Category Archives: Basics

Back ups, Backing up your computer

How do I back up my computer? Part 1

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Here we go again, folks. Last week I heard an interview with a relatively popular musician. He mentioned that he’d recently spilled a glass of rye on his laptop keyboard during a recording session. I’m not sure why he had a rye during the session but maybe that’s how he relaxes. The singer was relieved that he hadn’t lost all of his music, words and ideas but he came close. Believe it or not, the interviewer mentioned that he had recently done the same thing and almost lost the book he’d been writing. I listened and thought, “Wow! Two people who are creative but not too bright when it comes to common sense computing.”

First, if you have material on your computer that is important to you, sign up for Dropbox. It’s free, simple and ensures that nothing you create will be lost if something untoward occurs. Check out my post on Dropbox here:  Dropbox – 6 reasons why you should be using it now.  Briefly, if you save your work to your Dropbox folder, you can access it online from anywhere in the world. The free 1 gigabyte of storage is ample for most needs but if you need more, you can get up to 16 gigs through referrals or, more simply, pay a premium for more space. I’m a writer and I save everything I write to my box and I haven’t used more than a quarter of the space. Besides keeping your stuff safe, Dropbox saves old versions of your work, just in case you make a save error somewhere along the line. You can access these old versions by logging into your account online.

TIP: If you need more space, refer yourself a few times using your other email addresses. For each referral, you get another gig of space. Honestly though, I have lots of pics and articles in my folder and I still have 750 megs left open.

Next, a Dropbox account is a sensible part of backing up your computer but it’s not a complete solution. In the next few posts I will (again) run through the various steps that you need to perform in order to keep your creative efforts safe. If you’re an artist, a business type, teacher or just about any other profession, backing up your computer relieves stress and might just keep you employed.

Thanks for reading!

If you can’t wait, look for my older posts on backups here: How to back-up your computer Part 1   My next few posts will explain all of this using the latest software but the older posts are still effective.

 

Basics, Computers, Windows

Windows Basics

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If you’re just starting out with computers, there are many things that can make you feel lost and confused. Don’t worry, that’s normal. You’re not a dummy, not matter what the book says. No one starts off by knowing what to do with a computer. It’s certainly not intuitive, no matter what Apple or Microsoft might tell you. Stick with Computers Made Simple and we’ll sort it all out for you.

The first thing you see on your new computer is the desktop. This is much like your house or apartment. Everything you need is right there, waiting to be used. Just as you would paint your apartment to change its look, you can change the way your desktop looks. When you go away, sometimes you might have your lights set to come on at a certain time. Your screensaver, the thing that cuts in when you’ve been away from your computer for a while, does the same thing. I’ll explain all of this in another post  but, for right now, we’ll get used to what’s on your desktop and just beneath it.

Your mouse is your steering wheel. With it, you can steer your way through menus and programs, making choices as you go. Since your mouse has two buttons, you might wonder which is which. The left button is the one that says, “Yes!”. The right button is the one that asks questions. If you right click in any area of your screen, whether it’s your desktop, a photo or inside a program, a menu will come up. That right click menu offers choices, basically asking you what you want to do. Try it now. Right click your desktop and choose personalize. This will bring up the program that is standard with Windows. It lets you choose how you want your desktop to look.

TIP: If you have Windows Starter Edition, the one that comes with most netbooks (those little laptops), you can’t change much on your desktop. Don’t worry, it’s not worth the extra money to upgrade Windows on a basic computer such as a netbook.

Every app or program has a different right click menu. If you’re stuck and can’t figure out how to do something, try right clicking anywhere on the screen to see what choices are offered.

The left mouse button is the one you use to select things. If a menu is open, one click will select the item you want. If you’re on the Internet, one click will open a link and a right click will offer different options to choose from. On your desktop you’ll have to double click to open a program or a folder. Sometimes you might double double click and get two things running at the same time but, no worries, just close one down by clicking the X up on the top right corner of the program screen.

Holding the left mouse button down is used for selecting things on your desktop or in something that you are working on. If you click and drag with your left mouse button in Word, for instance, you will highlight a section of text. On your desktop, holding the left mouse button after you click on an icon will allow you to drag that item around. Try it. Click once and hold the button down to drag any icon around your desktop. Cool huh?

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Basics, Windows

Back to Basics – Windows

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Instead of getting deeper and deeper into computer technology, I’ve decided to start at the beginning. Many blogs deal with technology but not many of them are targeted at beginners. Tech people like to hide behind jargon. We will try to clear the air and the confusion, using plain English instead of buzzwords. Computers Made Simple will help you figure out what’s going on behind the scenes with your computer. If you understand the basics, I think you’ll discover that computers aren’t so mysterious after all.

Since I am a PC guy mainly, much of what you read here will pertain to the Windows Operating System (OS). Some of the posts will be cross-platform so if you’re a Mac person, keep reading. Windows and OS X are both operating systems and this post will help you figure out what an OS does.

Inside your computer are many, diverse bits and pieces. In order to make them work together, in order to simplify your work, you need an OS. This isn’t too much different from your car. It, too, has many diverse bits and pieces. Somehow, all of these pieces have to be controlled. You don’t want to be driving down a busy highway wondering whether your fuel will run out, right? There’s a gas gauge on your dashboard which takes care of that worry for you. That dashboard, full of gauges and lights, is essentially the same as Windows is on your computer. It’s the interface between the mechanical or electronic bits and pieces of your car and you. The Windows and the OS X interfaces are different but they do essentially the same thing; they control everything that is running behind the scenes while you work. They make life simpler, although that might be a questionable statement.

When you start your car, it takes a few minutes to boot or start. The engine has to get some fuel, it has to get a bit warm and it has to figure out if anything is missing that would cause a problem for you when you finally take off. It takes a look at things like seatbelts, air bags, tires (sometimes), oil pressure and so on. Once your car (actually a computer that controls your car) decides that things are running fine, it finishes the boot process and waits for you to drive off.

Windows does the same thing. When you start your computer (laptop or desktop are the same here), Windows checks hundreds of things before it is ready for you to start using it. We’ll go over some of these things in future posts but, for now, let’s say that Windows looks at file system integrity, the drivers that run the different pieces of hardware, the anti-virus software that keeps your safe as well as all of the little programs that are set to run when you start or boot your computer. Depending on your set-up, this could take just a minute or, sometimes, much longer.

Behind Windows (and OS X) is a massively complex sub-system which uses very complicated language to control everything inside your computer case. Just as you don’t actually have to know how the fuel from your tank gets into your engine to make it run, you don’t have to know how a file is saved to your hard drive, either. That in itself is a very complex process, both electronically and mechanically, but, because you are using Windows, you don’t have to think about it. It just happens.

There are some who would say that Windows has made computing more complex but if you think about the new cars, well, they are complicated, too. They do many things that cars didn’t do ten years ago. Computers, too, were simpler ten years ago but there is no reason to be afraid of them. Stick with Computers Made Simple and we’ll sort it all out together.

Thanks for reading!