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"Is something you own \u2014 a car or an appliance \u2014 on the fritz? You just might be able to save the cost of an expensive repair or replacement by Googling. Results produced by this uber-search engine kept me from cracking open my wallet on three recent occasions\u2014and the site has also helped several of my Good Housekeeping colleagues. Here are some tricks to try:  CITE THE MANUFACTURER My Toyota Sienna&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;check tire pressure&amp;quot; light kept coming on. I could see that the tires were properly inflated, so the real problem was getting rid of the message. A mechanic could have helped, but instead, I went to Google and typed in &amp;quot;Toyota check tire pressure light.&amp;quot; Seconds later, I got a link to material (not in the car manual) that explained how to disable the light. Savings: $100 for the dealer to diagnose the problem, plus the cost of any repair. TYPE IN THE ERROR MESSAGE Not long after, my Epson printer got huffy, flashing an &amp;quot;align print cartridges&amp;quot; message. The cartridges seemed perfectly aligned, yet the printer wasn&amp;#039;t working. I turned to Google and typed in: &amp;quot;Epson align print cartridges.&amp;quot; The responses included a link to a site with the you&amp;#039;d-never-figure-this-out solution (press two buttons at once to make the printer believe the faux problem is fixed). Savings: $200 (cost of a new printer).  BE CLEAR AND CONCISE Recently, my son&amp;#039;s video iPod appeared to be dead. But before buying a new one, I decided to try to bring the old iPod back to life. After Googling &amp;quot;my iPod froze,&amp;quot; I was directed to werty.net, a blog that includes tech information (but also \u2014 fair warning \u2014 some four-letter words). The blog&amp;#039;s two-step thawing trick: &amp;quot;Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Slide it to Hold, then turn it off again.) Press and hold the Menu and Select (center button) buttons until the Apple logo appears, about 6 to 19 seconds.&amp;quot; Voila! The iPod revived, and so did my bank account. Savings: $249 (cost of a new iPod).  TYPE IN THE BRAND AND THE WORD &amp;quot;PROBLEM&amp;quot; Margaret Bristol, a coworker, used Google when her digital camera stopped shooting. She typed in the brand plus &amp;quot;problem.&amp;quot; A troubleshooting page explained that Margaret likely had a defective memory card. Savings: about $265 (she ended up spending $35 for a memory card instead of $300 for a camera).  SPECIFY YOU NEED PARTS Googling can also help you order repair parts for appliances. GH editor Toni Hope needed a new refrigerator-door bracket. She Googled &amp;quot;GE replacement refrigerator parts&amp;quot; and quickly learned where to find the necessary model numbers. The $17 bracket arrived in five days, and Toni installed it herself. Savings: $89.95, plus the cost of labor.  GET GOOD ADVICE Toni&amp;#039;s son, Paul, uses the Web when his VW Jetta gets cranky. He enters his problem at Google, then follows links to sites like bentleypublishers.com and vwvortex.com. There he finds posts from others on how they solved a similar problem.   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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