5.BASIC

COMPUTERS::::Getting Started
Rev 20 APR 09

Hardware: Input and output devices: things you can touch: Monitor, printer, keyboard, discs and CDs or DVD's, Central processor Unit (CPU), memory chips or RAM, tower, hard drives, floppy drives, CD drives, DVD drives, modem, cables, camera, scanner, joystick, mouse, speakers, microphone, video camera, etc. Comparison of removable storage or DISKS 5.25 floppy disk holds 36 KB or about 240 pages of type 3.5 floppy disk holds 1.44 MB or about 900 pages of type or about 3.75 times greater than a 5.25 floppy A CD holds 650 MB or about 250,000 pages of type or about 500 times greater than a 3.5 floppy A DVD holds 4.7 MB or about 700.000 pages of type or about 7 times greater than a CD and about 2,900 times greater than a 5.25 floppy! (Hard drives with 120 GB have 17,800,000,000 pages of type or about 25,500 time greater than a DVD) This diagram is a simple picture or map of the guts of a computer.

This is the CPU, part of the computer that does so much of the brain work. It is situated on the mother board with large heat sinks attached to it. It generates lots of heat, so they have to keep it cool. They usually have a fan near it. Some have over 400 wires running in and out of it, see all the connectors.

<==Power button is usually on the front of the case.

To view a good audio/video presentation on your computer go to http://www.microcenter.com/multimedia/Computer_Components_Low/intro_lowband.htm

COMPARISON of a BOOK to a COMPUTER

BOOK: If I want to find info about the Internet, I have to find a book with that info. Then I have to open the book. Can't just open it anywhere, you must use the TABLE OF CONTENTS. Then I must find the area I want. Next I go to that page. Voila, info about the Internet.

BOOK

COMPUTER: If I want to find out this info in my computer, I have to turn it on=like opening a book. Next I look at the icons or a list of programs at the START button=like the Table of Contents. I click on the one I want and VOILA I go right to that info. Now, what magic is there to do all that???? Software installed on your computer.

Software: the language that the computer runs on is nothing more than billions of microscopic ‘on and off’ switches at various places on the hardware. It is code or programs or sets of instructions that make the various components of hardware work together. Most software needs to be booted up-started from scratch-every time you want to use it; it rests in an inactive state on hard drives or a CD rom. Some important software stays inside the computer on special memory chips (PROM-Programmed Read Only Memory) when you shut it off. When you turn on a computer, a small PROM program starts up larger programs, the operating system (OS), from the hard drive with lots of instructions to wake up the computer. Finally you can use the computer. All of this is done with the very basic machine language code of ones and zeros, or electronic "on and off" that you never see. (Other Languages-SML-Forth-Java-Lisp-Perl-Basic-COBOL-Visual Basic-C-C++-Machine) This is how machine language code looks: 11100101 00110101 01010111 00001011 Just ones and zeros, on or off! B.A.S.I.C. code that plots a dot in random places.

The code below is Visual Basic.

This code is HTML or Hyper Text Language which makes up a part of one of my web pages.
<html>
<head>  <title>Bohn's Stuff</title>   </head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="4">
<tbody>
  <tr>   <td>     <p align="center"> <img src="tn_wsctm.jpg" width="66" height="50"></p>
</td>    <td><a href="workshop.htm" target="_top">WOW Science Team</a></td>
<td>   <p align="left">;</p>   </td>        <td rowspan="8" valign="top">
<h1 valign="top" align="center"> <font color="#800080">BOHN'S STUFF</font> </h1>
<p align="center"> <font color="#804040"><b>Click on the following <br> to see more of my web sites</b></font> </p>
<p align="center"> <a href="http://oocities.com/Heartland/Village/7889">Bohn's Cyber Photo Album</a> </p>

Start: Press the button/switch on the case or tower. Primarily only an ON button! Turn on your monitor, printer and any other peripherals needed.

Stop: Move the pointer with the mouse to the lower left corner to the word START. A menu pops up and you click on the SHUT DOWN item with your mouse pointer. Follow the menus to shut it down. Also turn off the monitor, printer, etc.

Emergency stop: sometimes the critter won’t stop properly.

1) With older computers, the first emergency stop method is to press and hold down the CTRL and ALT keys with your left hand, then tap the Delete key with your right hand. A window will open with more instructions.

2) XP computers, do the same as 1. above, then click on the Shutdown menu item and follow the directions.

3) The next method is the last resort method. Press & hold the ON/OFF button or switch on the CPU.

