By Laura Katz
Welcome to the first column of Beginners’ Information
What do I buy first?
What do I need?
Where do I buy it?
First let me tell you what the different parts of a computer are and what they do. The main parts of a computer are the motherboard, the hard drive and the memory. The motherboard gets you the speed of the computer. Today’s computers are faster than ever. It’s like comparing a old model T with a Porsche. The speed today runs from 233 to 400. Get the fastest speed you can afford. The second thing to look for is the hard drive. You can compare the hard drive to a closet. The bigger the closet the more you can store. Don’t get less than a three gig hard drive. Today the prices are so cheap get the biggest hard drive you can afford. The last essential part is the memory. Get from 64 meg. to 128 megabytes of memory. Make sure you also include a CD-ROM. All the software today is on the CD-ROM. What you can spend today is one-fourth the price you would have spent two years ago.
Where do you go? That’s up to you. You can order from a local dealer, get one from Dell or Gateway, order a Compaq, or come to our Build and Buy and build one yourself. Personally I had mine built by a local dealer, Omni-Tec. I liked the idea of choosing what parts I wanted in my computer. I am also able to upgrade and add more stuff if I want to. When you get one from the computer stores, what you se is what you get. If you are still confused do what I did. I attended the Hal’s beginning windows 95, and came to the main Tuesday night meeting for beginners. I also attended the Build and Buy sig. (by the way sig stands for Special Interest Group) Gil Boyd is extremely helpful and so are all of the members there. If you want to know something just ask. All the members were once newbies too!
OK now I have a computer-what do I do now?
The first thing you should do is make sure you have all the software you paid for. Some computer stores load software into your computer but they don’t give you the disks. Go back and ask for the disks. Make sure you have everything you paid for! The second thing you should do is read the manuals, then play around with your software. You might want to register the software and send in the warrantees. Put the receipts and the boxes in a safe place. Things do break down.
How do I install new software?
If your software came on a 3.5 floppy disk insert the disk into the A drive. Go to start, settings, control panel and find the icon that says add and remove programs; double click on it with your mouse. Click on the part that says Install. The computer will look at the disk for the setup program. The setup program will usually say install or setup. f the computer can’t find the setup program you will need to click on the word browse. You need to find the setup.exe or the install exe. File to get your program to run. When you find it, click on it to start it. That should start the process to install your program.
But my new program came on a CD, what do I do?
First put your CD into your CD drive. Some of the programs have something called autorun. Autorun means the program will install itself automatically. You just have to say yes if they ask if you will follow all the rules and regulations. If it doesn’t start automatically, you will have to go to start, control panel and add and remove programs. Click install and follow all the steps to add the program.
I hate this new program-how do get rid of it?
Now you have a problem. You can go to add and remove programs and rerun it. It will usually remove the program. If you have a problem you might go out and buy a program called Uninstaller, or Clean Sweep or any other program that cleans up your hard drive by removing programs. If you want to know which one to buy, read any computer magazine for recommendations. You can search the Internet for articles on uinstaller programs and see which one the magazines recommend before you buy.
I have had it with my computer and need to go to bed.
Make sure you shut down the computer properly before you go to bed. Yes, you can leave it on, but make sure you shut down your printer. When you shut off your computer you need to go to the start menu and find shut down. If you do not shut it down properly you will waste time when you reboot the next time. The computer will run a scan disk program that will take time to finish.
Did you buy a surge protector when you bought your computer? If you did not, stop reading immediately and go buy one. Make sure your modem phone line is plugged into a surge protector too. You can fry your computer through your phone line if you don’t have one for your modem. YOU spent too much money not to protect your computer.
Next month we will deal with ways to maintain your computer. You will learn to scan disk and defrag. If you are curious ask a Hal member what these strange terms are. See you next month at Hal.
Laura Katz is a HAL-PC member.