Tips and Tricks
The following is a compilation of Tips and Tricks that can make your student life a little bit easier. This includes customizing things and doing them the way you want to instead of the way someone tells you to do them.
Computer Software
For your general coursework, you don't need a whole lot of computer software. In fact, you really don't need anything you have to pay for, but I'll get back to that in a minute. In this chapter, I'll let you know about a few options for computer software you'll need for the classroom portion of your medical school career.
The Ulimate Steal: Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for $60
Hopefully at least some of you heard about this last year, but Microsoft was selling their Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for $59.95. This offer was restarted again on August 20th, 2008. This software sells retail for $679 (91% savings). The deal is restricted to students (enrolled at least half-time) at any US higher education institution. As previously, this deal is only available for Windows XP or Vista users. You can purchase it at the Ultimate Steal website.
In order to buy it, you must enter your school email address. They will email you a password and instructions. Once you've logged in, you will be able to purchase Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95. You can either choose to download it (for free) and burn it to a CD or you can choose to have it shipped to you on a DVD for a "nominal" fee ($12.95). If you choose to download it, you will only be able to download it once. If you are worried that you will need to re-download it at some point, you can purchase the "Extended Download Service", which will allow you to download it as many times as you like for the next 2 years. Please note that you will only be given 1 product key, so you won't be able to download 50 copies and give it to all your friends and family or install it on more than 1 computer. If you want to do that, see the next section.
Even Cheaper Steal: OpenOffice.org for free
(I admit. That's a horrible pun.) OpenOffice.org is a completely free/open-source office suite. It's available for almost any platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and in over 20 languages. This software is perfectly capable of handling any task required by med school. In fact, I think it's a perfectly good option for almost every student. It's even got some nice features not found in MS Office. For example, you can convert any document to a PDF. If you are not one of the few users that truly uses MS Office 2007's "special features," I think you'll be perfectly happy using OpenOffice. In fact, version 3.0 (released Oct, 13, 2008) will even allow you to open those darn OOXML files that MS Office 2007 uses by default. That way when someone sends you one of those pesky .docx files you'll be able to open it.
A word of warning is needed, however. The default file format of OpenOffice is the Open Document Format (a true open standard). If you plan on using OpenOffice.org to complete homework assignments you must either "Save As" an MS Word file (.doc) or convert it to a PDF. If you turn in your biochem paper as a .odt file (the default), Dr. Cs-Szabo will not be amused. She will most likely be using MS Office, which doesn't support .odt files. You can change the default file format to .doc if you want via the Preferences. If you'd like to try OpenOffice but are unsure about something, leave a comment here or send me an email.
PDF support
The good news is, the viewers all free. The PDF viewer tends to be a Windows issue, since it does not to come with PDF support out of the box. Most people prefer the regular old Adobe Reader. Some Windows users prefer FoxIt Reader. If you want FOSS on Windows, you could always try Sumatra.
Some Windows users may also want to be able to "print to PDF". I recommend doPDF (freeware) or PDFCreator (FOSS).
Don't worry. I'm not leaving out Mac and Linux. Mac and Linux users should have PDF viewing and printing support out of the box.
Antivirus
All the Mac users are scoffing, even though they lost the PWN-2-OWN contest a few months ago. But at least for Windows Users, antivirus is important. There's the usual slew of commericial products like Symantec and McAfee. I just thought I'd mention AVG, Avast and ClamWin. ClamWin does not include a real-time scanner, so if you open a virus, ClamWin won't see it. It only scans what you tell it to scan. Don't worry Linux users, you're ok for now.
Instant Messaging
Between GoogleTalk/GoogleChat, FacebookChat, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and other services, there are a lot of IM programs to use. Why not try out an instant messaging program that uses multiple protocols. Pidgin works well on Windows and Linux. It supports Facebook chat via a plugin. For Macs Adium works nicely, and it has Facebook chat support built into the newest version.
PortableApps
PortableApps is a great resource for anyone using public computers at Rush. Let's just say the applications selection on Rush computers leaves something to be desired. PortableApps is a small application that can be installed on a USB drive. It lets you bring all of your favorite open-source applications with you wherever you go. This includes Firefox, games, any instant messaging service (via Pidgin), and even a CD/DVD burning program. This is a great piece of software for students who are constantly using public computers where you can't install applications yourself. You'll need to be on a Windows machine to install it to your thumb drive.
