RMstudents Technology meets medical education

Version 3.0 of OpenOffice.org, a free alternative to the Microsoft Office suite, was released today.  You can download it at the OpenOffice.org website.  The site is currently running very slow due to the large number of people downloading, but once it's back to normal, I'd recommend checking out the 3.0 features list.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with OO.o, it is essentially a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office.  This new version offers a bunch of new features, including the ability to read OOXML files created in Office 2007 (you know, those .docx, .pptx, etc. files) and a bunch of other usability improvements.   It also supports extensions, similar to Firefox, so that you can add a lot of new functionality to your office applications that isn't already there.  Also similar to Firefox, it is free and open source, which means that anyone with the proper skills can contribute and improve it.  Another notable feature is that Mac users are getting quite a few new features, including some that are unavailable in MS Office 2008 for Mac.  Read More »

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.  Read More »

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 Read More »

Need a study break?  Here's a funny YouTube video on how NOT to use powerpoint.

An updated version of this guide is listed on the Email Forwarding book page.

If you're like me, you can't stand Lotus Notes. I wrote this up on my personal blog, but here's a copy of it for those of you who aren't aware:

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.