by Clare Kumar

Falling on the last day in February, International RSI Awareness Day brings attention to Repetitive Strain Injuries, also known as Musculoskeletal Disorders or MSD’s. It was proposed by an injured Canadian worker over twelve years ago. I wish I’d thought of it!

Clare Kumar

RSI is a collective term applied to injuries to soft tissues (muscles, nerves and tendons), and are the most commonly reported workplace injury.

Stats Canada tells us that annually, 2.3 million Canadians suffer RSI injuries that interrupt their normal activities. That’s 1 in 10. What frustrates me, is that these injuries are usually avoidable. They are personally limiting and expensive, costing the Ontario government an estimated $26B, primarily in the administration of healthcare.

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Here are some things you should know about Repetitive Strain Injuries

Causes of Repetitive Strain Injuries

• repetitive motions
• awkward postures
• excessive force
• too much time in a fixed position
• fast work with inadequate recovery

Stress and tension can also influence the likelihood of someone suffering an RSI.

Prevention of Repetitive Strain Injuries

Injuries of this nature may take time to appear. If not treated, they can cause permanent damage.

• Education about the likely causes can help you avoid the above situations or correct problems
• Awareness of proper postures for the type of work you are doing
• Knowledge of how your furniture and tools can make your work more comfortable
• Scheduling a variety of types of work during the day
• Taking regular breaks and stretching
• Strengthening the body

I’ve been keenly interested in ergonomics for the workstation and the home since the mid 90′s when I took a new job at a major telecommunications company. I was excited to start my new job. I think they were happy to have me, but wondered a little, when I found the HR department had forgotten to assign me a work space.

I was accommodated by a fellow employee allowing me to share the space in his cubicle.

I was provided with a round desk and chair to work from. Can you smell disaster? This was a job in finance, and my tasks largely involved becoming an expert in Excel, creating and manipulating results documents to share internally. If you’ve created charts in Excel, you’ll appreciate the amount of mousing required to create a compelling visual representation.

Well, here’s the math:

1 mouse + 1 keyboard + 1 round table x 8 or more hours a day x several months = 100 per cent chance of rotator cuff tendonitis

Only I didn’t know that then.

The round table meant that I had to choose between keeping the keyboard or the mouse close enough to use comfortably. Given that I had to use both, I traded away the proximity of the mouse.

I worked for awhile trying to ignore the pain developing in my shoulder. Economic times were tough and the company was not in good shape. I persevered. Until one day, I couldn’t work sitting down anymore. So, I stood up and worked some more.

Then I decided to get educated and seek a safer environment. I asked for a computer station to be brought in so I could safely use the computer. I could write comfortably on the round table.

I ended up spending a few hours each week in physiotherapy. I couldn’t carry anything on my shoulder or sleep on my right side for two years. Pretty mild effects in the scheme of things, but still, 100 per cent avoidable.

After becoming aware I started to notice people around the office with braces for carpel tunnel injuries. My co-worker suffered back pain, and I learned he had sat in the same chair for 5 years and didn’t he could adjust it. Since then, I have lobbied for companies to make the most of the feature-rich equipment they are buying and to educate their employees on how to use it. A little prevention can save a lot of pain and lost productivity.

My wish for you on this RSI Awareness Day, is that you will take 10 minutes to think about your own comfort, and resolve to adjust anything that isn’t working for you.

To your comfort and productivity.

A Toronto-based Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant with a talent for teaching and motivating others, Clare Kumar founded Streamlife ® in 2005.

by Clare Kumar

 Whether you work with a laptop or desktop, interaction with the screen is an important part of workstation safety.

Clare Kumar

Avoid neck strain by keeping your neck in a neutral position by having the top of the monitor no higher than your eyes. There is some evidence that having the monitor at slightly lower levels provides more comfort.

With traditional monitors, this can be achieved by mounting the monitor on the base provided. If you’re taller, consider adding additional stands, or for optimal flexibility, mounting the monitor on a moveable arm.

Having the monitor at a comfortable viewing distance of 20-26 inches (50-67 cm) away and directly in front of you will help avoid eyestrain.

If screen font is small, it can be helpful to increase font sizes. Keying ” Ctrl and +” at the same time is a handy shortcut command to increase font size, “Ctrl –“ will reduce it. For Macs, substitute the Command key for Ctrl. Aside for facebook readers: this can also help de-clutter your screen by pushing the sidebars out of view!

