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A free dental timer

September 27, 2011 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

Dental materials have needs. Especially the need to be timed. Like, how long has that anesthetic been working? Or when will the alginate set?

Instead of having to remember all the working and set times for the products that you use every day, maybe what you need is a computer timer that’s specifically designed for dentistry.

Sure, you can use it for your operatory chess matches, timing how long your assistant was in the restroom, or reminding yourself to check the hygiene patient. But its best uses are definitely dental-centric.

Download the BlueMinder Dental Timer here for free. Doesn’t cost anything – no data, no money. Just install it at each clinical computer, tell your assistant to add your most-used dental materials (or just rely on the included materials library) and you can ditch the grey LCD clock boxes on your tray tables forever.

Or at least you can use it until the dental materials can time themselves.

 

Filed Under: Products, Software

Dell releases new firmware for Latitude and Precision laptops

December 3, 2009 By DentalBuzz Staff Leave a Comment

If your Dell E6500, E6400 or M6400 has been overheating, and seemingly sluggish then we have good news for you. The folks in Round Rock, TX have released a bios update that should fix all your performance problems.

Head over to dell.com and click on Support to download the latest drivers and bios update for your machine.

Here is a little of the back story

Filed Under: Software, Technology

The Best of Both Worlds

October 6, 2009 By DentalBuzz Staff Leave a Comment

fusionDental practices that have made the leap to Apple hardware and are running a copy of Windows XP in a virtual machine, things are going to get a little brighter. VMware the maker of Fusion for Mac announced today the availability of version 3.0 with Snow Leopard Support.

Highlights include:

  • Optimized for Snow Leopard. Built from the ground up for the Mac, VMware Fusion 3 leverages Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s advanced architecture with a new 64-bit core engine and native support for the 64-bit kernel, delivering even better Windows on Mac performance.
    Ultimate Windows 7 Experience.  VMware Fusion 3 will be the first to enable the full Windows 7 experience, side-by-side with your Mac, complete with Windows Aero and Flip 3D.
  • Switching Made Easy. VMware Fusion 3 will make it easy for users to bring their entire PC to their Mac in a few easy steps – wirelessly or with a simple Ethernet cable – allowing customers to protect investments in existing Windows software, and to keep using the programs they still need.
  • Best-in-Class 3D Graphics. Support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 will enable users to run their favorite 3D Windows games and applications – all without rebooting.

VMware Fusion 3 is now available for pre-order at at vmware.com/fusion at a suggested price of $79.99, with upgrade pricing of $39.99 available to current VMware Fusion users.

Filed Under: Practice Management, Software, Technology

Upgrade to Vista to downgrade to XP

June 25, 2008 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

Our resident gadget expert,The Computeritized Dentist, just wants his network to run properly and leaves the technical specs to the geeks. We asked him to read an important message that we got from Microsoft today.

The Computeritized Dentist will now translate this June 24, 2008 letter from Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte detailing the fate of Windows XP, among other things:

“Today, almost every dental office in the world that is computerized uses a PC with our software platform. And unless you want to ditch everything you’re already using, you’re stuck with us – and all the peripherals that try to get along with us.

“Windows XP is a dinosaur, and you may have heard that it is scheduled to be installed in the Museum of Planned Obsolescence on June 30, 2008.  Ha, ha, there’s really no such museum; that was just a clever metaphor that I thought of myself.

“Okay, so back with the XP thing. You dentists have mostly stayed on with using XP because it doesn’t throw up all over the perceived “security threats” like Vista does when you plug in a digital x-ray sensor or try to access your system remotely. It’s true; Microsoft will no longer sell Windows XP after this month, but now you will have almost six entire years until you will need to upgrade all of your equipment again.

“So the deal is, when you purchase a new PC from now on, you are also purchasing Windows Vista as its operating system. But because we know you dentists have issues with Vista, we’ve created something called “downgrade rights.” This means when you add a workstation, you have the option to downgrade your platform to Windows XP. And then when you are ready to upgrade, you are “future proofed” since you already have a license for Windows Vista. If you choose to downgrade, you’ll need to install Service Pack 3 and Internet Explorer 7, because it’s going to be hard for us to support you if you if you don’t.

“Hopefully all of your dental technology companies will have their Vista compatibility problems worked out before April, 2014. Because after that, we’re thinking…we might not be around anymore. Just kidding; we just haven’t promised XP support after that date.

“In the meantime, keep your eyes out for the Vista replacement, currently called Windows 7 and scheduled for launch in January, 2010. Our dominating market share depends on its success.

“Thank you so much for filling out all the error reports as well as you fill teeth. Your feedback has been filed away in some remote server in a dark room, but at least we try.  And we mean well. And…and…Go Windows!”

 

If you want to know where the Computeritized Dentist got all of this info, follow the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/letter.html

Filed Under: Practice Management, Software, Technology Tagged With: Microsoft XP, peripherals, Vista

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DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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