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When we were preparing the last page we noticed a glaring omission in the Eye Surgery Education Council's description of the ideal candidate for laser eye surgery. The ideal candidate will have just won the $10 million jackpot in the state lottery.

Actually laser eye surgery doesn't cost quite that much, but there's no two ways about it: laser eye surgery is EXPENSIVE. And in this country, it's almost never paid for by insurance. But, unlike in other areas of your life, being economical isn't always a good thing. If you buy a cheap Rolex from an unlicensed street vendor, you can always toss it out a few weeks later if you discover it's a poorly put together knock-off. With your eyes, you don't have that liberty.

Costs fluctuate and they vary from state to state and doctor to doctor. There is no universal standard, except that such surgery is almost always quoted per eye. Giving estimates to a general readership on the Internet is well-nigh impossible, but it's reasonable to say that you can probably expect to pay somewhere in the area of $1200 to $2600 per eye, although significantly less (or more) is possible. Many doctors and eye centers offer low-interest payment plans.

You should never choose a doctor based solely on who offers the cheapest price or the best payment plan!

If not price then what? Click next to find out more about how to pick a doctor. We found several sources for pricing information:

In 2007, AllAboutVision.com commissioned a report from a leading industry analyst who found that wavefront LASIK combined with IntraLase costs an average of $2,357, compared to $1,694 for conventional LASIK. This is a price difference of $663 per eye between the two procedures.

A March 2007 TLC Laser Eye Centers report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the company range of charges was $350 to $500 extra per eye for wavefront analysis (custom LASIK) combined with IntraLase.

TruVision Laser Eye Centers in 2007 advertised conventional LASIK at $895 per eye, and wavefront LASIK at $1,295 per eye, for a price difference of $400. (The company web site notes that an extra fee also would be charged for use of IntraLase.)Below are typical prices, per eye, for other types of refractive eye surgery. As with LASIK, the prices vary based on many factors, including your individual prescription, where you live, and which surgeon you choose.

CK: $1,500 to $2,000
PRK, Epi-LASIK and LASEK: about the same as LASIK
Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE): $2,500 to $4,500 per eye or more, depending on extra costs such as facility fees.

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and other related Information, Advice and Resources.

Using a microwave oven beyond just reheating of foods and drinks can be quite difficult. Most of us have some kind of training in using a conventional oven properly and there are a huge number of cookery programs on TV to give helpful tips and advice on cooking times and temperatures. Microwaves however are completely different with very little help available and cookbooks being few and not widely promoted. Here is a guide to the general use of your microwave oven.

When using your microwave oven do not always blast everything at full power, as to so extent microwaves will cook foods in similar ways to your conventional oven and you do not cook everything at full power with your conventional oven as you end up with the food burnt on the outside and not cooked in the middle. The same effect can occur with dense items of food in a microwave oven if the food is cooked on too high power. The thing to remember with microwaves is that they penetrate the food only to a certain depth and by reducing the power this allows the heat to disperse through the food and cook it evenly and thoroughly.

To observe how your microwave cooks put in a stew and try it on full power you will notice after a couple of minutes the liquid near the outer edge of the container is bubbling and very hot and that in the middle will probably be still be cold. If you reduce the power and cook for a longer period of time you will notice that the heat has dispersed further into the liquid. Remember though that you will still have to stir the liquid and leave all microwave food to stand for at least two minutes before serving it.

Using your microwave oven to cook is much more economical than when using a conventional oven and because it does not generate heat will keep your kitchen cooler and is generally cleaner than using a conventional microwave oven.

Bought to you by Rossgo of http://www.everythingmicrowaves.com

Heavy eye lids may have looked sultry and sexy on long-gone film sirens like Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck but in today's society, heavy eye lids may mean that impaired vision is in your future.

Gravity plays a large role regarding the condition of your eye lids. Like the muscles in the body that elongate due inactivity and lack of exercise, your forehead and eye brows muscles can elongate, too, then move downward into the muscles surrounding the eyes.

This very quiet elongation means that one day you will notice that the distance between your eye brows and eye lashes have diminished and those once youthful eye lids look creased and lined.

Crows' feet are another indicator that your eye brows and forehead are in need of attention. Crows' feet can be lines and they can also be folds that develop at the corner of the eye affecting the peripheral vision. Left untreated, you may consciously or unconsciously begin to lift your forehead when you are speaking resulting in deep horizontal forehead lines. You might also realize that you are experiencing eye strain, tiredness and even headaches from this increased activity.

Poor muscle tone and lack of ligament support that begins in the forehead will pushes downward into the brows and the results affect the eye lids as they pool onto the lashes resulting in impaired vision. This is caused by inactivity in the upper portion of the face.

Some people who have sagging eye lids, commonly called dermatochalasis by the medical community, will immediately elect to have surgery; some may even try Botox or other modalities recommended by their physician; however, there is another avenue that will produce remarkable results without anything invasive.

