BACK TO THE BASICS

RIVER BENDER - August,  2001

At the last NBCUG meeting it was a surprise to see so many members wanting more meetings having basic tutorials. The club recently purchased a PC projector so tutorials are what you'll see more of in the future if you attend the meetings on the third Saturday of each month. I thought I'd do the same here by mentioning a few PC tips. The following are for Windows 98 but will probably work as well for Windows 95 or Windows ME:

What's a browser? Yep, surprisingly some folks don't know. One grandpa didn't know about his installed browser and was using only e-mail since that's why his kids sent him a PC. A browser is the software for surfing the Internet and displaying web pages. The two main browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Communicator or Navigator. Both are free but take a long time to download. If you're a member of NBCUG you can borrow the CD for MS Explorer 5.5 or you can order it from Microsoft for a few bucks.

What's a URL? It's a "Universal Resource Locator" which is the address or location of a Web site or other Internet service that you enter in the address area of your browser. Here are the URLs for River Bend and NBCUG web sites:

http://www.ci.river-bend.nc.us/              http://www4.coastalnet.com/nbcug

What's a search engine? A search engine is a web page that allows you to enter search words and scan the World Wide Web for information on any subject. The search engines I like best are http://www.google.com and http://www.metacrawler.com. Type these addresses in the address area of your browser and then learn how to make a shortcut icon for each of them on your desktop because you'll use search engines often.

How can I copy a diskette? Put the diskette to be copied in your floppy drive. Have a blank diskette ready for the copy. Click on MY COMPUTER and then right-click on 3 1/2 FLOPPY and select COPY DISK. Follow the instructions given to swap the diskettes in the floppy drive.

How can I put an Icon for MS WordPad on my desktop? I copy text from web pages or e-mail and save it in WordPad. Since I do this often I have an icon for WordPad on my desktop. Here's how to add it: Go to START, PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES and right-click on WORDPAD. Select SEND TO and DESKTOP. You can also put a calculator on your desktop the same way by going to START, PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES, CALCULATOR.

My Desktop icons are too small. Can I enlarge them? I see some people's icons so small they can hardly read the name. Here's a couple ways to enlarge them. You'll have to decide which is best: (1) Right-click in space on your desktop and select PROPERTIES and SETTINGS. By sliding the SCREEN AREA slider to the left the icons will enlarge. Mine are set full-left at 640 x 480 and COLOR is set for High Color-16 bit The second way is: (2) Right-click in space on the desktop and select PROPERTIES and APPEARANCE and down under ITEM at the bottom scroll to ICON. Note that you can select SIZE on the right. My icons are size 32. Note that there are many other desktop items that you can play with. Be sure to jot down what you have now so you can go always go back if you screw up.

How can I organize my favorite Internet bookmarks? You need to create folders to save your favorite web sites addresses in. Jot down the names of folders you might need. You can add more later. In MS Internet Explorer, go to FAVORITES, ORGANIZE FAVORITES and select CREATE FOLDER. You can sort folders later by going to ORGANIZE and selecting a folder. While holding down the left mouse key slide the folder name where you want it. In Netscape go to BOOKMARKS, EDIT BOOKMARKS, FILE, NEW FOLDER. Like MS Explorer, sorting in Netscape is manual but a bit messier. One has to highlight where the new folder goes and select FILE, NEW SEPARATOR to create a spot for the folder.

I lose my mouse sometimes or get lockups. What can I do about it? This often occurs because your graphics hardware acceleration is set too high. Rebooting usually corrects the condition but to avoid it happening again right-click on MY COMPUTER, select PROPERTIES, PERFORMANCE, GRAPHICS and slide the Hardware Acceleration setting down one notch. By the way, here's a neat way to manually move your cursor around when your mouse drops dead: Your PC must be optioned for this in advance so go to START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL, ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS, MOUSE tab and check USE MOUSE KEYS. When your mouse cursor disappears this allows the cursor to be moved around using the keypad on the right; i.e., 8 is up, 2 is down, center is left-click, etc.