Summary | Explore your desktop with the mouse and
Control Panel. What kind of computer do you have? What's on your desktop? How
can you set up Windows so that it starts to work for you?
What is it?
You interact with the operating system through a CLI (command
line interface for Unix and Linux) or a GUI (graphical user interface
for Windows and Macintosh). While you have to type everything for a CLI, you can
point and click for most things you want to do with Windows.
Also known as a WIMP (for windows, icons, menus, and pointers),
the GUI also includes buttons, scroll bars, task bars, and wizards. The whole
thing adds up to the computer's look-and-feel. Microsoft has a small army
of programmers fussing with Windows' look-and-feel. The options can be
bewildering.
Tip | There are almost always two and often three or
more ways to do the same thing in Windows.
Tip | The terms directory and folder
are used interchangeably by most people.
Abuser
Interface
by David Weinberger
Darwin Online, August 10, 2001
Perhaps the hardest conceptual lesson to get if you weren't
brought up with computers: the digital world ... is abstracted not only from the
natural world but also from the digital world. A user interface is a purely
invented layer under which there may be guts that have as little to do with the
UI as a desktop has to do with a file directory. Menus aren't things that exist
in the world or even represent something that exists in the computer. It's all
100 percent artificial.
That freedom from the literal is tough to get, but until you get it, you won't
be able to work your computer.
Skills
exploring your desktop
setting
up Windows
tools
Desktop, Control Panel
What do you have?
Someone's sure to ask.
"Hey, I got a new laptop!"
"Yeah, whaddaya have?"
In the lower left corner of your screen, go
to Start | Settings | Control Panel | System
That's a screen shot of mine on the right.
The General tab is branded with the logos of Microsoft and the
OEM (original equipment manufacturer). The parts are all made by just a couple
of companies. Then the OEM assembles and markets the PC. The General tab will
tell you about your flavor of Windows and your processor as well as the amount
of RAM on the machine. You want as much RAM as possible. Here's the short answer
to the "Whaddaya have?" question above:
"I have a Gateway with Windows 98, a Pentium III
processor, and 256 megabytes of RAM."
The Device Manager tab will tell you about everything that is
part of or connected to your computer. Expand the menu by clicking on the +
signs. Right-click on each device and select Properties to learn more.
You don't need to worry about Hardware Profiles unless you're
using this machine to move from one physical location to another in a local
network with many peripherals. This may soon define your house, but that's a
story for another day.
The Performance tab will tell you how much of your system
resources are free. If your computer gets sluggish, check this percentage. When
it gets below 20%, you should start closing applications. Note the Advanced
Settings.
Learn more about the Control Panel.
John Lever's Basic Windows and File
Management has more screen shots and a slightly different perspective.
If you have a brand-new PC or laptop, you have one chance to get
everything perfect. Symantec's Norton line of housekeeping
products can do it for you, but you can do it yourself, too. Personally,
I've never done Fred Langa's whole 20-step process.
Fred’s
System Setup Secrets
by Fred Langa
Information Week (originally published in now defunct Windows Magazine), August
31, 1999; updated,
January 2001
Running through a 20-step setup process is a hassle and it’s
clearly not for everyone. But taking the extra time, one time, up front, to get
everything perfect pays off again and again over the years when a system goes
belly-up and needs to be redone. With Drive Image and a CD-R of the perfect
setup in hand, I can restore a system in its entirety -- OS, apps, everything --
in just minutes.
This way gets the awful, messy, grunt-work out of the way right away, and lets
you reap the rewards of a stable, easy-to-restore system for as long as you own
it.
How your computer starts up ...
By the Bootstraps
by Fred Langa
All personal computers start in stages: There's just enough
special, low-level code permanently stored in the system BIOS and inside the CPU
itself to get the machine going to the point where the CPU can talk to the hard
drive, monitor, etc.
Once this tiny amount of initial code has run, the system then looks on your
floppy or hard drive for the most basic components of an operating system. If it
finds them, it loads and runs them.
These core operating system components contain the instructions the system needs
to load the rest of the operating system and to complete the start-up process.
In this piece-by-piece way, your computer self-starts.
What's on your desktop?
Extending the metaphor, the desktop keeps close at hand the
documents and tools that you use often. They're in the large open area.
There are several icons such as My Computer and Recycle Bin that
can't be deleted from the desktop. They can be renamed, however, and most of the
icons can be changed. Every other icon that came on your desktop when you first
turned on the laptop can be dragged to the Recycle Bin. Don't empty your recycle
bin for a while. Then if you need anything later, you can pull it back out of
there.
