When you first start the ITSBITS^® Catapult Garage you will see the top menu strip and a "Welcome" tab, then it will open the Registration tool. Notice that you can only use the "File" menu option to exit and the "Help" menu option is available. All others are disabled until you register and obtain your machine-dependent serial number. Once the serial number is in place, the other menu options will be available to you.

Use the "Help" menu and the "Registration Entry" option to enter your registration information. This will bring up the registration tool within the garage...it looks something like this:

As you look at this screen notice that entries shaded in green are optional but those shaded in red are required...you cannot register without these. Let's consider a few of the things we're asking you for.

• Title -- (Optional)

• Your name -- Required -- IHS, Incorporated, will not send you email without your name at the top. This is a simple security measure to let you be sure the email is actually from us. (See our Privacy Policy.)

• Address, city -- (Optional) We will only use this to get an idea of where our customers are actually located. That lets us see where we need to work in expositions, seminars, etc. That will allow us to better serve you and, in future, know where to offer training and other events that might interest you.

• State and ZIP code -- Required -- Like all businesses, we have to deal with the tax people. We are located in the state of Alabama and there is a state sales tax (currently 4%) in Alabama. Other states may, in future, require collection of sales taxes when we sell into them. Since we don't relish going to jail or paying big fines, we have to get this information from you before we can allow you to register.

• Country -- Required -- More government regulations...gotta get it.

• Phone Number -- (Optional) -- We will only call you if there's a problem with your account, credit card, etc., or, rarely, if there's a trouble ticket we're working on for you.

• Email Address-- Required -- We will email your serial number to this email address, so be sure to give us one that works. We will also deal with any trouble reports, password-resets, etc., using this email address. (We guard our email address list closely--we're not going to share it with anyone except as required by law.)

• Your company's name and your job title -- Optional -- Yes, just like the address, this is for our marketing purposes and it may let us know where to offer informative training and other sessions in the future. We'll appreciate your information and we'll guard it closely. Again, we're not going to share it with anyone except as required by law.

• My operating system -- (optional) -- Help us know where we need to concentrate our efforts for future developments where you need them to be and we'll thank you ahead of time.

• Let us send you a little information. About once a month (or two) we'll be emailing a newsletter. This will include information if we're adding new tools and/or workshops into the garage so it will be better and better as time goes by. We'll also tell you about any critical updates to the software and we may want to tell you about other software we're introducing and/or handling. We promise to limit the number of emails you get from us under this heading and we'll always try to make it interesting for you.

• Other information from us to you. -- From time to time we have other information we believe you might be interested in. This information may or may not be directly related to your software. For instance, we might send you news about something that relates to the internet's future. Again, we will only send this if you click to let us do it and we promise it will be very limited in quantity.

• Information from our partners -- From time to time we may have information from our partner companies that we believe would be of interest to you based upon the type of our software you're running. We would like to be able to tell you about some of these partners' offerings from time to time when we do think you'd be interested, but we will only send it if you let us. We won't deluge you with spam--we'll only send it if we really think a lot of our customers would be interested.

• UserID / Password -- required -- You MUST enter the ID and password you used to purchase the software from us when you downloaded it or if you have a full retail package, you must enter the ID and password that came with the package.

Once you have the data filled in, hit the OK (Green Door)button. The tool will process the data, encrypt it, save it to your hard disk, display it on the screen (see below for a sample of what it will look like), and put it in the system's clipboard.

Looking at this screen, notice first that the instructions for manually entering your registration to get a serial number are shown in the lower information box. In most cases, you won't need these instructions because the tool will normally open an Internet Explorer window with navigation to the appropriate website:

As noted above, the registration information is already on your system clipboard. This means that when the web page comes up you need only put your cursor in the window there and use IE's EDIT>>PASTE (or you can use CTRL+V to do the paste if you prefer.) This puts the data into the webpage for entry. Then hit the "SUBMIT" button on the webpage to send the data to the remote web server for processing. Wait a few seconds and you should see your serial number returned to you. Be sure to scroll the page down to be sure it shows no error message(s).

Now, you have your serial number in the webpage box. Use your mouse to highlight only the entire, encrypted serial number, and nothing else. Then use the IE menu option to EDIT>>COPY the highlighted data onto the clipboard. Minimize, but DO NOT CLOSE internet Explorer.

Back on your ITSBITS^® Catapult Garage registration tool, click the "OK" button to move forward. The tool's screen will change to look something like the one shown above. Now place the mouse over the large, top box and click it to put the cursor there. Now click on the button to "Paste S/N in above." Now you should see the serial number in the box. Click the button to "Enter and use S/N."

Assuming everything went as it should, your registration tool's screen should change to look like the one shown below:

At this point you're ready to go. You can close your IE window and click on the green way-out (OK) button in the registration toolkit. You'll notice that your configuration files were backed up...more information on that can be found in the Utility Functions section. Now you'll see the VIEW and TOOLS menu items enabled on the ITSBITS^® Catapult Garage startup page.

Finally, as a matter of information, you can find your machine serial number saved on your hard disk under the same directory where your ITSBITS^® Catapult Garage software is stored. The file will be a .cfg file with the machine-name-SN.cfg format. Hence, if your machine name is Charles, your file is stored as CharlesSN.cfg. You will also notice that you have a folder named "BackupConfigurations" and the S/N .cfg file is there, too.

ITSBITS^® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as the property of IHS, Incorporated. ITSBITS^® Catapult Garage, all tools, workshops, related software, and documentation, regardless of medium, is ©2007 by IHS, Incorporated...all rights under all applicable copyright laws reserved by IHS, Incorporated.