Shopping Tips, 2012

This is my shopping advice update for 2012.  Much of it is the same as last year's.  Please be sure to read that first.  Its all still valid and points to way to a lot of discounts.

This year, I want to add three new tips to save you money and stress:

1. Don't bother with Black Friday.
2. Use your phone.
3. Don't forget your points.

Black Friday

No one likes fighting crowds of anxious shoppers.  Good news:  You shouldn't bother.

Black Friday sales actually cost more than routine pricing from online stores.  There are exceptions, but that is not the norm.

Smart Phone = Smart Shopping

If you do decide to go shopping in a physical store and have a smartphone, download a couple of comparison shopping tools first.

There are a number of apps that will use your phone's camera to scan barcodes or even search based on a picture of the product.  They look up the price on Amazon, Google, eBay, and other services.  This is amazingly easy and quick.  Look on your phone's App Store to see what I mean.

Here are a few examples for iPhones:

• SnapTell
• Red Laser
• Price Check By Amazon
• Google Shopper

If you have an Android phone and can recommend an app like these, please put it in the comments below.

Credit Card Points

Lastly, it your credit card gives you "points," consider trading them in for gift cards.  For example, you could trade in 10,000 points for $100 at Amazon and then buy several gifts.  You could also trade in points for several small iTunes or Amazon gift cards.  These would make great gifts for children who are about to receive an iPad or Kindle Fire from their parents.

As stated at the beginning, don't forget to check last year's tips for more advice.

Taking Google Docs With You

If you're graduating, moving, or otherwise leaving Cairo-Durham CSD soon, you might be interested in taking your Google Docs files with you.  This is a lot easier than you might think.

1. Go to the Start Portal.
2. Click on Docs and login, if necessary.
3. Click on the check box for any file or files.
4. A "More" button should now appear.  Click on it.
5. The "More" button should pop-down a menu.  From that menu, select "Download..."
6. You will see a new window.  In that window, there are two tabs named "Selected items" and "All items.  Click on "All items".
7. There will be three options in small print.  They are "MS Office", "Open Office", and "PDF".  Select the format that you want to convert your files into.  If in doubt, you can do this process once for each option and then save all three copies of your files.  Most people find "MS Office" to fit their needs.
8. Click "Download".
9. Follow any additional directions that appear on the screen.

Soon you should have copies of your files downloaded.  You can place these on a flash drive, email them to someone, upload them to your personal Google Docs account, or upload them to any number of other services such as DropBox or SkyDrive.

(Note:  This is an update to the old article "Saving Google Docs" from June 13, 2011.)

Changing PowerSchool Login for Parents (March 5)

On March 5, 2012, the way that parents login to PowerSchool changed.  If you're having trouble logging into our PowerSchool system as a parent, please check out the directions on our website or you can download the directions.

Changing Themes in Email

A few people have recently said that they don't like the new look of our email system. You can set a new "theme" to change the look, if you want.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner.
• Click on Mail Settings.
• Click on "Themes"
• Select a theme that you like.
• Click on "Inbox" on the left edge to return to your email.

If you want to leave feedback with Google about their changes, you can use their feedback form.

Electronics Shopping

Its mid-November now and that means a lot of people are shopping to replace their computer, iPod, TV, or what-have-you.  I thought it would be helpful to review some on-line shopping tips.  If you think that I missed anything, feel free to add it to the comments below.


General shopping:

• Check for coupons on RetailMeNot.com & DealCoupon.com
• Compare prices on many sites using www.google.com/products.
• Check product reviews to avoid problems. Amazon.com, Google.com, & Epinions.com are good for this.
• Watch sites like www.DealNews.com, www.Woot.com, and www.DailySteals.com for sales.
• Remember to include the tax and shipping when comparing costs between stores. I have often found that the store with the lower advertised price is not the cheapest once shipping is added.

Computer & electronics shopping:

• See the general list above.
• Check DealMac.com and DealNews.com for sales.  They even have Black Friday news.
• NewEgg.com is well known for good pricing.
• Some one-day-deal sites can be useful, but you'll have to check them every day.
• CowBoom.com
• DailySteals.com
• MeritLine.com's Daily Deals page
• Woot.com
• For cameras, check the reviews on www.Steves-DigiCams.com and www.DPReview.com.
• Steves-DigiCams.com also has a feature & price search that will suggest models and stores.

Check for academic discounts.

• Apple: http://store.apple.com/us-k12
• Dell: http://www.dell.com/us/en/k-12/df.aspx?refid=df&s=k12&cs=RC1084719
• HP: http://www.hpk12.com/

Email Improvements

Google has notified me of an upcoming change to our email system.  This should be happening within a few weeks, at most.

To learn how your cairodurham.org email is about to change, please look at this web page.  The video at the top takes less than 2 minutes and the descriptions in the page give a lot of insight.

PowerSchool 7 Login Problems

On October 14, 2011, PowerSchool was upgraded to version 7 for Cairo-Durham Central School District.  If you're having trouble logging in, check on the following:

• Macs must be running Safari 4 or higher (available on MacOS 10.4 or higher)
• PCs must have Internet Explorer 8 or higher
• If you use FireFox, it must be version 3.6 or higher.

If you're still having problems after checking the above, PCs often need all of their history, Cache, etc. cleared in order to work correctly.  You will only need to do this once.  See the picture below for a guide. It shows what settings to clear on Internet Explorer 8.