Personal Folders Backup

TIP OF THE DAY

Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002 & 2003 "Personal Folders Backup" Add-in

There is a program available from Microsoft to backup your Microsoft Outlook information quicker and easier -- Personal Folders Backup.  Personal Folders Backup creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2000 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up.

With Personal Folders Backup, you can choose which of your .PST files you wish to back up, and how often you wish to back them up.

Each .PST file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You can have a single .PST file (usually called "Internet Folders" or "Personal Folders" in your Folder List), but you might also have an additional .PST file that you use for archiving ("Archiving Folders"). Personal Folders Backup lets you back up any or all of these .PST files.

Note Personal Folders Backup only backs up .PST files. If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox, your server mailbox folders are likely backed up regularly by your server administrator.

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Renter's Insurance

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Renter's Insurance

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/personal_finance/6816419.htm
BUSINESS
Posted on Sun, Sep. 21, 2003.


Renters insurance worth the cost

Michelle Singletary/The Color of Money

If you're renting, you should have renters insurance.

But alas, a recent survey has found that almost two-thirds of the 81 million people living in rental units do not.

This is not smart.

And don't even fix your mouth to say, ''I can't afford it.'' This is perhaps the cheapest insurance you can get. Skip just one movie a month (including the popcorn and soda) and you can afford renters insurance.

The average cost of renters insurance is $12 per month for about $30,000 of property coverage and $100,000 of liability coverage, according to a survey sponsored by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America.

Now, of course that's the average, which means the cost could be higher depending on where you live.

For example, if you lived in the following cities and bought renters insurance for $20,000 in content-replacement coverage, $100,000 liability, $1,000 medical (for accidental injuries to others) with a $500 deductible, you would roughly pay these yearly premiums, according to State Farm Insurance:

? $148 in Washington, D.C.

? $253 in Los Angeles.

? $208 in Chicago.

(Note: State Farm is no longer writing new renters' policies in Florida. Other companies are.)

Unless you can self-insure your property, meaning you have enough money saved to replace your clothes, jewelry, computer, DVD player and DVD movies, big-screen television, stereo equipment, microwave, video camera -- you get the picture -- you need renters insurance.

Now, if you're thinking you're covered under your landlord's insurance policy, think again. You're not.

''One of the top reasons why people don't have renters insurance is that they think because they don't own the unit, the landlord will be responsible if they have a loss,'' said Robert Rusbuldt, CEO for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. ``But if the building burns down it's your responsibility to replace your property. If the building burns down and it's your landlord's fault, he's not responsible for one dime of the contents you own in your apartment.''

Your landlord's insurance covers only the building and the infrastructure of that building, such as the elevators, the air-conditioning system and the hallway, Rusbuldt said.

And what do you think might happen if the pizza delivery guy trips over your bicycle in your apartment and breaks his leg? He might sue you. But if you have renters insurance, you will likely be protected (up to a limit) from personal liability.

If your roommate has insurance and you think you're covered, think again. Each person in the rental property typically needs his or her own policy. Although you may be able to get a joint renters insurance policy, it's probably best to have separate coverage in case your roommate moves out.

Here's some good news for parents who have sent their children off to college. If a student is living in a campus dorm, his or her belongings may be covered under your homeowner's or renters insurance policy. But students living in off-campus housing need to double-check to see whether they are covered (typically they are not).

So how much renters insurance coverage do you need?

This depends on how much stuff you have. You'll need to estimate the value of your personal possessions. If you've kept receipts, that's even better. The idea is to buy enough insurance to replace everything if it's stolen, damaged or destroyed.

Since many insurance companies place limits on what they will pay for specific items, you may need to pay for additional coverage to make sure those items are completely insured. For example, you may have a family heirloom or expensive jewelry, furs or electronic equipment that could surpass the normal limits. You may also need to buy additional coverage for flood damage.

And don't forget to make sure your policy includes coverage of your pooch. Renters insurance policies usually cover dog bites, yet some companies may charge more if your dog has a tendency through its breeding to be aggressive.

When purchasing a renters policy, you'll need to decide what kind of coverage you want -- actual cash value or replacement cost.