There is a small trick to getting Flash to work in Firefox for PortableApps. First, make sure Firefox is installed and working on PortableApps. Also if you don't have a zip program, download and install the 7zip PortableApp. Then download this xpi file from Macromedia (right-click, Save Target As) and save it to your USB drive. Then extract the contents (using 7zip or other extractor) to the /App/firefox/plugins folder on your USB drive. Make sure to restart Firefox if you have it open and you should be good to go.
Virtualization
If you have the need to run another operating system from within your normal one, you have a few options. The most common example of this is a Mac user wanting to run Windows inside OS X for one reason or another. My personal choice for this task on any operating system is VirtualBox. This software is completely free of charge and it comes in 2 flavors: Open Source Edition (OSE) and Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). The only difference between the 2 is that the PUEL version contains a few additional features, like USB devices in the virtual machine. The only people I would not recommend VirtualBox to are people who want to play hardcore Windows games, since it does not support hardware acceleration. VMWare workstation and Parallels are both commercial products available to purchase. Parallels does have some support for hardware acceleration if you're looking to game. Note that if you're trying to run Windows inside a virtual machine, you will need to purchase a Windows license.
Lecture Recordings
For more information on how to access and view Rush lecture recordings, go to the Lecture Recordings page.
Email Forwarding
If you're like me, you can't stand Lotus Notes. I wrote this up previously, but this is a more up-to-date copy of it for those of you who aren't aware that you can forward your Lotus Notes email to 3rd part clients:
It's actually fairly easy to circumvent the Lotus Notes software completely if you want to. First, you need a free email account. Try Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, whatever. I use Gmail, but you can use any email address you want. Also, I will do my best to explain so that anyone can follow what I'm saying, but if something needs clarification, let me know.
- Set up your personal account to write like it's coming from your Lotus Notes account. (I don't know if this step works for other web-based email besides Gmail. Does anyone know? If not, skip ahead to 2nd bullet.)
- Log in to Gmail. Go to your Settings (top right corner of Gmail).
- Go to the Accounts tab (2nd). Next to "Send mail as:", click "Add another email address".
- Enter your Rush email address (e.g. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu) when prompted. The click "Next Step". Then click "Send Verification" on the next screen. The next screen should contain a box to enter a confirmation code.
- Log in to your Lotus Notes email in a new browser. You should have an email from "Gmail Team", open it. Copy the confirmation code into the awaiting box in Gmail (or follow the instructions in the email).
- You should now see your Rush email listed on the Gmail settings page. Below this there is an option "When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses:", you may want to make this "Reply to same address the message was sent to". If you've never used this feature in Gmail before, please understand what it is. From now on, any email you send, you'll be able to choose who you want the email to be "From" (e.g. mynick@gmail.com vs Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu). It's a pretty cool feature.
- Create a "rule" that will forward any emails you receive from your Lotus Notes account to your personal email account (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail).
- Log in to your Lotus Notes email and go to the "Mail" tab if you're not there already.
- Hover your mouse over the "Tools" menu (just above your list of emails on the far right) and click on "New Mail Rule". A new window should pop up (make sure you've allowed pop-ups for this page).
- Make a name for your rule (e.g. Fwd_to_gmail)
- Under "Create Conditions", click the first drop-down menu and select "All Documents" (you need to scroll down). Then click "Add>>"
- Under "Specify Actions", select "Send copy to" from the first drop-down menu. In the next empty box, enter your personal email address (Gmail). Make sure "Full" is selected on the bottom drop-down menu. Then click "Add>>".
- The following step is optional, but beneficial. Under "Specify Actions", you can tell Lotus Notes to delete the original message. To delete messages from your Lotus account once you've forwarded an email to your personal account, select "Delete" from the first "Create Actions" drop-down menu. Then click add. If you're worried that deleting is too final, you can always skip this step. (Another option would be to create an "Archive" folder which you simply move messages to after they've been forwarded, so your Lotus Notes inbox stays clean.)
