8. My answer, as always, is an unequivocal, “It depends.”
Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who are Microsoft® Word users have long taken advantage of the built-in Track Changes function as well as some of Word’s other innate abilities, such as counting words in a document, inserting or overwriting and more. But one of the issues I’ve run into with Track Changes is that I can forget that it’s enabled, especially if I’m in Final display mode and may be inadvertently tracking what I’m doing… Not good if I forward my completed Word document to another who may then peer into the meta-data and see my changes and revisions.
In my last Tuesday Tech Tip I helped Certified Legal Nurse Consultants eliminate annoying pop-up messages that show up above your Windows® System Tray whenever you send a print job, when your computer discovers a wireless network or if your computer simply gets chatty. This week we tackle another of my pet peeves – Windows Error Reporting. I’m certain that everyone out there who is not on a Mac® has enjoyed the experience of having a window pop up in the middle of your work notifying you that some cryptic service or program has failed and asks you if you want to report it to Microsoft®.
This year is almost over and there have been a lot of advances in the tech world. Computers are faster, bigger and smaller and Windows® 7 works better than anyone expected. Pocket cameras are better than ever. Smart phones do everything but shop and cook for us. But there’s still a lot of technology advances to be made that I think will improve our lives. I want to end the year with my personal tech wish list for 2011 and hope that some of you Certified Legal Nurse Consultants share a few of these wanton desires with me:
I’m not a Mac user. I do think they’re wonderful computers but like anyone who likes a challenge, I live in a Microsoft Windows world. I’ve always wondered how Mac users who travel get along in a predominately Windows world? After all, most hotel business centers usually have low-end, Windows-based desktop computers (to keep costs down). What happens to Mac users? Do they have to be bilingual and speak two computing languages? Or, is this Windows predominance what forces them to carry an Apple laptop with them every time they leave home (like one of our CLNC Mentors who carries her slick Mac with her on every road trip we make)?
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.
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.”
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.
My last tech tip for your legal nurse consulting business was to clean up, and my recommendation was to blow it out – your keyboard and air vents, that is. Today we’ll look at some different aspects of cleaning up for your CLNC business. This time it’s your data, not your dust.
In line with our talk about the wonders of the Windows operating system, I’ve got a mixed bag of news. On April 14 of this year, Microsoft will end support for Windows XP, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003. For the majority of the Certified Legal Nurse Consultants out there, it’s the support for XP and Office 2003 that will hurt.
*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.
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