Actual cash value is the less expensive of the two. Under this type of coverage your belongings are replaced after depreciation. This means the insurance company will take into consideration the age and condition of the stolen or damaged property.

A replacement-cost policy will pay you to replace your property with the same or a similar item at the current market price. Just know that premiums are usually higher for replacement-cost insurance policies.

Start looking for insurance by calling any insurance company you may already be doing business with. You can find an independent insurance agent by going to wwwTrustedChoice.com.

Just so you know, the average cost to replace all the personal property in a two-bedroom apartment is about $25,000, according to State Farm.

Do you have $25,000 saved to replace your property if it's all lost in a fire? Do you even have enough saved to replace the $4,200 in electronic equipment the average person has?

If the answer is ''no,'' then go get some insurance.

Michelle Singletary is a financial writer for The Washington Post. Listen to her discuss personal finance noon to 1 p.m. Tuesdays on WLRN-91.3 FM's ``Day to Day''.

Microsoft Office Templates

TIP OF THE DAY

Microsoft Office Templates

Microsoft has a website for Microsoft Office that has lots of (free) templates available for all sorts of situations (cover letters, legal documents, holiday cards, etc).  It also has images you can download.  It provides training on all Office products.  There are two ways you can access the site.  Within any Office product, you can click on Help and then click on Office on the Web.  Or, through your browser go to:  http://office.microsoft.com.  Go to the site and look around, it has a lot to offer.

Why you should use PDFs

TIP OF THE DAY

Why you should use PDFs

Extracted from: http://www.woodyswatch.com/wowmm/archtemplate.asp?v4-n15

1.      The Case for PDF
2.      What is PDF?
3.      Working With PDF Files
4.      PDF in the Future


1. THE CASE FOR PDF
You should convert your documents to PDF format before handing them out. Distributing Word .doc files can lead to all sorts of embarrassing situations. If you're going to send a .doc file to someone, or post it on the Web, seriously consider converting it to PDF before you let it go.

Word stores a lot of junk in .doc files, and you can get bit - bad - if you let a .doc file with a checkered past out of your grasp. Recently we've seen an instance where flotsam and jetsam in a Word .doc helped to change the course of politics in the UK http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v8-n27 . Microsoft was embarrassed by junk in a Word doc when a bogus "Mac to PC convert" was found to be an employee of a PR agency hired by Microsoft to pull the wool over unsuspecting eyes http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v7-n50 . There are many, many more examples. (Heck, back in February 1997, I was infected by the first Word 97-specific macro virus, W97M/Wazzu.A, by opening a document that I download from Microsoft's Web site. Microsoft posted an infected marketing .doc file. PDF files don't contain macro viruses!)

Word isn't the only culprit: Outlook 2002 can "brand" .docs with personally-identifiable information, too. Outlook doesn't have the temerity (or, it would seem, the brains) to brand PDF files. But Word documents sent attached to email messages using Outlook 2002 pick up a lot of potentially embarrassing information (see http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v7-n53).

Simon Byers, a security researcher at AT&T, recently downloaded 100,000 Word docs from the Web and found all sorts of hidden information (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994057 ). Byers used automated tools, but if you want to look at the text buried inside a document - or the log of all the people who made edits to a Word 97 or 2000 document - all you have to do is click File | Open, Click File | Open, in the Files of Type box, choose Recover Text From Any File, then navigate to the file and open it. Pay special attention to the text at the end of the file.

2. WHAT IS PDF?
A PDF file isn't anything at all like a Word document.

A Word .doc contains all sorts of things: text, formatting, macros, revisions, histories, links to other files, histories of links to other files, and heaven-knows-what-else. A PDF ("Portable Document Format") file is more like a snapshot of a printout: a representation of what the printed document should look like.

First, a PDF file can contain fonts, so if you create a PDF file with WoodrowGothic 17-point bold, you can be sure that whoever prints the file will see precisely the fonts you intended. Second, PDF works. It's become ubiquitous. Even the U.S. Internal Revenue Service uses PDF for all of its forms.

3. WORKING WITH PDF FILES
Adobe gives away its PDF viewer/printer. Free. The Adobe Reader, as it's called, can be downloaded at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html . The Readers is a remarkably stable piece of software, and I install it on all of my machines, without hesitation. You should, too.

