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Wallace Wang - Absolute Beginners Guide to Computing

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Book:
Absolute Beginners Guide to Computing
Author:
Wallace Wang
Publisher:
Apress
Genre:
Books / Home and family
Year:
2016
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Absolute Beginners Guide to Computing: summary, description and annotation

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**This book teaches anyone how to use their new Windows computer. You will learn and understand how you can perform a wide range of tasks, including managing files, browsing the internet, and protecting yourself, as well as interacting with Cortana.

Using Absolute Beginners Guide to Computing you will learn how to use Windows, and how you can connect and communicate with others. You will learn the basics of browsing the web, how to send email, and sign up for services. You will learn about some of the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. You will also learn how to connect and use external hardware, and process digital music, photos, and video.

Written by an author who has written multiple computing titles, this book is friendly and approachable, and can teach anyone how to use a computer. With simple steps, easy troubleshooting, and online resources, its the best place to learn how to make computing a part of your life.

What Youll Learn:

How to get pictures onto your computer to share. How to listen to digital music. What clubs, groups, and other resources there are to help.

Wallace Wang: author's other books

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Part I
Basic Training

Basic Training

One of the biggest problems with learning anything new is knowing where to get started. In this part of the book, youll learn the most common commands for using Windows 10 no matter what program you might need to use.

Youll learn how to give commands using a mouse, trackpad, and keyboard, how to start and stop programs, how to write and edit text, and how to save your data in files that you can organize in different ways.

By the time youve read this part of the book, you should feel confident that you can use your computer all by yourself.

Wallace Wang 2016

Wallace Wang Absolute Beginners Guide to Computing 10.1007/978-1-4842-2289-8_1

1. Understanding Computers

Wallace Wang 1

(1)

San Diego, California, USA

Most computers tend to work in similar ways. A monitor displays information, a processor calculates new results, and input devices such as a keyboard, mouse, or trackpad (sometimes called the touchpad) allow someone to control the computer.

The monitor can show useful information such as stock quotes or news stories displayed on a web page.

The keyboard, mouse, or trackpad lets you control the computer by typing text or manipulating items on the screen, such as editing a photograph or choosing commands.

Once you give commands to the computer, the processor calculates a new result and displays those changed results on the screen.

Using a computer is essentially a back-and-forth conversation where the computer shows information on the monitor and then waits for you to do something about it. You can use the keyboard, mouse, or trackpad to manipulate data on the screen, such as editing text, viewing a different web page, or modifying a picture. Once youve given a command to the computer, it changes the data on the screen and shows the results so you can do something else.

The software is what makes every computer do something useful. By installing different programs, you can literally make the computer do practically anything you want.

Some people use a computer to write letters, play games, draw cartoons, plot stock market prices, or edit movies. Software turns your computer into a versatile tool customized for your particular needs.

However, the most important software every computer needs is called an operating system because it literally controls how the entire computer works. On a PC, the most recent operating system is called Windows 10.

Windows 10 controls the physical parts of a PC such as sending data to a printer or accepting characters typed from the keyboard. To use a PC, you need to learn the basics for using Windows 10.

Dont worry. You dont need to learn every possible technical detail about Windows 10. All you really need to know are the basics for using Windows 10 so you can do something useful with your computer.

Note

The whole purpose of an operating system is to act as an intermediary between the hardware of a computer and a program such as a word processor or game. Programs dont communicate directly with hardware so they communicate with the operating system, which takes care of making the hardware work. Every computer needs an operating system. PCs use Microsoft Windows or Linux, a Macintosh uses macOS, an iPhone uses iOS, and most other smartphones and tablets use Android. Thats why when you buy software, it can only run on a specific operating system.

Why Computers Are So Difficult to Understand

In the early days of computers, you had to be a computer expert just to turn on a computer, let alone use it. Fortunately, computers have gotten much easier to use, but in case you still feel computers are too hard to use, the reason is because computer programmers and engineers created and designed computers for themselves.

Think about how every field has its own jargon and way of thinking. Accountants know the meaning of terms like balance sheets, cash flow, and equity, while plumbers can easily understand terms like auger, closet bend, and dip tube. If youre not an accountant, you wont understand common accounting terms. Likewise, if youre not a plumber, you wont understand common plumbing terms.

If youre not a computer expert, you wont understand common computer terms, and thats why computers have always seemed so confusing and difficult to use. Most computer manuals are written by programmers for other programmers, using terms that they already understand. If you dont understand common computer terms, you probably wont understand most computer manuals, help files, or other types of documentation that are supposed to help you but often tend to confuse and frustrate you even more.

Even worse, programmers already know how to use a computer, so they readily skip over steps, assume too much, and gloss over explanations. The actual steps for using a computer are often based on earlier, more primitive ways of using a computer. If you arent familiar with these, you probably wont completely understand why todays computers work the way they do.

For example, the first IBM PC came with a keyboard that combined a numeric keypad with cursor keys, as shown in Figure . If you wanted to use the numeric keypad, you had to press a special Num Lock key. If you wanted to move the cursor on the screen, you had to press the Num Lock key a second time to turn off the numeric keypad so you could use the cursor keys.

Figure 1-1.

The keyboard of the original IBM PC combined cursor keys with a numeric keypad

How could you tell if the Num Lock key was on or off on the original IBM PC keyboard? You couldnt. You had to press a key on the numeric keypad and if it typed a number, then you knew the Num Lock key was turned on. If it moved the cursor, then you knew the Num Lock key was turned off.

IBM later redesigned the keyboard to offer separate cursor keys and numeric keys. Inexplicably, the separate numeric keypad still retained the Num Lock key so it could double up as a cursor keypad. This meant you now had one dedicated cursor keypad and a second cursor/numeric keypad, as shown in Figure .

Figure 1-2.

IBM modified the keyboard to include a separate cursor keypad along with a second cursor/numeric keypad

Why would anyone ever turn off the Num Lock key so they could have two separate cursor keypads? They wouldnt, yet you can still see this horrible design in many PC keyboards even today.

Computer manufacturers often retain old features out of inertia and familiarity. Rather than question why certain features exist and eliminate outdated ones, computer people tend to keep old features and pile on new ones to create a confusing mess that only they can understand.

Just as computer people have retained obsolete hardware designs, so too have they retained obsolete software designs.

In the old days, people used floppy disks, which were circular disks coated with magnetic material. These early floppy disks were 8 inches in size but later shrank down to 5.25 inches and eventually to 3.5 inches in size, as shown in Figure . They were called floppy disks because they were plastic disks that would flop up and down if they werent enclosed in a protective plastic case.

Figure 1-3 Early computers stored data on 8- 525- and 35-inch floppy disks - photo 3

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