DESKTOP: Once the computer boots up/starts, you have a bunch of stuff on the monitor screen. This entire screen is called the DESKTOP, a virtual desktop. It represents the top of your desk with file folders and files lying on top of it. Everything happens here, everything starts and ends here.

Usually this electronic desktop has lots of little pictures with labels/titles under them. Each of the pictures is called an ICON. They are entry ways to programs. Icons can be deleted, renamed, arranged and made. (Icons with small arrows are shortcuts, no prob!) Somewhere on the DESKTOP is a small arrow. This is the main pointer and its movement is controlled with the mouse that you move. They are interconnected. When you move your mouse so the pointer is on an icon and you double click the mouse button, (or single click and press ENTER) that program will start up from the hard drive and fill the screen or the DESKTOP in its own special window.

Making the computer work is that simple: move mouse/pointer to an icon or title or button, click-click and a program starts or stops, windows open and you play a game, or type, or send email, or browse the Internet.

On the bottom of the desktop is a task bar. It has 4 components:

START button, opens the start menu, fast access to lots of programs
TASK bar, programs temporarily hidden.

Quick launch toolbar, fast access to often used programs, and you can add your own

System Tray, programs that start on boot up and keep running: clock, printer, volume control, modem, virus program, etc. NOTE: Too many ‘always run at startup’ programs slows down the computer.

There are many more programs than can’t be shown on the desktop, so they are stored in a big list in an easy to get to place. Find and click the START button again and you will see a window with lots more programs and ways to get to the rest of your programs. On new XP computers you will find on the START window a button called ALL PROGRAMS. Most of the rest of the programs on your computer can be accessed here. On older computers, the START window menu has PROGRAMS as an entry. Click on that word and a window with a large list of programs opens. Away you go!

NOTE: The best way to practice using the mouse is to play the game Solitaire. Practice, practice!

OPERATIONS

1) MOUSE: Six basic functions: (the mouse can be switched to being left handed)

a) Pointing-moving the mouse moves the pointer-an arrow

b) Clicking-left click-hold the mouse still and push the left button

c) Double clicking-pushing the left button twice in quick succession

d) Right clicking-gives special instructions about that object

e) Selecting items-

(1) point to an object

(2) click and hold the button down

(3) move the mouse until all of object is highlighted

f) Dragging and dropping-to move an item-

1) point to an object

2) click and hold the button down

3) move the mouse and the object to where you want it to move to

4) release the left button to drop the object in place

2) WINDOWS: Windows are powerful! They can be opened, closed and are very flexible. There can be several windows (programs) open at the same time. The top one is always the active window. To change, just click on any part of another window & it will be the active window OR click on title in the Task Bar.

a) Title Bar: the top most bar, usually shows the title of the program

b) The next to the top bar of most windows will be a menu bar: File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Window, and Help are just a few of the many menus that you might see. If you click on one item, a menu or a list of functions drops down. If a function has a small arrow on the right, point at the arrow and another cascading menu will open revealing more functions.

c) Under that might be a tool bar or even several tool bars. The icons on it depend on what kind of program you opened. When in any of the Menus, you will note many tool bar icons. Clicking on them will do the same as going to the menu bar. For a word processor, you will see: New document, Save disc, Files, Printer, Word check, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Font, Justify, etc. In fact, there might be several tool bars to utilize. They become very handy when you get to know the program and its capabilities.

d) In the top right corner is a small group of 3 tiny boxes

i) The dash is to minimize the program. When you click on that, it looks like your program goes away or is shut down, but it was only put on hold. If you look at the bottom of the screen in the task bar, you will see the name of your program. It is still running, just sleeping. To get it back, just click on the title at the bottom of the window. Modern computers are multitasking. They can run several programs at once. Usually, you don’t have them all on the desktop running in open windows.

ii) The middle box has a single box or 2 overlapping boxes inside it. It is called the Maximize or Restore?(resize) button. If 2 little overlapping boxes show and you click it, the window will reduce in size. You will be able to adjust the size of the window. In the bottom right of the window is a small box or triangle with diagonal stripes. Grab that and pull or push and the window will change size. Also, if you hover your pointer over any edge of the window, the pointer switches to a double arrow. With that you can pull that edge larger or smaller. You can grab the topmost title bar-the blue one-and move the whole window. If a single box shows, and you click it, the window goes to full size and you don’t have any adjusting power over it.

iii) Lastly, an X. That is a short cut for EXIT. Click on it and the program will close completely. Of course, there is another way to close a program, click on FILE, go down usually to the bottom of the menu and click on Exit. Closed! Notice the underlined X!

e) Scroll Bars: along the right and bottom sides are scroll bars, usually. Grabbing the bar and sliding it causes the stuff on the page to move up or down-or sideways, depending-coarse tuning. There are also small arrows at each end of the scroll bars. Click on one and the screen moves one notch-fine tuning.

f) Some programs like the internet have an ADDRESS bar.

g) Status bar (on bottom): sometimes there is a bar along the bottom; it helps explain some of the top buttons or icons or actions. See below: Page #, Sec#, At=inches from top, Ln#, Col#, REC=macros, TRK=changes, EXT=status, OVR=overtype-Insert toggle

h) HINT: Sometimes menus will not close, click on an empty spot next to the window, not in the menu and it should close.