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If you’re entering a lot of data, consider using a document holder to keep the document close to the screen to avoid neck twisting.

Glare is another factor that can impede comfortable viewing. A monitor is best placed perpendicular to a window to avoid reflections. Also watch the angle of your screen to ensure it is not reflecting ceiling lights.

If you are lucky enough to have two screens (the biggest instant boost to productivity I have experienced), position them beside each other so your neck does not have to move excessively. There is even a dual monitor arm that will elevate your laptop screen to a comfortable level and hold a second monitor. In the above photo you can see that I use a monitor arm and a separate laptop stand.

Folks using tablets stay tuned. I got one over the holidays and I am still exploring tablet ergonomics and the effects of touch screens.

Happy viewing!

Sources:

(1) The influence of computer monitor height on head and neck posture

(2) How to sit at a computer

A Toronto-based Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant with a talent for teaching and motivating others, Clare Kumar founded Streamlife ® in 2005.

We all know a thing or two about getting what we want in a negotiation and when it comes to cellphones everyone has a tip.

Some believe they know how to get the carriers to kneel to the ground, while others feel like its an exercise in high blood pressure. Either way, these tips will help you avoid a few common mistakes before making that call.

Be careful of the silent “extension” – Here’s the scenario. You call your carrier with the intent of upgrading and end up making a few minor adjustments to your existing plan. (eg. Adding text messaging or increasing your voice mail or data plan) When doing so, make sure your carrier doesn’t extend your contract by another 2-3 years. Customers usually get a rude awakening at a later date, when they discover that was the case and still have months if not years left on that extended contract.

Loyalty will only get you so much – Highlighting the fact that you have been a good client for 10 years doesn’t mean what you think it should. From the carrier’s perspective what it really means, is that, you’re less likely to leave. Statistically they know this and that’s why the deals for long time customers, never quite stack up to the deals being offered to newcomers, so, don’t lead with this as your trump card.

Don’t say no to a contract to spite the man and end up hurting yourself – Here’s a scenario we see much too often. Client purchases an iPhone outright and then discovers it doesn’t work with one of the newer carriers. Okay, no big deal, until they also realize that the plan only offerings aren’t as good as the offers on subsidized deals on a 3yr contract. Making matters worse, they end on a cell phone plan that is horrible, with, less overall features and for example, 100MB of data. 100MB of data on an iPhone, is like winning a Ferrari with a limiter set to a max speed of 40KM an hour. In the end, the client is out of pocket upfront by $500-$700 or more and with the higher monthly costs over the same period there is no benefit of giving up your hard earned cash. Some will argue that their freedom was worth every penny and maybe they’re rich enough to do so, but you paid for that right. So, that’s the reality of the cell phone game today, and of course, I hope it changes – soon -, but as they say, don’t bite off your nose to spite your face.

Bite your tongue and make good notes - Do NOT get into a pissing match with any carrier representatives, despite your frustrations. Put yourself in their shoes, would you budge if someone was calling you every name in the book to save $5 or get some feature for FREE? Furthermore, once they make their notes in the system, it becomes exponentially harder to get them to go against each other so, stay cool and make good notes of all conversations. In the end, you don’t want to have to rely on their word against yours, despite the fact that they can record calls. So keep track of dates/times and representatives you spoke to, as well as get the details – confirmed and reconfirmed.

Make your business work for you - If you own a business you should never be paying for your cell phones personally. In addition to tax write offs and other benefits, business cell phone plans tend to have more incentives and more value overall. Examples include, bill credits to cover existing termination fees, cheaper phones and other feature and promotional incentives that are richer than regular consumer cell phone deals. The more devices you have in your business the more difficult it can be to make the comparisons and an informed decision, so let our team help you reduce your cell phone bill.

Lastly, do your homework. This may seem obvious but we realize how confusing things can be and simplifying the whole cell phone experience was the main reasons we created myCELLmyTERMS. So either get some help from our team, especially if you have a business with several users, or do the research first on our site before making that call. Also remember, the iPhone and other market leading smartphones are really computers and they costs more than some big screen TV’s today, so either you buy it outright ($500+) and search for a good plan, or save your cash, get a better plan and take the subsidized pricing with the contract (sometimes as low as $50). When it comes to plans and features, know your usage profile currently and if upgrading to a smart phone understand how much data you need.

