By Laura Katz
Gifts
I hope everybody has a nice Hanukkah and Christmas. It seems strange to be typing this before Halloween but, oh-well, Happy Holidays. I hope you all got what you want in computer gifts. If you’re still shopping I could use some ink cartridges for my printer, and some special paper, both for printing photos and for printing regular stuff. A store gift certificate would be nice too!
Actually that’s meant as a suggestion to any reader who doesn’t quite know what to get the new computer user. Games are really hard to buy, as you don’t know what the computer user really likes to play. Equipment is another chancy gift, as you don’t know what the computer can handle. Of course you could ask, but that might spoil the fun. I did ask my hubby for a storage unit for my disks one Hanukkah, not a little dinky unit, but a freestanding (on wheels) unit that holds all my disks and CD’s. It’s great and it keeps all my disks in one place. You might just go shopping with your friend and see what she drools over. Before you go shopping check out the Internet, there are many different places to find out which camera is the tops, or what the best printer is for printing out photos.
Attachments
What are they? How do they work? If you do e-mail you have seen a little box that says attachments. You might have gotten an attachment such as a Excel spreadsheet or a photo on your e-mail. How did they do that? Would you like to learn? It’s real simple to do. (By the way be real careful if you get an attachment from somebody you don’t know, it could contain a nasty virus. You do have a virus checker on your computer don’t you?) If you don’t stop reading right now and go out and buy one. Make sure it checks your floppy drive as well. My computer kept getting a virus because the virus was on the boot up disk and the virus checker program didn’t check the boot up disk.
Both Netscape and Explorer have similar features for attachments. Look for a paper clip at the top of your message form. If you are in doubt just put your cursor over the clip and it will say send an attachment. Now to find the attachment, that’s the tricky part. You have to know where it is. First, remember what you have called your attachment and where you have stored it. I keep my documents in a folder called “my documents” and my photos in a folder called “my photos” If you can’t find your document go to start, find, files or folder, and do a search. Once you have found your file just click attach and your folder is on its way .Bon Voyage!
Utilities and full versions
Saturdays I have been spending time at the HAL-PC office helping people get on the Internet. One of the problems people seem to be having is that their computer keeps crashing. The funny thing is that their computer was fine until they installed a crash protector. Another reason for the crashes seem to be a newly installed utility program. Folks, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. No I am not telling you not to buy Utilities programs. I am telling you to ponder if you really need them. If your computer works fine, leave it alone!
A second thing I have been seeing is that some people have adulterated versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer. Make sure when you purchase a computer that they give you full versions of the software. If you don’t have full versions go to their sites and download the full versions.
Recently I told you to Scan Disk and Defrag. Make sure you set the two things to two different times. Do Scan disk first and about an hour later start Defrag. Your computer can’t do both at once.
Trash- (in your e-mail program)
I love e-mail-in fact you can send me some with things you’d like to know but don’t know whom to ask. There are times though when I need to eliminate the trash. Guess what folks, sending the old e-mail to trash isn’t enough. Go into the trash folder and eliminate that trash too. It doesn’t go away until you delete it. It merely goes to a second folder called trash. That feature does come in handy if you goof and eliminate something that you want, but after you are done just go to delete and highlight the trash by holding down the shift key while you press delete and say bye-bye. While you are emptying your trash you might take a look at all your sent mail. Do you still need the mail you sent last year? You can delete that as well. (Make sure you empty your desktop trash as well.)
Searching the web-
Recently I had to go to funeral in Queens, New York and needed directions to the cemetery. I went to and typed in the address. In less than a minute I had the location. In a few more minutes I had door to door directions from the airport to the cemetery. Now Mapquest isn’t the only site on the Internet that has maps. One of the best features of the Internet is the search feature. I use that feature to find out information on computer equipment, what the weather will be in Dallas, what teacher sites are out there. I don’t have to even know anything about it. I just type what I what to find and let the various search engines do the work for me. There is even a kid search engine called Yahooligans for children.
Laura Katz is a HAL-PC member. She can be reached at laurak@hal-pc.org.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.