Of course, Adobe isn't giving away the Reader out of the goodness of its heart. They want to sell you Adobe Acrobat, the program that lets you create, search, and modify PDF files (for about US $450). Acrobat also lets you create fill-in-the-blanks forms, which can be filled in by anybody with the free Reader. For more info about Acrobat, see http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/main.html .

There are many, many programs that create files in PDF format: PDF is a well-documented file format specification, and (according to Adobe), 1,800 companies now make products that use the PDF format.

One of our long-time advertisers, Document Automation Developers, sells a program called MakePDF (about US $40) that lets you save a Word file directly in PDF format - you don't need Acrobat; it's as simple as clicking on a Word menu. If you don't need all of Acrobat's features, and prefer to work in Word (or Outlook, Notes, Eudora, and more) look at http://www.docauto.com/MakePDF.htm .

4. PDF IN THE FUTURE
You're going to hear PDF mentioned more often, as an alternative to Word .doc files. There are just too many Word documents with embarrassing hidden information running around.  PDF is simple, cheap, reliable and ubiquitous.

Eat More Fish

TIP OF THE DAY

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/health/6734067.htm
Heart-healthy omega-3 may be good for your brain
BY SALLY SQUIRES
Washington Post Service

They occur naturally in fish, flaxseed, canola oil, nuts and avocados and are sold in dozens of dietary supplements. Increasingly, they are added to bread, dairy products, margarine, baby food and cereal.

Omega-3 fatty acids are already prized by cardiologists for protecting the heart against blocked arteries and for thwarting irregular, often fatal, heartbeats.

Now psychiatrists are taking a closer look. Omega-3s, dubbed the ''happy'' fats in some quarters, are under investigation for treating depression, bipolar disease and the so-called baby blues, or postpartum depression. Earlier this year, the American Psychiatric Association formed a committee to review the findings to make treatment recommendations for the use of omega-3s.

There's hope that omega-3s may help bridge the treatment gap in mental disorders -- up to 30 percent of people being treated for depression, for example, find drugs inadequate in controlling their symptoms.

''The main problem we have with depression is that we do not have treatment that [dependably] provides complete recovery,'' says David Kupfer, head of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh's Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. ``We're still leaving people mildly depressed or unable to function well. It's like trying to make the last 10 yards when you're in field-goal range. . . .''

The idea that omega-3 fatty acids might help treat mental disorders dawned on Joseph R. Hibbeln in an anatomy lab in 1984. ''I had cut open the brain, and it just very much struck me that it is mostly fat,'' says Hibbeln, chief of the outpatient clinic at the Laboratory of Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in Bethesda, Md.

Essential fatty acids can't be produced by the body but are required for good health. Playing key roles in brain cell structure, they're vital for each neuron's membrane, both its outer protection and its means of accessing key nutrients. It is these essential fats that regulate the growth of long tendrils called axons that enable neurons to communicate with each other.

One is an omega-3 fatty acid called alpha linolenic acid, which is found in fish, canola oil and flaxseed. The other is an omega-6 fatty acid, which is found in soybean, safflower and corn oils, as well as in meat, poultry, fish and processed foods. Omega-3s and omega-6s are close enough in chemical structure to be able to compete for the same molecular machinery that allows entry into the brain.

In 1909, Americans got most of their fat from free-range animals, which have higher levels of omega-3s than most of the meat and chicken eaten today. They also consumed about 0.02 pounds per year of soybean oil -- a number that increased gradually until about 1960, when ''soybean oil took over the U.S. food chain,'' says William Lands, a retired biochemist with NIAAA.

OMEGA-6 FACTOR

By 1999, per-capita consumption of soybean oil -- a major ingredient in crackers, bread, salad dressings, baked goods and processed food -- reached 25 pounds per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ''That means that there has been a 1,000-fold increase in [consumption of] omega-6 fatty acids'' over 100 years, says Hibbeln. ``So we have literally changed the composition of people's bodies and their brains. A very interesting question, which we don't know the answer to yet, is to what degree the dietary change has changed overall behavior in our society.''