Cash is King” was one of the first lessons I learned from a mentor early on in my life as an entrepreneur. “Never underestimate the importance of having a cash reserve in the bank”, he said. What Arlin Sorensen meant when he took me aside was too make sure that we kept a cash reserve on hand for a rainy day — just like Mom always tried to teach me. Did I listen to him or my mother? Sometimes. But I still needed to cut my teeth and learn the hard lesson of having money in the bank for myself.

Stuart Crawford

During the economic meltdown in 2009, it was hard, if not impossible, for the small business owner to acquire the needed capital or credit in order to stay afloat. Who survived? Don’t look at me; I struggled throughout the entire financial catastrophe during the tail end of the new millennium. But I did look around to see who continued to run successful businesses, while many of us were simply trying to stop the bleeding.

The businesses that survived understood the importance of cash flow and continued to serve their clients, fulfill orders, pay for goods and services and weather the storm while those of us who ignored the warning signs scraped to get by.

Going through tough financial times, I look at my business differently now. Like many business owners, I have come to understand the importance of having liquid cash in my bank account or somewhere close by that is readily available, just in case. Credit is helpful too, but healthy cash flow is a must in order for your small business to thrive.

Here are some easy ways to help preserve cash flow in your business:

• Invest in assets that appreciate and lease those items that depreciate. As a technology provider, I am always sharing the benefits of leasing IT equipment versus purchasing. There is no sense in investing $50,000 of hard-earned cash into office furniture or any other asset that loses value when it will be worth next to nothing in five or so years. Leasing technology or any other form of equipment offers you a monthly payment instead of paying upfront for the goods and services. Plus, leasing has some very attractive tax benefits. One of the top leasing firms in Canada is London, Ontario’s Catalyst Financial Partners. You can check them out at http://www.catalystfc.com.
• Keep your receivables under control. I am shocked to see how many small business owners continue to extend credit in the form of 120-day receivables with their clients. You are not the bank and no small business deserves to be kept at bay for any length of time for monies owed to them. Get a grip on your receivables now.
• Move to the cloud. The average small business doesn’t need to invest their business savings into a bunch of IT equipment that never gets used to its fullest capacity. My small business is 100% in the cloud — from our email services, telephone systems and even our customer relationship management software. What does that mean? Simply put, that means that all the software and applications we use are accessed and shared over the Internet. The cloud allows you to keep up to date with the latest technology and pay a low monthly fee for it. Many of your IT systems today can be moved online and out of your office.

As a business owner, you can be the most innovative entrepreneur, have the most stellar rolodex and provide a customer experience that’s the talk of the town; but if you don’t know how to manage your cash flow – you don’t have a business.

Stuart Crawford,  president and chief marketing officers, Ulistic Inc. After a 9 year military career which saw Stuart rapidly  accelerate through the ranks finishing as a Master Corporal in the Canadian  Signal Corp Stuart went to work putting into practice the leadership and  character traits he learned through his time with the Canadian Forces. He is a member of Editorial Advisory Board of ITBusiness.ca

Pretend you are visiting your office for the first time. Take a look around with fresh eyes.

What do you see? Does every piece of furniture serve the purpose it was intended for? Are there pieces simply attracting piles of paper?

Clare Kumar

Often when we spend a lot of time in a place, be it work or home, we stop really seeing what’s there. We just accept that it’s supposed to be there, whether it’s working or not.

To make sure that everything in your office ought to be there, take the following steps:

1. Identify your work activities

Analyze how you spend your time at work and what activities you engage in. Referring to your calendar can help ensure you include all the activities that are critical to your work. Some activities to consider are:

• Working with a computer to manage email and work on documents, or to talk with others
• Writing to create content, manage your calendar, jot down ideas or conversation notes
• Meeting with others face-to-face to talk informally, deliver presentations or hold collaborative work sessions
• Preparing or collating documents
• Talking on the phone for anything from quick chats to lengthy conference calls

2. Select furniture pieces that support your work

You might think this is an obvious step, but it often gets less thought than it should. Your ideal furniture depends on the kind of work you do, and how you like to do it. I’ve seen people take phone calls sitting at their desks while others need space to walk around while talking. Knowing your preferences is an important step in building a functional office.

Let’s take a look at the furniture required to support using a computer, for example. You might need a surface for the computer laptop or keyboard and monitor, a chair, a place for hard drives, a backup system, printing and scanning devices, modems, routers and other peripherals.

Think through each activity and list all the key pieces you require. It’s easy to look at a magazine photo of an uncluttered desk and forget all the items that must be accommodated. Be careful to marry the need for function with your passion for form.