- Click "Save & Close" at the top of your screen. Then go back to your inbox.
- Test it. Have someone send you an email to your Lotus Notes account and watch the magic :)
- Look up people's email addresses. I highly doubt there's a way to search the Rush directory from outside Lotus Notes.
Emailing the list-servs(maybethis is possible?). Update: This actually works from any email address.- Probably more things that I've forgotten.
Email Forwarding Alternate
Update: It appears as though at some point after the Internet Services department "disabled" email forwarding (as detailed below), they re-enabled it. Forwarding seems to be working consistently now. As long as that is the case, I would recommend following my earlier guide, Life Without Lotus Notes. Just make sure you don't add anything that "deletes" your mail in the rule in case the IS Department decides to disable it again. You can actually use both of these at the same time if you want to. Mail will only be forwarded/copied once.
This chapter of Tips and Tricks is a remix of a post I did last fall, Life Without Lotus Notes. In this post, I outlined how to go about using Lotus Notes to forward your email to another account. Unfortunately, many of us found out a few weeks ago that this ability has been disabled, although apparently not for everyone. At least, not yet. Many students (probably 50%) forward their email from Rush's Lotus Notes to an external mail service like Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail. This is apparently a topic of some controversy for the Rush Internet Services (IS) department, since if you contact them, you will likely be told that email forwarding is "not allowed". However, upon speaking with someone from IS who specifically works on Lotus Notes, you might find the topic is far less controversial. Suffice it to say, according to the Lotus Notes folks, email forwarding is not illegal. Here are the steps to get things working in Gmail.
Forwarding your email from Lotus Notes to Gmail
- First, please understand what we're doing. We are telling Gmail to ask Lotus Notes every so often if you've gotten any new emails. If you have, they will be downloaded to Gmail. The messages can be left in Lotus Notes and copied to Gmail or fully transferred to Gmail and removed from Lotus Notes. Please understand, any unread messages in your Lotus Notes inbox (or Folders) will be downloaded to Gmail. This includes emails previously forwarded using a "mail rule". If you're anything like me, that was over 2,000 emails. If you have a lot of unread emails, take a few minutes and delete them (or mark them as "Read") before completing the rest of this. Unless you want a ton of emails in your Gmail inbox.
- Log in to Lotus Notes
- Look at your screen and find what server your account is on. See the image below. The format will be something like: rpma02ln.rush.edu . You'll need this later so, keep track of it.
- Log in to Gmail. On the top right, click on Settings. On the Settings page, click on the Accounts tab. Under "Get Mail From Other Accounts", click on "Add Another Mail Account". A pop-up window should come up. If it doesn't, be sure you don't have a pop-up blocker keeping you from viewing it. In the box (Email Address), enter your full Rush email address (e.g. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu). Then click "Next Step". Under "Username" make sure to fill in your full Rush email address (i.e. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu and not Firstname Lastname). Enter your password. Under POP Server, you will need to enter the server name you looked up in Step 3. If your server is listed in the drop-down menu, you can just select the correct one. Otherwise, select "Other" and enter the server address manually. You can leave off the "http://" (i.e. just enter rpma02ln.rush.edu). Leave the Port as 110. The remaining 4 checkboxes are optional. The options are explained in the next step, but if you don't want them, just click "Add Account"
- The Options. "Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server" will leave a copy of every message you receive in your Lotus Notes account. If this box is unchecked, any emails that get transferred over to Gmail will be deleted from Lotus Notes. This is helpful if you don't want your Lotus Notes inbox filling up. If you're worried about losing some emails (even though you shouldn't) or if you'll need to get a copy of them from inside Lotus Notes, I suggest you check the box. "Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail": I don't think anyone needs this. Someone let me know if I'm wrong. "Label incoming messages" refers to a feature of Gmail. If you've never used labels before, they're pretty useful, but this option is up to you. Finally, "Archive Incoming Messages (Skip the Inbox)". I don't know why you would want this, but maybe someone does. If you're wanting to automatically archive only "Rush News" emails, that's the topic for another post (coming soon). If you've decided on your options, click "Add Account"
- Gmail will now to go Lotus Notes and download all unread messages. This may take a while, especially if you have a lot of them in Lotus Notes. Take 5 and go grab a cup of Hazelnut roast from ABP.