Flooding brains and bodies with a diet rich in omega-6 fatty acids theoretically could allow them to block omega-3s from getting inside cells and replenishing stores in the brain and elsewhere in the body.

Intrigued by this possibility, Hibbeln charted fish consumption worldwide and compared those figures to rates of depression. In a paper published in 1998 in The Lancet, he showed that nations with the highest fish consumption -- Japan, Taiwan and Korea -- had the lowest rates of depression. Nations with the lowest fish consumption -- New Zealand, Canada, Germany, France and the United States -- had the highest rates of depression.

VIOLENCE PATTERNS

Next, he took a look at homicide, suicide and aggression rates and compared them to seafood consumption. Similar patterns emerged. Using World Health Organization statistics, for example, Hibbeln found that men living in land-locked Hungary, Bulgaria and Austria had the lowest fish consumption and the highest suicide rates, while their counterparts in Japan, Portugal, Hong Kong, Korea and Norway ate the most fish and had the lowest suicide rates.

Since then, Hibbeln has examined patterns of postpartum depression. During pregnancy, mothers are the sole source of an omega-3 fatty acid known as docosahenaenoic acid (DHA) to the fetus. So key is this substance to fetal brain development that the mother's stores are depleted if she doesn't consume enough DHA. In a 2002 study in the Journal of Affective Disorders, Hibbeln reported that ''rates of postpartum depression are 50 times higher in countries where women don't eat fish,'' he says.

Of course, results from such population studies -- known as epidemiology -- can at best show only associations and trends, not cause and effect. Nailing down a new scientific theory requires both basic science and clinical trials.

As director of a Boston-area psychopharmacology research lab, psychiatrist Andrew Stoll often gets the most difficult patients to treat, the ones for whom standard therapy has failed.

DEPRESSION

In the late 1990s, research had already shown that depressed people seem to have lower levels of DHA in their brains than healthy people. Studies by Hussein Manji at the National Institute of Mental Health also found that people who respond well to antidepressants have neurons that exhibit greater plasticity, meaning that they are more receptive to changes that help them grow. Other laboratory work suggested that omega-3 fatty acids could help neurons be more plastic.

Stoll put all these elements together in a study of 30 people suffering from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. During the four-month study, published in 1999 in the Archives of General Psychiatry, he randomly assigned participants to receive either fish oil capsules containing omega-3 fatty acids along with their standard treatment or a placebo of olive oil plus the standard treatment. The study found that the omega-3s significantly lengthened the period of remission.

Since then, a handful of other small, short-term studies have also found benefits to omega-3s. In England, Malcolm Peet and his colleagues at the Swallownest Court Hospital in Sheffield gave another type of omega-3 -- eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) -- in varying doses to people with ongoing depression that was not well controlled with antidepressants. Peet found in this 12-week study that one gram per day of EPA was significantly better than a placebo in improving mood. (Both groups also received standard antidepressant medication.) Other studies found omega-3s helpful in controlling postpartum depression, impulsivity and even antisocial behavior in prisoners.

MANY QUESTIONS

But the story is still unfolding. Exactly how omega-3s may work and which dosage of omega-3s may be most effective is not known, ''although it's probably going to be in the range of one to three grams per day,'' says Marlene Freeman, lead investigator of two studies examining the use of omega-3s in pregnant women at high risk for postpartum depression. ``It's all kind of theoretical, but then we don't truly know how antidepressants work, either.''

And at least one trial, published earlier this year in the American Journal of Psychiatry by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, found no significant effect of adding DHA to treatment for major depression.

Such findings explain why plenty of people -- even experts in the field -- are cautious about overbilling the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.

''The biggest risk is for someone to try to treat themselves with these over the counter when what they really need is an evaluation,'' says Freeman. ``It scares me a little to have this in the media.''

''Is the evidence strong enough to use [omega-3s] for depression?'' asks Alice H. Lichtenstein, professor of nutrition at Tufts University. ``It's sufficient evidence to do human trials, but not to make dietary recommendations.''

Stoll is so convinced of the benefits of omega-3s that he jokes he nearly force-feeds food rich in omega-3s to his three children.

As Stoll says, ``Anything good for the heart seems to be good for the brain.''