Clare Kumar is a Toronto-based Professional Organizer and Home Stager with a talent for teaching and motivating others. Clare founded Streamlife ® in 2005. She has coached residential, small business and corporate clients to get organized, to improve productivity and achieve greater peace of mind, while creating inspiring spaces  in which to live and work.

I’ve had a scary experience unlocking  iPhones that I hope no one else has to go through.

Having unlocked phones already, mainly BlackBerry phones, I thought that unlocking iPhones would be just as easy and not as complicated – boy was I wrong. Here is what I learnt…

The first iPhone I unlocked or “jail break” was the iPhone 3Gs 8 GB version. I was told to backup the phone before doing the unlocking procedure which we did. After the unlocking procedure the phone was wiped, no data and it had an earlier version. When we attempted to restore the data, the phone would lock again. So we had to unlock the phone again and lose the data again. There was no way we could find to restore the data we backed up without the phone re-locking, leaving us with a phone with no data.

The second iPhone was an iPhone 4, this procedure was much smoother but it kept losing the network settings, which had to be programmed into the phone twice. And to top it off we are restricted from upgrading the phone further for fair of it re-locking again. What a nightmare!

So here are the 3 things you should bear in mind when unlocking an iPhone:

1. Understand that if you have an iPhone 3Gs that you  you may not be able to restore any data to the phone – this depends on the version of your iPhone. But in most cases an unlock means a clean iPhone with no data. So be prepared for this.

2. Limited upgrades. If you have an iPhone 3Gs you will not be able to upgrade your OS or Firmware to later versions. For the iPhone 4, while you should be able to restore your data you may be limited to the current version of the phone. No upgrades to iOS5 or later versions.

3. Connectivity issues. This doesn’t always happen, but its a distinct possibility that you may lose your network settings during the process of the unlock, so you will need to learn how to re-enter the settings in the event that this does happen.

With the iPhone 4S now available in Canada, I hope that the unlocking procedures get better and these  issues can be addressed. In the meantime, be aware of the risks and do your research to ensure that you are getting the best cellphone  deal.

Yale Holder is co-founder of myCELLmyTERMS, a Toronto-based company that helps cell phone users negotiate wireless plans with independent dealers.

When Google crawls your web site to index and rank your content it has to start somewhere. That somewhere is the front door to your site – your domain name. It’s time to take inventory of your domain name and make sure the welcome mat is out for those Google robots.

Krista LaRiviere

Don’t overlook these five important SEO signals that could make a difference between a Page One and a Page Two ranking.

1. Expiration Date – Do you know when your domain name will expire? If your domain expires two weeks from now and you haven’t renewed it yet Google, might get the sense that you’re not committed to the domain and therefore the web site.

Domain names are relatively inexpensive compared to a decade ago. A dot com domain costs a couple hundred dollars for a 10-year term. If you want to signal to Google that you’re serious about your business and domain, it is a good idea to register it for a longer period of time.

2. Domain Age – How long has your domain name been in use? Less than a year, five years, or more? This matters to Google. This doesn’t mean an older domain will outrank a newer domain (there are many other variables involved), but an established domain with a solid web presence will likely rank more favorably than a newer domain with a similar presence.

3. Keywords in your Domain – Is your domain name reflective of what you sell (www.shoes.com) or is it more about who you are (www.brownshoecompany.com)? A popular topic in the SEO world is Google’s weight on keyword phrases in a domain name.

The inclusion of keywords in your domain can have some other benefits. One is that it might be easier for a prospect to remember a domain name with common words in it. Also when we take into consideration the importance of backlinking and the corresponding anchor text in backlinking, it’s easy to see how a domain packed with keywords can add a lot of punch.

If changing your domain name for your main corporate web site is unrealistic, consider mapping just your blog site to its own keyword-rich domain and then pointing blog posts back to your site.

4. Top Level Domain – What’s a Top Level Domain or TLD? This is the .com, .edu, .gov, .uk, biz, part of the domain. There are restrictions on TLDs based on your organization type. For example, .edu is reserved for educational organizations, .gov is reserved for governmental organizations, so you would have to prove that your business is registered as one of these before one could be assigned to you.

With country-specific domains (.ca, .fr, .de) you are required to be operating your business in the country in question. Dot com domains are designated for commercial use, so they are basically open to anyone in the world.

