Here are six guidelines to help you avoid seeing your notebook PC disappear!

So there you are, rushing to catch a plane. You’ve got an important presentation on your laptop, along with sensitive company and personal information. And then, suddenly, it’s gone.

Either you’ve lost it, or it’s been stolen.

Airports and hotels are favourite places for thieves. Laptops disappear from both and that’s bad enough. But often, irreplaceable data has gone with them. According to Safeware, an insurance agency specialising in insuring high-tech equipment, in the US alone 591,000 laptops vanished in 2001.

None of this has to happen to you. But you have to be extra careful today. With the increased security at airports, losing track of a laptop is easier than ever. Here are six guidelines to help you avoid seeing your notebook PC disappear — or, if it does, help you find it or get a quick replacement.

Tips for Getting Through Security Checks

Oddly, some airports have collected stacks of laptops. They’re left behind by harried passengers in security areas. Most are reclaimed eventually. But some people never come back for their machines.

Obviously, you’ve got to allow yourself plenty of time when you fly. When I travel, I carry my laptop in a backpack. There’s lots of room in there, and it’s inconspicuous. I see fashionable businesspeople carrying laptops in expensive cases. They’re asking for trouble. Those cases say, "Laptop! Laptop! Steal me!"

Security people most likely will want to check the laptop. If possible, handle it yourself, rather than having them do it.

Don’t be afraid to speak up. You don’t need your machine damaged.

Be sure your battery is charged. The security people may well want to turn on the machine. Most important, don’t let it out of your sight. This becomes especially difficult if you are selected for a random head-to-toe check.

Once on board your flight, put the computer — safely stowed in your bag — under the seat in front of you. Try to avoid putting it in the overhead bin. Others will have more access to it there.

Have Sensitive Data? Encrypt It

If you have sensitive information on your computer, consider encrypting it. If you have Windows XP, you already have the tools needed. While the thief has your machine, these extra steps will make it much more difficult to access the laptop’s data.

Encryption will protect your business secrets, but it won’t retrieve your data. To do that, you’ve got to back up your information to another computer. If you run your own server, you can easily upload files to it.

You don’t have to back up everything on the laptop. Just copy the files you will need to the server. If your laptop should be stolen on your trip, you may be able to borrow a computer at your destination and download your important files. Finding time for backups is a pain, I know. But they can save you.

Make Your MP3 Player do Double-Duty

If you don’t have a server, or don’t want to back up to it, take a look at MP3 players. Some today have huge hard drives. They are easily hooked to a laptop through the USB or FireWire ports. The data can then be copied to the MP3 player. These things can copy any data, not just MP3s.

Trace a Stolen Laptop’s Location

If your laptop does get stolen, wouldn’t it be great if the system could do the high-tech equivalent of phoning home? There are programs that will report the location of a stolen laptop. They work when the laptop connects to the internet.

Security experts also say that engraving your name on the computer is helpful. That will make it more difficult to sell on so thieves may look elsewhere.

Set a System Password

Every road warrior should protect their laptop with a start-up password. This way, a system password prompt will appear each time you start your computer before Windows even begins to load. It will prohibit any access to the computer at all.

To create a system password, you’ll need to access your computer’s setup utility (also known as BIOS settings, which stands for "Basic Input/Output System"). Typically you do this by pressing Delete, Esc or F1 as soon as you turn on the computer. Check the manual though, as some computers are different.

Consider Laptop PC Insurance

If your laptop is expensive (and aren’t they all?) you might want to insure it. Some homeowners, renters and business insurance policies don’t cover computers, and if they do, there may be many conditions attached.

Today’s laptops are ripe targets for thieves. If you follow these basic guidelines along with some good common sense, you won’t have to give yours up.

Podcasting is a new way to get your message out to millions of people without costing you an arm and a leg.  A podcast is a digital media file that gets distributed over the internet using syndicated feeds for playback later and can be downloaded to a portable media player or computer.  Listeners can also subscribe to your podcast so that when you record a new one and publish it to the internet they are notified and can download it for their listening pleasure or a fee if you choose to go that route.

How can podcasting help your business?  The ways are limitless so instead of having a blog a million pages long and boring no less, we are going to highlight two of the best reasons, in my opinion of course, here.  Reason number 1?  You are in complete control! No one will tell you what you have to record, you control what your listeners hear, how long the cast is and who is allowed to listen to your message.  Reason Number 2?  It’s easy and you can do it for free!  What is better than growing your business and doing it affordably?  There are programs out there that let you record and edit your audio files for free like www.audacity.com.  If you want to pay for a program they come in all shapes, sizes and price ranges.

To reach your target audience you will want to do some research to find the appropriate place to link your site and then get it out to all the RSS feeders that you can.  If you don’t know what an RSS is that’s alright.  An RSS is Really Simple Syndication and is how your podcast is syndicated and found by others on the internet. Many websites today will have RSS somewhere on them with a logo or icon.  When you click on this little logo you will be able to subscribe to the feed and be notified when there are updates and new content available. It is an easy way to get updates without having to manually visit a web page or blog to check for updates or news.

Having your podcast associated with an RSS feed will allow those listeners that have subscribed to your feed to be notified automatically and immediately when you have new information.  No more sending emails out to everyone individually, this saves you time and therefore money!