Rather than electing to have a brow lift or upper eye lid surgery or both, many savvy consumers are rethinking surgery and considering specialized facial exercise to correct this malady that usually affects most everyone over the age 50.

Just as exercise trims a thick waistline, slims inner and outer thighs and strengthens the abs, specific exercises can indeed lift sagging upper eyes, eye brows and more.

The forehead muscle is called the frontalis muscle. It is a vertical muscle that originates in the hairline. When it loses its tone and elasticity, it elongates by pushing into the eye brow muscles which then weakens the upper eye lids.

Your frontalis muscle can regain strength through isometric contraction exercise and this action lifts the forehead and the eye brows. By frequently exercising the muscles around the eyes and the forehead muscle horizontal lines will soften, the eye lids will open and the impaired vision? Well, in just a few weeks, your eye lids will lift and your eyes will look brighter. Try it! What do you have to lose just saggy eye lids that make you look tired.

Rather than opting for temporary measures such as surgery and injections that may detrimentally alter the face, exercise will increase the distance between the eye brows and the eye lashes giving the user a lifted look. Your eyes will feel and look brighter and healthier without any risk, pain or recovery. Exercise works!

Cynthia Rowland is widely recognized as an expert in all natural facial fitness with over thirty years experience in health & beauty related fields. She has appeared on The View, NBC 4, Fit TV, HGTV and other popular shows. This author, speaker and television personality is leading the crusade to keep men and women looking vibrantly younger through natural techniques without spending their childrens inheritance.

Cynthia Rowland

I Save Faces
http://www.rejenuve.com/fmsavesfaces.htm

Credit card application online approval is now easier than ever thanks to the Internet. It matters little what type of charge card you are seeking. Whether it's a small business credit card, a balance transfer credit card, a travel rewards card or a student card to help build a solid credit record, you can apply for any and all of them online.

Let us say for instance that you are seeking a cash rebate offer. You would then go online and use a credible site that allows you to compare the various deals to see which ones offer you the financial benefits and services that best suits your needs. We currently recommend using Find-Cards-Now.com for its security, ease of use and excellent selection.

Depending upon the offer, credit card application online approval can happen in an instant, or it could be several days for the bank or credit card company to process your application. If you have a strong credit record then you can rest assured that you will more than likely be quickly approved for just about any charge card of your choice.

Your options are many. All of the major banks and credit card issuers allow you to apply for credit cards online. These include banks such as Bank of America, Chase and Citibank, as well as credit card companies like Discover Card, Visa, and Mastercard. As stated before, there is really no shortage of offers to choose from, including secured and debit cards.

When reviewing the deals that interest you, be sure to carefully look over the details of each offer. Some important questions to ask are: is it an introductory offer, are there any annual fees, what kind of customer service does it offer and are you completely protected from unauthorized use and fraud. It is very important to know the terms of service.

In the modern age, the World Wide Web has changed the way we do things dramatically. It has made the sharing of products and information quite convenient for us all. Managing our finances, whether it be online banking, or getting credit card application approval for that new platinum card with all the great travel rewards, has also greatly benefited.

Morgan Hamilton is a financial adviser that specializes in the credit and debt markets. To get more information about Credit Card Application Online Approval and be able to review and compare Instant Approval Credit Card Application we recommend you visit www.Find-Cards-Now.com

Hard Drives: ATA versus SATA

The performance of computer systems has been steadily increasing as faster processors, memory, and video cards are continuously being developed. The one key component that is often neglected when looking at improving the performance of a computer system is the hard drive. Hard drive manufacturers have been constantly evolving the basic hard drive used in modern computer systems for the last 25 years, and the last few years have seen some exciting developments from faster spindle speeds, larger caches, better reliability, and increased data transmission speeds.

The drive type used most in consumer grade computers is the hearty ATA type drive (commonly called an IDE drive). The ATA standard dates back to 1986 and is based on a 16-bit parallel interface has undergone many evolutions since its introduction to increase the speed and size of the drives that it can support. The latest standard is ATA-7 (first introduced in 2001 by the T13 Technical Committee (the group responsible for the ATA standard)) which supports data transfer rates up to 133MB/sec. This is expected to be the last update for the parallel ATA standard.

As long ago as 2000 it was seen that the parallel ATA standard was maxing out its limitations as to what it could handle. With data rates hitting the 133MB/sec mark on a parallel cable, you are inviting all sorts of problems because of signal timing, EMI (electromagnetic interference) and other data integrity issues; thus industry leaders got together and came up with a new standard known as Serial ATA (SATA). SATA has only been around a few years, but is destined to become the standard due to several benefits to be addressed in this Tech Tip.