Tip | Right-clicking on an open area of your desktop
will give you some useful options, especially New | Folder.
taskbar
The taskbar is the gray strip, probably at the bottom. The
taskbar has the Start button on the left and the system tray on the right. To
move it, put the pointer on an open gray area, hold it down, and move it or drag
it to the right edge of your screen. Then Start is on top and the system tray on
the bottom. Between are, perhaps, other taskbars. You can also move it to the
top.
Right-click in the open gray area to see the list of four
toolbars and the option to make your own. For example, you can fill the Quick
Launch toolbar with one-click shortcuts to often-used programs and documents. In
the far right end of the gray area is the system tray. It contains, if you want,
the time and date as well as icons to programs that are set to open with
Windows. They take up RAM.
You can move this gray area to any of the four edges of your
screen. You can also make it wider. Grab the top of the taskbar and drag down to
make it disappear or up to make it fill half the screen.
You can detach some of the toolbars and let them float on the
desktop. Right-click on everything and check out some of the options. If you see
one named Properties, try it. It often opens a new set of options. To drag it to
the right edge, hold down the left mouse button on an open gray area of the
taskbar and drag up and over to the right edge of the screen.
Several of these icons are harder to get rid of. However, you
can rename all of them as well as replace the icons with an image you like
better.
Open
two browsers and a text editor
step 1: On the desktop, click on the blue e icon for IE
(Microsoft's Internet Explorer).
step 2: Click on the N icon for NN (Netscape's Navigator).
step 3: Choose Start | Programs | Accessories | Notepad.
step 4: Grab an edge or corner and resize so all three are visible.
Set up Windows
Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add / Remove
Programs | Windows Setup
You have a large array of optional components, not all viewable
here.
The Description area will describe the component. None of these
components is doing any harm. If you're pressed for disk space, get rid of
everything you don't need. The MB tells you how many megabytes of space they
take.
Click Details... for a further breakdown of the component's
parts, which also come with a description. Some include a further level of
detail.
The components that you definitely need, I will mention below.
Everything else is up to you. If you aren't sure, go to the Bistro and ask your classmates
what they're doing.
Accessibility
We will discuss some of these options and tools in MBA 604.
Meanwhile, it's worth learning more about them before you get rid of them.
Accessories
On the left is what you'll see when you click Details
for Accessories.
The Description area will again describe the component. Click
Details... for a further breakdown of the component's parts, which also come
with a description. Some include a further level of detail.
Desktop Wallpaper and Screen Savers can be interesting at first,
but after you outgrow it, you can remove it here.
The Games are the standard FreeCell, Hearts, and Solitaire. If
you're into that sort of stuff, you can find more elaborate and interesting ones
online.
If you're going to use a digital camera at some point, you may
well need the TWAIN support, so keep Imaging.
WordPad is partway between Notepad and Word, closer to Word; you
can get rid of it.
Paint
Start | Programs | Accessories | Paint
How to take screen shots like the ones on this page.
step 1: Have visible on your screen what you want to take a
shot of.
step 2: Press the Print Scrn key on your keyboard.
step 3: Open Paint as above.
step 4: Press CTRL-V or pull down the Edit menu and select Paste.
You will get the whole monitor screen in bitmap form.
You may well want to crop and save in a compressed file format such as .gif or .jpg.
Calculator
Start | Programs | Accessories | Calculator
That's the Scientific view on the right. You can pull down the
View menu and select Standard. That will halve the size and let you more easily
keep it on the screen with other programs.
FunCalculator.com
Address Book
Your email client, AOL's or Microsoft's, will probably come with
an address book.
Communications
If you're going to want to move files straight from one computer
to another via a cable rather than a floppy or via the Internet, you need the
Direct Cable Connection.
You will need NetMeeting for your MBA courses.
Desktop Themes
These things eat RAM, but you may like them. Give them a try
first.
Internet Tools
You'll need the Internet Connection Sharing if you're going to
have a home network. You need the Personal Web Server to use FrontPage offline,
so keep it.
Multilanguage Support
Some languages use different character sets, with diacritical
marks and letters not used in English. For languages not listed here, especially
Oriental languages, you will be asked to download a character set to display
them as a browser plug-in.
Multimedia
You definitely need the Shockwave and Flash. You may well need
the CD Player, though you can download others that are far more sophisticated. I
recommend keeping the Audio and Video Compression. You could use the Sound
Recorder to add a personal greeting to your web site, for example.
Online Services
After you've set up an online service for non-school use, you
can get rid of all of these.
System Tools
I would definitely keep the Character Map. If you get another
backup system, like a Zip drive, you can use their backup software. The Net
Watcher, System Monitor, and Resource Meter are interesting but pretty geeky and probably not necessary for most of you.
WebTV for Windows
I've seen WebTV on a TV and it's an, uh, interesting marketing
strategy. If you're interested in how your web pages look on WebTV, you can
download the software you need.
Next: Getting started with Windows
Getting Started with