All of this becomes important when you are trying to do business in a particular country. If you are selling software in the UKand Indiathen you will want to ensure you have a proper web presence with the proper domains mapped to proper web sites. In other words, when www.google.co.uk comes to your door, it knows you want your content to be indexed and ranked.

5. 301 Redirects – Make sure you have only one active domain for your web site. When Google shows up, what it doesn’t want to see is multiple domains mapped to one web site without the proper 301 redirects. Getting this wrong in Google’s eyes indicates you are producing duplicate content, trying to potentially game their algorithm and you may even be competing against yourself for to rank for key words. You do want to have both your www.domain.com and domain.com resolve to the same web site so people will find you if they type in the www. or not.

Domain names are just one of many factors search engines considers when attempting to rank your web presence for organic search. It is worth taking inventory of your domain, so you send the best signals to the search engines and let them know your door is always open.

Krista LaRiviere is CEO and co-founder of gShift Labs Inc., a search engine optimization software company helping other businesses gain better knowledge, understanding and control of their SEO campaigns.

Why is that puny game crashing your power rig? Which component is getting pushed over the edge? Is it your watt-thirsty video card?

The overclocked CPU? The interleaved banks of exotic RAM? Finding out the limits as you fine-tune a system can be harder than you might expect. HWMonitor (free) can help.

Newer motherboards provide helpful feedback when things go wrong, but gaining access to the diagnostics often requires a reboot into BIOS or some other disk trickery. Stability problems that arise in demanding, high-load situations aren’t likely to reveal themselves during idle diagnostic states. This is where HWMonitor steps in, providing real time, dynamic feedback on the temperature, voltage and operational status of system’s main board and subsystems, such as video cards, fans and batteries.

You can run HWMonitor side by side with a stress-test benchmark (such as Cinebench) or suspect game, watching the temperatures rise until a crash predictably repeats. Is the video card showing a spike before the blue screen? Does your CPU get hot enough to make s’mores? Chances are you just found your problem. HWMonitor also maps out power usage in detail, allowing an easy means to determine whether a particular component is overwhelming the system; for example, a new video card that draws more current at peak load than an old power supply can reliably provide, triggering intermittent reboots.

Has your system suddenly become stealthy when it used to groan and moan? Don’t be happy; be worried. That newfound silence might be an ill omen. HWMonitor helps here by telling you if a crucial fan has gone offline or is running abnormally. Remedying the situation can be as simple as unblocking a vent, reseating a cable, or clearing out a dust-choked grill–a small price to pay given the consequences. The cost of cooked CPUs and replacement motherboards adds up fast.

Handy as it is, there are eccentricities in the code. Some hardware configurations pose problems for HWMonitor. For example, several AMD processors stopped reporting internal temperatures on an ASUS test system when the motherboard core unlocking feature was enabled. This problem disappeared when default CPU settings were used. For the most part however, operation was flawless.

A pro version for IT professionals features remote operation, superior logging capabilities and graphing, but weighs in at a steep €19.95, almost $30 USD at the time of this writing. For most users, the free Basic version has all the information and features they will ever need. Given this goodness, recommendation is an easy call. HWMonitor is a utility that belongs in every computer user’s toolbox.

To a busy person, a little chime signaling the arrival of new mail amounts to nothing more than a statement of the obvious. Of course you have new mail. You always have new mail. Look in your inbox right now and you know what you’ll find? New mail. You really don’t need some obnoxious bell tinkling away in your system tray to tell you about it.

Message notifications, be they push or pull, do far more to break your concentration than to alert you about important new information. They ding every five minutes or so and tell you basically the same thing every time: Someone sent you e-mail. If you’re very busy, and you already have enough basic awareness of your own professional life, you’ll disregard the chime and keep working. If you’re a little compulsive (like me), you’ll feel obligated to check the inbox, breaking your focus on the task at hand to peruse the new messages. In either case, your notification has interrupted your train of thought, however briefly, to announce something that you could have guessed on your own.

The problem with notifiers isn’t just that they tell you the obvious about the state of your inbox; it’s that they break into your consciousness with such frequency that you could spend the majority of your day looking at (and usually deleting or archiving) two or three messages at a time without ever accomplishing any significant work. Every time you shift your focus away from a present task, you then have to spend some time refocusing on it again. If a pointless little bell draws your attention every 5 or 10 minutes, you’ll be lucky to get a full hour of actual work done in an 8-hour day, and you’ll never be able to establish a state of flow.

