RMstudents Technology meets medical education

I just received an email that Rush's Perkspot site has been upgraded.  If you've never heard of Perkspot, it's a website that offers Rush employees and students discounts for a ton of stores, products, services, and events.  They have discounts on books, cell phones, computers and electronics, event tickets, travel, insurance, and more.  To be eligible, you simply must be a Rush student (or employee).  You'll need to sign up for an account with Perkspot (using any email address you want) and you'll be able to log in and get all sorts of great deals.  This site is updated constantly with new coupons and deals that are available online and in-store.  Of course some discounts are better than others.  For example, Apple's discount is the regular "university discount" that you get everywhere.  Dell, HP, and Lenovo all offer their corporate discounts, which in the case of Lenovo is often very good.  I saved over 30% on a Lenovo laptop last Spring.  Read More »

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 »

The following is posted on behalf of Marissa Le c/o 2010 concerning prep for the USMLE Step 1:

This link is to an online guide book by med
students for med students- it has practically all the advice you'd want
for Step1- check out the table of contents, it has advice about which
books/sources, and subjects are highest yield for studying.  Also check
out "what's available" for sample tests that will give you an accurate
assessment of what you would score- and what subjects you are weakest
on, and when to take these assessments.  Check it out- or at least save
this to look at later.

http://www.gotmedbooks.com/insidepages_guide.php?num=0

...also
Kaplan Q-bank and USMLEworld are both good.  I had both, Kaplan seemed
more nit-picky than the real test, and world is cheaper.  ... also you
don't really need it until you are really studying for the boards- so
you can save by just buying it for 30 or 60 days.

Thanks Marissa!