- Once this is working correctly, you should not need to touch it again. Gmail will decide how often to check your Lotus Notes inbox for new messages. This could be as often as every 2 minutes or as infrequently as every 60 minutes. You are always free to come back to the "Accounts" tab and manually click the link "Check mail now", which will force Gmail to check. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell Gmail how often you want it to check Lotus Notes. This means that for time-sensitive emails, a 1 hour delay may be troublesome. One of the biggest benefits of just having Lotus Notes forward all your mail to Gmail is that it arrived in Gmail right away. Too bad this feature has been removed from our Lotus Notes...
Here are some images to help you out:
Writing as your Lotus Notes email through Gmail
As far as I know, this will only work through Gmail. I don't use Yahoo! or Hotmail, but if you can do this and someone sends me instructions, I'd be happy to put them up. Basically, these instructions are to tell you how to write an email in Gmail and still have it be "From" your Lotus Notes account (i.e. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu).
- Log in to Gmail. Go to your Settings (top right corner of Gmail).
- Go to the Accounts tab (2nd). Next to "Send mail as:", click "Add another email address".
- Enter your Rush email address (e.g. Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu) when prompted. The click "Next Step". Then click "Send Verification" on the next screen. The next screen should contain a box to enter a confirmation code.
- Log in to your Lotus Notes email in a new browser. You should have an email from "Gmail Team", open it. Copy the confirmation code into the awaiting box in Gmail (or follow the instructions in the email).
- You should now see your Rush email listed on the Gmail settings page. Below this there is an option "When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses:", you may want to make this "Reply to same address the message was sent to". If you've never used this feature in Gmail before, please understand what it is. From now on, any email you send, you'll be able to choose who you want the email to be "From" (e.g. mynick@gmail.com vs Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu). It's a pretty cool feature.
Setting up a stand-alone email client
If you are a fan of stand-alone mail clients like MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, you may have realized that you can actually use these programs to check your Lotus Notes. I can't go through instructions for individual mail clients (at least not now), but if you tell your program that you want to create a new POP or POP3 inbox, this is the info you'll need:
- POP3 Server or "Incoming" mail server: as determined above, step 3 (e.g. rpma02ln.rush.edu)
- Username: Firstname_Lastname@rush.edu
- Password: duh
- SMTP or "Outgoing" mail server server: either postcard.cc2.rpslmc.edu or ponyexpress.cc2.rpslmc.edu (should not matter which). Neither connection should need a "secure" or "SSL" connection. If you're having trouble getting this to work, post a comment here and someone should be able to help you.
Subscribe to an online calendar
This page is designated to be a guide on how to subscribe to a calendar that is availble in iCalendar format. You can use it to add online calendars like the RMstudents Events Calendar to your personal calendar in MS Outlook, iCal, Thunderbird, Google Calendar, etc. Feel free to click 'Edit' above and start working on a guide for any of the previous programs if you already know what you're doing.
Microsoft Outlook and Windows Calendar
To add the RMstudents Events Calendar, Microsoft users should just be able to add it automatically by clicking here.
If you'd prefer to add it manually or if you'd like to learn how to add another calendar that's just a .ics file, instructions will be posted below.
iCal (OS X)
To add the RMstudents Events Calendar, Mac users should just be able to add it automatically by clicking here.
If you'd prefer to add it manually or if you'd like to learn how to add another calendar that's just a .ics file, instructions will be posted below.
Thunderbird
This is where the guide for Thunderbird should go
Google Calendar
To add the RMStudents Events Calendar to your Google Calendar, under "Other Calendars" (on the left), click on "Add" and choose "Add by URL". For the Public Calendar Address, enter http://rmstudents.com/calendar/all/ical . That should be it. Note, do not click on this link and try to save the .ics file. By doing so, you'll just be downloading a snapshot of the calendar and new events that are added to the calendar won't be imported over to your calendar. (*Editor's Note: The old URL, http://rmstudents.com/calendar/icalendar will continue to work as well)