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While it’s nice (and usually surprising) to get an instantaneous reply to an e-mail you’ve sent out, the truth is that none of us expect an immediate response to our messages. Even the most wildly urgent e-mail in your inbox probably doesn’t require a response in less than 30 minutes (if it did, the person probably would’ve called or IMed you). Most of your contacts will be satisfied if they hear from you within the same business day, and still others will happily wait until tomorrow for your reply. So why the sense of urgency to know that new mail has landed?

Some productivity mavens recommend simply reducing the frequency of your notifiers to 20 or 30 minutes, but this strikes me as pointless. Because you already know that you’re going to get at least a couple of new messages in any given 5-minute period within the business day, you’re better off just assuming that you pretty much always have new mail in your inbox.

Rather than allow a notifier to tell you when you’ve got mail, just set your own intervals for mail breaks in whatever way suits your schedule. If you’re fastidious about responding quickly to important messages, check every 30 minutes. If you’re more relaxed, do it once every hour or two. In my experience, getting accustomed to worrying less about the e-mail inbox is a great way to discover just how little everyone else worries about the immediacy of your replies. Sure, there’s the occasional frantic weirdo who’ll call you ten minutes after sending you an e-mail to ask you if you got it, but most people really don’t care how long it takes you to get back to them, as long as it’s within a business day, or by end of day if it’s slightly more urgent.

What you gain in exchange for the relaxed mail intervals is a better shot at staying focused on the tasks that actually matter. You’ll likely also find that you spend less time dealing with e-mail overall, since it takes less time to sort and archive 30 messages at once than to deal with three at a time every 10 minutes. So go ahead, turn off the notifier and try working for a week without it. You may be surprised at the focus boost you get.

Reader David Mitchell delves into the personal with this question about Lion. He writes:

I’m planning to buy Lion and was curious about what pros like you do when you install a new operating system like this.

Every Mac user–”pro” or otherwise–is different and we all develop certain work habits. I’ve had Lion for awhile thanks to pungling up the $99 necessary to become a developer and have installed it on a couple of different Macs. These are the things I generally do in the first several minutes:

• Run Software Update. Apple often releases patches and updates with new OS versions. To make sure my OS and Apple applications are as up-to-date as possible, I run Software Update immediately (available from the Apple menu).

• Kill the translucent menu bar. I’ve never grown fond of the thing. To restore the menu bar to its time-honored off-white hue, open the Desktop & Screen Saver system preference, select the Desktop tab, and disable the Translucent Menu Bar option.

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• Restore scrolling. Much as I love my iOS devices, I’m not ready to change my scrolling habits to Lion’s “natural” scheme where scrolling down makes the contents of a window also move down. Over 20 years of doing it the other way will make this a hard habit to break. To change the way this is done, go to your Trackpad system preference, select the Scroll & Zoom tab, and disable the Scroll Direction: Natural option.

• Make Dock folders useful. Another Apple design decision that I never cottoned to is the way folders (stacks) are displayed in the Dock. To me it makes no sense to take a pile of documents and either fan them out or expose them on a grid. I generally have a lot of files in these folders and these two Apple-preferred options make it hard for me to find what I’m after. Instead, I Control- (right) click on these stacks and ask them to be displayed as folders in List view.

• Hide the Dock. I rely on utilities such as DragThing and LaunchBar to navigate to my files so I rarely need to see the Dock. I select Dock from the Apple menu and choose Turn Hiding On.

• Search for System files. Under Lion, the Finder’s Search window still won’t search for files in the System folder and Library folders by default. I often muck around in these folders and want Search to as well. To make that happen I press Command-F in the Finder to bring up a Search window. From the Kind pop-up menu near the top of the window I select Other. In the sheet that appears I enter System in the Search field. I then tick the In Menu check box next to the System Files entry that appears in this window so that I have the option to easily search for files that appear in System and Library folders.

• Tweak the sidebar. Apple’s collection of sidebar items–Applications, Desktop, and Documents, for example–are a start, but they’re hardly the end- and be-all of sidebar shortcuts. I always drag my user folder and the Drop Box folder within the Public folder into the sidebar.

• Change the Desktop background. Apple makes some lovely Desktop backgrounds but I quickly tire of the default. If you do too, just Control- (right) click on the Desktop and choose Change Desktop Background. In the window that appears you can choose from a variety of new background pictures.

But that’s just me. You’re a smart and experienced bunch. What settings do you tweak within the first five minutes of installing a new OS?