The two technologies that we will be looking at are: ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) a 16-bit parallel interface used for controlling computer drives. Introduced in 1986, it has undergone many evolutions in the last 18+ years, with the latest version being called ATA-7. Wherever an item is referred to as being an ATA device, it is commonly a Parallel ATA device. ATA devices are also commonly called IDE, EIDE, Ultra-ATA, Ultra-DMA, ATAPI, PATA, etc. (each of these acronyms actually do refer to very specific items, but are commonly interchanged) SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) a 1-bit serial evolution of the Parallel ATA physical storage interface.

Basic Features & Connections

SATA drives are easy to distinguish from their ATA cousins by the different data and power connections found on the back of the drives. A side-by-side comparison of the two interfaces can be seen in this PDF from Maxtor, and the following covers many of the differences

Standard ATA drives, such as this 200GB Western Digital model, have somewhat bulky, two inch wide ribbon cable with 40-pin data connections and receive the 5V necessary to power them from the familiar 4-pin connection. The basic data cables for these drives have looked the same for years. A change was made with the introduction of the ATA-5 standard to better improve the signal quality by making an 80 wire cable used on the 40-pin connector (these are commonly called 40-pin/80-wire cables). To improve airflow within the computer system some manufacturers resorted to literally folding over the ribbon cable and taping it into that position. Another recent physical change also came with the advent of rounded cables. The performance of the rounded cables is equal to that of the flat ribbon, but many prefer the improved system air flow afforded, ease of wire management, and cooler appearance that come with them.

SATA drives, such as this 120GB Western Digital model, have a half inch wide, 7 blade and beam data connection, which results in a much thinner and easier to manage data cable. These cables take the convenience of the ATA rounded cables to the next level by being even narrower, more flexible and capable of being longer without fear of data loss. SATA cables have a maximum length of 1 meter (39.37 inches), which is much greater than the recommended 18 inch cable for ATA drives. The reduced footprint of SATA data connections frees up space on motherboards, potentially allowing for more convenient layouts and room for more onboard features!

A 15-pin power connection delivers the 250mV of necessary power to SATA drives. 15-pins for a SATA device sounds like it would require a much larger power cable than a 4-pin ATA device, but in reality the two power connectors are just about the same height. For the time being, many SATA drives are also coming with a legacy 4-pin power connector for convenience.

Many modern motherboards, such as this Chaintech motherboard, come with SATA drive connections onboard (many also including the ATA connectors as well for legacy drive compatibility), and new power supplies, such as this Ultra X-Connect, generally feature a few of the necessary 15-pin power connections, making it easy to use these drives on new systems. Older systems can easily be upgraded to support SATA drives by use of adapters, such as this PCI slot SATA controller and this 4-pin to 15-pin SATA power adapter.

Optical drives are also becoming more readily available with SATA connections. Drives such as the Plextor PX-712SA take advantage of the new interface, although the performance will not be any greater than a comparable optical drive with an ATA connection.

Performance

In addition to being more convenient to install and drawing less power, SATA drives have performance benefits that really set them apart from ATA drives.

The most interesting performance feature of SATA is the maximum bandwidth possible. As we have noted, the evolution of ATA drives has seen the data transfer rate reach its maximum at 133 MB/second, where the current SATA standard provides data transfers of up to 150 MB/second. The overall performance increase of SATA over ATA can currently be expected to be up to 5% (according to Seagate), but improvements in SATA technology will surely improve on that.

The future of SATA holds great things for those wanting even more speed, as drives with 300 MB/second transfer rates (SATA II) will be readily available in 2005, and by 2008 speeds of up to 600 MB/second can be expected. Those speeds are incredible, and are hard to imagine at this point.

Another performance benefit found on SATA drives is their built-in hot-swap capabilities. SATA drives can be brought on and offline without shutting down the computer system, providing a serious benefit to those who cant afford downtime, or who want to move drives in and out of operation quickly. The higher number of wires in the power connection is partially explained by this, as six of the fifteen wires are dedicated to allowing the hot-swap feature.

Price

Comparing ATA drives to SATA drives can be tricky given all of the variables, but in general it is the case that SATA drives will still cost just a bit more than a comparable ATA drive. The gap is closing rapidly though, and as SATA drives gain in popularity and availability a distinct shift in prices can be expected. Considering the benefits of SATA over ATA, the potential difference of a few dollars can easily be justified when considering an upgrade. Computer Geeks currently has a limited selection of SATA drives, but several technical sites, such as The Tech Zone and The Tech Lounge, offer real time price guides to see how comparable drives stack up.

Final Words

The current SATA standard provides significant benefits over ATA in terms of convenience, power consumption and, most importantly, performance. The main thing ATA has going for it right now is history, as it has been the standard for so long that it will not likely disappear any time soon. The future of SATA will be even more interesting as speed increases will help hard drive development keep pace with other key system components.