Podcasting is yet another wave of the future.  To get ahead and reach more people than ever you need to grab your board and ride the waves into the next age of technology.  Surf’s Up!

Windows appears to be fine and superlative if they are clean. Cleaning should be done on a regular basis, at least twice a year.

Given below are some useful techniques for cleaning a window:

•      Clean one part of a window with the horizontal strokes and the other part with the vertical strokes. By doing this, you can identify which area of the window have a streak.

•      To steer clear of streaks on a large window, employ squeegee. Situate it at the top of the window and pull down effortlessly. The trick for no streaks with the squeegee is to introduce a dry rubber blade on the dry window.

•      Bring a flexible toothbrush or cotton swab in use to clean the corners.

•      To give a superfluous shine to the window glass, polish it with the well-washed cotton T-shirts or old cloth diapers. Or else rub a clean blackboard eraser over a freshly rinsed and dried out window to furnish it a brilliant shine.

•      Polishing windows with the wrinkled newspaper will provide a luminous shine. Besides, it leaves a film which is resistant to dirt.

•      When you have to clean the soil, grease or the other debris from your window panes, use a product such as baking soda, ammonia, or washing soda.

•      Make certain that you dry out your windows in one direction only, leftwards or rightwards as mingling of the direction will not give a tidy look.

•      If you are cleaning the window sills, scrape the entire surface through the wet cloth sprayed with alcohol so that all the spots get cleared.

By following these tips, you can view the world from a clean perspective which will come into sight as rose-tinted glasses.

Over the past year, I’ve had the dubious pleasure of buying two different printers: a black-and-white laser printer and a dual-purpose copier and color inkjet printer. My laser printer gets a good workout on a daily basis, while I usually reserve my color inkjet printer for photos.

Although both printers are well made and carry brand names (HP and Brother), they were incredibly inexpensive. In fact, one of the primary reasons I bought both was because of their bargain prices. Imagine my chagrin, then, when I had to replace the toner cartridges in my laser and the ink cartridges in my inkjet, and discovered that each cartridge cost about half of what I paid for the printer.

I quickly – and correctly – surmised that printer manufacturers sell printers at or below the cost of making them, and generate profits from the sale of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) ink cartridges. With dire warnings of possible damage to the printer or voiding the printer warranty, the manufacturers insist that consumers buy only OEM printer cartridges. I resented being gouged by their inflated prices, and so did some of my own research about OEM print cartridges and alternatives. Here’s what I discovered:

Option One: Compatible Ink Cartridges

Contrary to popular belief, compatible ink cartridges are not recycled. Rather, they are brand new, generic versions of OEM cartridges. They have all of the quality and reliability of OEM cartridges, but cost only a fraction of the price.

Option Two: Remanufactured Print Cartridges

As the name implies, remanufactured ink cartridges are, indeed, recycled. However, the old cartridges aren’t simply refilled. Rather, they are disassembled, inspected, cleaned, reassembled, filled with ink, and individually print tested to meet or surpass the specifications associated with OEM ink cartridges.

Cost Savings

I was astounded when I saw the price differences between OEM, compatible, and remanufactured ink cartridges. For example, one black and one colour ink cartridge for an HP DeskJet 920C might cost Ј50.45 for the OEM cartridges, but only Ј16.95 for remanufactured cartridges. A pack of four ink cartridges (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow) for the Brother DCP117C might cost Ј31.80 for OEM, but only Ј8.95 for the compatible version. Over the lifetime of a printer, those kinds of savings really add up!

Cartridge Life

Typically, remanufactured ink cartridges have a shorter "shelf life" than OEM or compatible cartridges. A remanufactured cartridge will be good for about six months, whereas a compatible cartridge is vacuum-sealed and will be viable for years.

Suppliers

I also discovered that it’s important to purchase compatible and remanufactured ink cartridges from a reputable dealer. When shopping online, look for a supplier that uses top-quality ink, has been in business several years, offers free UK delivery, and doesn’t require a minimum order.

Massive advancements have been made in the cost and the quality of orthopedic devices, implant devices and many other medical components. These advancements have been supported, and in many cases made possible, by the modernization of equipment and manufacturing investments in the medical products industry.

Injected molded plastic parts, such as artificial knee and hip joints, specially engineered small – to medium-sized medical parts, and plastic injected syringes, pill containers and breathing apparatus devices are all essential to modern medicine and personal health care. Implant devices such as artificial hip joints are frequently made from strong, tough but hard to machine titanium and cobalt chrome stainless steel.

Much of this technological improvement simply would not have been possible without the machine tool advancements that have occurred to help generate these medical applications. And many of those industries and jobs are located in the heartland of America, according to applications engineers at Makino, a global provider of advanced machine tool technology.

This is an area of future manufacturing growth. One major designer and developer of cardiovascular medical products, such as leads that connect to life-saving devices such as implantable defibrillators and pacemakers, says the intricacy of modern machine tools makes all its work possible. The small, detailed shapes with exceptional finishes demanded by modern health industry consumers simply could not be made without the work performed by modern CNC machine tools.

Health care and orthopedic health professionals recognize that technologically progressive equipment and methods are vital to making continued advancements toward superior health care in the United States. Prioritizing the investment in machine tool technology will yield even greater health care benefits and options to an aging American population that continues to grow.