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Anyone with a medical condition should have some form of medical ID on them.  In the event you are incapacitated you want the rescue squad to know you are a Type 1 diabetic (like me), epileptic, asthmatic and or any of the other "…tics" out there.  It can only help them and you!

Last year I wrote about how I created my own, "MedicAlert" dog tags and received lot of emails about them.  Some of you thought they were a good idea…others not so good.  I have continued using them until the last couple of weeks.

I was looking online for something better than what I had.  My dog tag had basic contact information on it along with a website URL where all of my medical info could be obtained.  That is a fine idea but what if the rescue people find me where there is no internet connection and they can’t get to my webpage? 

Well, I found something online that takes care of that "lack of internet" problem.  Quite honestly, I wish I had created this device and could have; however, I didn’t.  The site is called TAC Drive (tacdrive.com) and includes the best of all worlds as far as I am concerned.  

TAC Drives are almost identical in size to a regular dog tag, though thicker.  You can have contact information engraved on them just like I had with my old tags.  Mine has my name, my medical condition, my wife’s contact info and my two doctors’ names and phone numbers. 

So now you are thinking, "Okay, what’s the big deal?  You had all of that before."  The big deal is the 0.25 inch thickness which contains a thumb drive.   The drive portion of the TAC Drive holds software that has all of your medical information on it.  You can put anything medically relevant on it:  all of your ICEs (In Case of Emergency contacts), any medications, your doctors, (their names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.) and a whole lot more. 

The medical information only takes up a small portion of the thumb drive space so you can also store other files on it.  The TAC Drive’s storage sizes range from 1GB to 8GB and prices are $20 – $55 which is very reasonable for what you get.  You can add other files to the drive, encrypt those files and with a premium account upload those files to the internet for backups.  They also come in several different colors and there are a couple of exterior designs to choose from.

So next time you are in a situation where this information is needed the rescue person can see your contact info on the outside of the TAC Drive. They can obtain all the necessary information when they plug the drive into their computer. 

In 500 words I cannot tell you enough good about these devices.  Email or call the support people and they will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have, as they were for me.  If you need something like this I highly recommend you get to TACDrive.com, choose the one you want and update your medical information quickly.

Tags: alerts, assistance, diabetes, help, medical, rescue, squads

Your computer continues to start up slower than you remember it doing when you bought it.  You may have already run Disk Cleanup, Error-checking and Defragmentation but things still frustrate you about its operation.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have some "anti-frustration" software on your side?

It may just be here now!  Soluto created by a new software company in Israel has been available since the end of May, 2010.

What Soluto currently does is relatively simple.  It monitors your computer’s start up boot sequence and suggests ways to speed it up.  I run Windows 7 which already runs pretty fast but as you will see below it still sped my computer up.  Some people have reported going from more than seven to less than two minutes to start their computers

After you install Soluto it will ask you to restart your computer so that it can begin gathering information.  Once rebooted the software will give you a graphic of all the programs that start in the background, some of which you may have no idea are even there.  They are then rated as to those you cannot remove from the boot, those you may not want to remove from the boot sequence and the "no-brainers" which should be removed.  It gives you details on each program so that you can decide what to do.

On my notebook it advised me that it took 2:40 to complete the start up with 82 programs starting.  The number one, no-brainer it suggested to remove was Snagit.  When I hover over the advice window it tells me what Snagit does and that I could choose to either delay or pause it.  If delayed, a program will start up after everything else is finished when you are using your computer.  If paused, a program will start when I manually start the program as it may not need to run all the time in the background.  I chose "pause" so now it runs only when I need to use it. 

I ended up removing all but one of the "no-brainers" and several others that were suggested.  My computer now boots in 1:53 minutes with only 67 applications running when it starts.  Many of them also took up RAM running in the background so now I should get a slight increase in overall speed, but not so much that I notice.

If your computer hangs up or frustrates you while Soluto is running you can right click on its icon and choose, "My PC just frustrated me".  It will then see if it can figure out what bugged you, look for a fix and send that info to the Soluto database.

Soluto is brand new software and is still improving.  It will continue to run as a background service which watches your PC while it is running.  It will be analyzing any frustrations that hit your system and trying to figure out "why" by comparing information they continue to gather from other users.  Over time Soluto may be able to suggest solutions you can resolve with just a few mouse clicks. 

After you have rebooted a few times you may want to hide the Soluto graphics from showing on your desktop.  If so, right click on the Soluto icon and uncheck "Live Boot Progress".  If you want to see it again later just recheck it.

Tags: boot time, help, restart, Snagit, Soluto, speed up, TechSmith

One of the main things that I believe are of some benefit to your computer is to perform regular defrags on them.  Some geeks believe that a defrag of your hard drive is never needed.  If you are one of the people in my camp I have a couple of suggestions for you.

First an explanation in case you have absolutely no idea what defrag means.  Fragmentation, or fragging occurs each time you open a program or application. Your computer or system puts a picture on your monitor, calculates things, and runs the application, etc.  To make these programs work your system pulls files off of your Hard Drive, usually “C:\”, and puts them to work.  When you close the application(s) it places, or writes all of the files (even basic things like how to draw the window on your screen) back on the hard drive.  Each time you close down that application your computer writes the files to different locations on your drive.

Over time this causes your computer to slow down and not run as quickly or efficiently as it may have in the past.  This is because it has to look all over your hard drive for the files it needs to work.  Defragging moves the files around the drive in a more organized pattern.  When you defrag it places the files that are dependent on each other physically closer together.  When a program needs them it can find and use them faster, which in turn helps increase your system’s speed.

Before starting to defrag your drive you should shutdown all of your applications and plan on not using the computer until it is finished. 

To use the build in defrag component of windows, open “My Computer”, right click on the drive you wish to defrag, choose “Properties”, “Tools” and finally “Defragment Now”.  If you are a Windows 7 user click the “Start orb” and type “defrag.”  When it shows up click it or press your enter key. 

It will automatically select your C:\ Drive.  You may change to another drive; however C:\ is your main drive and almost certainly needs defragging the most.

Follow the simple instructions and you’ll be done in no time.  Well, Okay, if this is the first time you have run defrag in a while it could take a couple of hours.  The time depends on how badly your drive is fragmented and the size of the drive.  I usually run it once a month at night before I go to bed and in the morning it is done. 

Years ago before it was included with Windows you had to pay $90 to get the defrag  application.  Today there are some good ones for free. 

The one that comes with windows does a good job but it is rather clunky. I use Smart Defrag which looks good and is much more user friendly.  They both do the job. 

Happy defragging!

Tags: defrag, fragmentation, hard drive, help, maintenance, microsoft