Staying connected on the road is always tough and there are so many opportunities to waste money. Do you spend $9.95 for 24 hours of internet access in your hotel? Do you pay for a subscription at a place like Starbucks and continually stop to check email before hurrying back out? If you are around other family members or business colleagues, do you all pay for your own connections? That gets expensive!

Novatel Wireless has released a product through Verizon and Sprint that is sure to turn a head or two called "MiFi." It is a device the size of a few stacked credit cards that uses mobile broadband to create a WiFi network accessible to up to five devices! Unlike Bluetooth tethering (if you happen to be one of the lucky few that has a compatible phone / cell plan), the MiFi has a built-in battery that can broadcast a protected Wi-Fi signal for over four hours and every device connected to it can talk to one another and share files in the same way they can with a standard wireless router. A built-in Micro-SD card reader allows you to store and share up to 16GB of files. Available through Virgin Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and a few other carriers, the MiFi is offered at a deep discount when signing up for the mobile broadband plan needed to operate. Head to the Novatel site first to learn more and pick your carrier.

Unlike Vista, we here at DCG are very pleased with the performance and feature set of Windows 7; we are recommending all of our clients deploy it when it becomes available in October. If you plan on upgrading, the most important question is whether or not your current computer and software setup will be compatible. Microsoft has released a beta version of its Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, a free utility that scans your machine's hardware and software profile in order to provide a list of possible conflicts when you go for the upgrade.

Downloading and installing is easy and the scan takes about five minutes; when I ran it on my Lenovo mini tower, it passed my hardware with flying colors and let me know that I may have issues with my current version of "Adobe Acrobat." Apparently, all of my productivity and entertainment tools like Photoshop, Blackberry Tools, iTunes and my accounting software are good to go! If your machine has any serious compatibility issues, the Upgrade Advisor will give you links and information to help you get what you need, whether it be security upgrades or device drivers, in order to provide the best "7" experience.

Brent - You have us on your St. Bernard Managed Care service. What Windows Updates are automatically taken care of? Is there anything we need to do?

The St. Bernard Managed Care client will update workstations that are powered on Thursday through Monday nights; they will need to be left on in order to receive the updates. St. Bernard only installs "white-listed" and "gray-listed" security patches and updates; as a result, a cursory examination of missing patches can lead someone to believe they are not getting patches when they really are. We are fairly conservative about updates so as not to cause downtime due to a "misguided" Microsoft update.

St. Bernard Managed Care does not automatically push down Service packs. The odd-numbered Service Packs are really just "roll-ups" of all the prior patches, so you don't need those and we don't install them unless asked. The even-numbered Service Packs are "real" product upgrades and can negatively impact client setups. We will never automatically install an even-numbered Service Pack unless a test phase is undertaken on a few machines to be sure dependent software still works.

Do-it-yourself identity theft protection does not take as much money as you think. I don't have to tell you how important your personal information security is, so run through this list to ensure you are doing what you can to keep your identity safe:

1. AnnualCreditReport.com offers legitimately free credit reports at one report per bureau, per year. You can even order them by phone at 877.322.8228.
2. Get one of the three bureau reports every three months to ensure consistency in both your monitoring and their reporting. Through AnnualCreditReport.com, you can keep the quarterly cycle going indefinitely.
3. Place a fraud alert on your credit report by calling any one of the bureaus. The contact info for all of them can be found at www.fightidentitytheft.com. Create a reminder in your calendar to renew your alert every 90 days.
4. Tell bureaus to stop selling your information to credit services! Going to www.OptOutPrescreen.com or calling 888.567.8688 will reduce the number of credit card offers that come in the mail.
5. Request free public records reports from ChoicePoint. Print the form and mail it in with some necessary information in order to receive a copy.
6. Take your name off of other marketing lists by signing up for ProQuo.com's free service.
7. Buy a mailbox that locks or use a PO Box to protect your physical mail.
8. Buy a crosscut paper shredder and shred any junk mail with your information on it.
9. Never follow a link from an email message in order to log into a financial website. If you need to log into your bank or investment portal, do so by going directly to their URL in your web browser.
10. If you think someone has compromised your personal information, contact the Identity Theft Resource center. Volunteers are there to help!

There are an astronomical number of social networking sites that people use these days. Even if you just have accounts for the mainstream ones (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.), it is still a hassle to keep up with all of them.

This edition's tip highlights Ping.fm, a free service that allows you to update your status on almost any networking site you can think of at the same time - it will even update your AIM status! The sign-up process involves simply typing in an email address and password of your choice and you are good to go. Start adding any of the 40+ networking sites that you use and you will be able to send updates via E-Mail, AIM, Skype, SMS and about ten other methods. Ping.fm supports grouping, so you can blast out to MySpace and Facebook that you running off to "Burning Man" for a week of partying all while saving your reputation with your colleagues on LinkedIn. If you are any kind of networking fanatic and are looking for a huge time-saver, Ping.fm is a service worth looking into.