Health insurance policy is now portable

Now you can port your health insurance to any health insurance company in India. IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) today released the advertisement to all newspapers about it. 

 

You can now keep the credit gained in your existing policy even after switching to a new insurance company. You may be aware or not, all medical conditions and pre-existing illness are not covered by all policies. Only few high-premium policies cover those. All other normal health insurances will not cover them for the first two years. They are only covered after you paid your third premium. Suppose if you want to change the insurance company in the fourth year, you need to start afresh with the new insurance company and you will be covered for pre-existing and few complicated medical conditions only after paying third premium.

With portability, you can now change the insurance company keeping that “two-year-old policy” credit. You will be readily covered for all conditions by your new insurance company. If you don’t like your current insurance company or if you find a better policy offered at less premium, you can change it. You should apply at least 45 days before its renewal date.

The advertisement read as following:
•  Portability means transfer of the credit gained by the insured for pre-existing conditions and time bound exclusions if the policyholder chooses to switch from one insurer to another insurer or from one plan to another plan of the same insurer, provided the previous policy has been maintained without any break.
•  A break in policy occurs when the premium due on a given policy is not paid on or before the premium renewal date or within 30 days thereof.
•  A policyholder should apply to such insurance company at least 45 days before the premium renewal date of his/her existing policy for porting his/her policy.
•  The policyholder should fill in the Portability Form along with proposal form and submit the same to the insurance company.
•  If the insurance company does not communicate its decision to the requesting policyholder within 15 days of providing all the details as required by the insurer, the insurance company shall not retain the right to reject such proposal.
•  Portability is allowed to all individual health insurance policies issued by non-life insurance companies including family floater policies

Free Windows Registry Cleaner

While going through an online software selling website, I have seen approx. $25 costing registry cleaner in the hot selling products list.  I wondered why people are shelling out that much when there are a number of free registry cleaners are available.  So, this post has come out of that doubt and show the people a free registry cleaner that I have been using for years. 

What is a Registry Cleaner?
Registry cleaner is a software that cleans the unwanted registry entries, invalid paths, invalid ActiveX, unused file extensions, etc. thus by speeding up the system.  Registry is a database where Windows Operating System stores its settings and options.

One of the best and free registry cleaner is RegSeeker.  It come as a standalone product, which does not need any installation.  Just copy the folder onto desktop or just drop into your Program Files folder.

If you use it for the first time, you can see that hundreds of invalid and unwanted registry entries and after deleting them, you can see a slight boost in your system’s performance.  Sometimes when you uninstall a software, it just deletes the files in Program Files folder, but keeps the entries in registry like software key, which troubles sometimes when you change the key.  I have had these problems and resolved it easily by running Registry Cleaner.

It also comes with features like tweaks for XP, listing and uninstallation of installed products, and searching and deleting registry entries right from RegSeeker.

RegSeeker Homepage: http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

Empty Recycle Bin at Logoff and Shutdown on Windows XP

I had been looking for a simple solution for legacy systems (Windows XP) to perform a simply empty recycle bin during a shutdown and even better if it can be integrated into a logoff. To my surprise there were tons of requests for years and nobody gave a solution properly which does not require any 3rd party tools.
Most of the users suggest to turn off Recycle bin totally, but it can save lives sometimes, so that not what we want. Secondly, if we need to install a tool, we are just expanding our exposure to risk since the tool may have vulnerability and who knows what it can do when run as SYSTEM during a shutdown.
I found the simplest solution is to make use of Microsoft's built in shutdown and logoff script function:
Shutdown scripts: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/gptext_assigncomputershutdownscripts.mspx?mfr=true
Logoff scripts: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/gptext_logoffscripts.mspx?mfr=true
However, do take note that Shutdown scripts are run as SYSTEM and logoff scripts are run as the user logging off.
A simple "Empty the Recycle Bin" scripts using just batch file:
ATTRIB %systemdrive%\RECYCLER\* -R -S -H /S /D
DEL %systemdrive%\RECYCLER\* /F /S /Q
RD %systemdrive%\RECYCLER /S /Q
It's 3 lines to make sure it deletes and finish the job. Just copy and paste into a batch file which is your logoff / shutdown script.
There we have it. A simple and do-no-need-3rd-party solution. I hope you will find it useful.

Open source download accelerator – wxDownload Fast

Say goodbye to commercial download accelerators.  Here comes open source application – wxDownload Fast.  As my system got crashed few days ago due to power fluctuations, I had to repair the system and install the OS and lot of applications freshly. I have become open source applications fan and have been trying alternatives to the commercial applications.

Now, it is the time for testing an application for download accelerator and found wxDownload Fast, which is working great for me.  It is built using C++ and available for Windows XP and Linux.  It has all the features that commercial products have like segmented/multi-threaded/accelerated transfers, scheduling the download, file organizing, pause and resume, proxy support, etc.  It also available in a potable format, which does not need installation, so you can try it without installing or can carry on a USB.  It also calculates the MD5/SHA1 checksum of downloaded files so they can be easily verified.

 

The only thing it is missing is browser integration.  It does not automatically integrates into IE or Firefox.  If you want to integrate wxDownload Fast with Firefox, you first need to install FlashGot and select wxDownload Fast as external download manager.  You can always copy the link location by pressing right mouse button and selecting “Copy Link Location” and when you click “New” in wxDownload Fast, it will automatically recognizes the download link from clipboard.  Get it here.