Jason Kohrs Computer Geeks tech tips and computer advice

For over 16 years, users of desktop label printers have been agonizing with the constant need to manually change label rolls just so they can print different sized labels. Were talking about the little desktop label printers here, like the Dymo LabelWriter. These small label printers connect up to a PC or Mac and enable the user to quickly print a single label, or labels by the hundred.

Labels for these printers are supplied on rolls, and the labels are precut to certain sizes. The most common label size used in these personal/desktop label printers is the Address or Shipping label. People naturally use these label sizes for addressing their letters or packages, but many owners of these personal label printers also like to print labels for other uses. Other uses could be for filing, product identification, name badges, CD labels, price tags, and so on.

So the problem has always been that when you want to change to a different size label, you had to remove the current roll, insert the new roll, print your labels, then you would most likely put the original roll back in because that is the size you use the most - and it just makes sense to have that roll in your label print most of the time.

A perfect example would be a Dentist that prints labels for letters that are mailed to its patients, but also requires a label to be put on each new patient's dental file. You could imagine the secretary changing rolls of labels say 10 times a day, or maybe it's 20 times or 30 times?.. who knows? it could be 100 times a day. Each time a new patient arrives the secretary would need to remove say the Address labels from the printer, load the File Folder' labels, print the label for the patients file, then put the Address labels back in so she can continue sending mail pieces to patients and suppliers.

This whole process takes time, and it sort of makes nonsense of the fact that the label printer was supposed to be saving time - not wasting because the rolls are constantly being changed.

Thus, a real solution was need for those users who regularly use more than one label size.

Enter the Dymo LabelWriter Twin Turbo. This little baby is actually 2 label printers in the one chassis. You get to load it up with 2 different label rolls, meaning that you won't need to be swapping out rolls of labels as often. And choosing which roll you want to print to is easy - you just specify left or right. It's that simple.

Getting back to the Dentist example (and let's assume that a Dymo LabelWriter Twin Turbo was now being used), the secretary would have a roll of Address labels and also a roll of File Folder labels loaded up in the Dymo machine, both rolls ready to go. When an Address label is required for a letter that needs to be mailed, the secretary just prints the label. When a File Folder label is required, the secretary just prints the label. There's no need to stop the workflow and manually load a new roll of labels - having both rolls loaded up in the printer simultaneously just saved a whole lot of time and aggravation.

The 16 year old problem has now been solved. And by the way, the Dymo LabelWriter Twin Turbo can print over 50 labels per minute, on over 30 different labels sizes, it can print postage stamps and it doesn't use an ink cartridge or toner or a ribbon.

Sally Green is the PR Manager for Labelcity. Labelcity is a specialist supplier of Dymo, CoStar and Seiko Label Printers, Supplies and labeling Software, with over 16 years experience and well over 40,000 customers.

Do you have your own flower garden and would like to make some use of it? Are you fond of crafts and do it your self decorative projects? Would you like to make some homemade floral arrangements to further accent your home or to give away as gifts? If this sounds like you, then please read on for some tips on making beautiful floral arrangements.

To start your floral arrangements, you will first need something to put your flowers in. Get a vase or some other container that is decorative and also holds water. Before you start your floral arrangements, you may want to consider further decorating the vase or container by spraying it with gold or bronze spray paint. Let it dry for 24 hours and then spray on a coat of clear enamel spray. This will give your arrangement a more decorative feel.

Next, you need a base for your floral arrangements. The base is used for the flowers to have something to anchor to. You can use a ball of willow branches, grapevine, or floral foam that you can buy at a local craft store. The floral foam is called Oasis. If you use Oasis, be sure to soak it in water and poke holes in it with a pen before you put flowers it so that it doesn't break the stems.

When cutting flowers for floral arrangements, try to do so early in the day or morning. This is because the stems have more water in them at this point of the day and the flowers are not drooping. Be sure to only use cold water in the flower arrangement because warm water tends to make the flowers open up too soon and not last as long.

If you want your flowers to last longer, you can places apple and lemon wedges in the water at the bottom of the floral arrangements. The apples have nutrients that will help feed the flowers, while the lemons prevent premature rotting and browning. It also adds a more decorative touch to your flower arrangements.

When designing your flower arrangements, try to pick colors that go with the environment the arrangement will be placed in. First use taller flowers to create the vertical part of the arrangement. Then use full blooming flowers with bright and bold colors for the center and sides of the floral arrangements. Then fill in the small gaps with tiny flowers.

Those were some great tips on making beautiful floral arrangements. If you use all of these tips in conjunction with each other, you are sure to have a long lasting floral arrangement. With a little practice, you can be well on your way to having beautiful floral arrangements that rival those found in floral shops!

Sandy Beaches offers expert advice and great tips regarding all aspects concerning Flowers. Get the information you are seeking now by visiting Floral Arrangements