3) OPEN OR CLOSE A PROGRAM: Click on an icon and it opens the program from the hard disk. When you are done with it, you can close the program.

a) Go to the FILE menu, and down and click on the word EXIT or CLOSE and the program goes away. OR

b) Click on the X in the top right corner and the program closes

4) POINTER VS CURSOR: The pointer is the little arrow that flies around the window with the mouse. The cursor (the arrow turns into an I bar) only shows up in places where you are able to type. The cursor is moved with the mouse also, the same way. Move the cursor to the point at which you want to type something, and click. A blinking vertical bar (Insertion Point) appears. Start typing and the letters will flow from that point.

5) MOVING ABOUT THE SCREEN:

a) Naturally using the mouse can move you anywhere on a window.

b) To move right or left across characters, use the right/left arrows

c) To move up or down the page across lines, use the up/down arrows.

d) To move to the end of a line, press the END key

e) To move to the beginning of a line, press the HOME key

f) PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN does just that, goes to the top or bottom of the page.

g) Scroll bar on the right moves page up/down, on the bottom moves the page right/left. Single arrows move one line. Double arrows move top/bottom of page.

6) WORD PROCESSOR: A typewriter has many strikes against it: one font, one font size, one color, no editing, no 2^nd chance, no memory. Word processor programs are very powerful electronic typewriters. Notice the top title line, we are working in a WORD document. Word processors come with very many capabilities (write/edit/format/store/print/word wrap) and are usually made for an office operation. But they can be used for simple things like typing a letter, taking notes, etc. Once you start a word processor program, (the large

icon is Microsoft WORD) look at the menus and toolbars to see all the capabilities. Most are items we have already covered: save, print, cut, copy, paste, exit, delete, etc. But the FORMATTING, INSERTING, or TABLES operations are powerful. Formatting changes the font, font size, justification, bold, underlines, italics, color of the font, layout of the page, number lists, bullet lists, and many more. Inserting allows you to insert pictures in your print, to insert words, insert the date or time, apply page numbers automatically. Tables can be made on a page and then filled out with data. Great for lists, addresses, etc. It has a spell checker, find & replace, labels, envelopes, grammar check, Thesaurus. The library has word processing classes once in a while.

7) SELECTING: or Highlighting: In most cases the computer doesn’t know what you’re trying to do. You have to prod it to do the right things. Selecting or Highlighting is one way! Highlighting is a process of dragging the pointer over something and it will change so it has a dark back color and light text, or highlight. Say you had a paragraph to move or delete. Place your pointer/cursor over the first letter and hold down the mouse, then drag the pointer/cursor to the last letter. Let go of the mouse and the whole paragraph should now have reverse color and a background color, i.e., highlighted. The computer now knows what bit of data to work on. PS: the computer can also highlight like when we take notes and color them with a magic marker. See the icon on the tool bar.

8) CUT-COPY-PASTE: These are very important items to know about. When you want to rearrange a paragraph, move stuff in a letter, copy things from the internet, make more that one copy of something, you have to know how to use these.

a) Select or Highlight the data you need to move. (Click on 1st character and drag across to the last)

b) Click on the Edit menu or Right click (or use the codes) (3 methods)

c) Click on operation you want

d) (CUT cuts the highlighted data out, COPY makes a copy of it.) puts it in temp memory

e) Codes are Ctrl + X to Cut or Ctrl + C to Copy

f) Place the cursor where you want to paste the data

g) Click on the Edit menu or Right click

h) Click on Paste (or use the code-Ctrl + V) & it puts it there

i) Cut can be used to delete a larger area of type. Just highlight and Cut. Or hit delete button.

9) DELETING CHARACTERS: To delete to the right of where you are press the DELETE key. To delete to the left, press the BACKSPACE (has left arrow on it) key. Keep pressing to eat up a lot of characters.

10) PRINTING: Make sure your printer is turned on and has some paper in the tray(s). Actually there are three ways to PRINT.

a) Click on FILE menu and go down to PRINT. (Notice the icon . Also notice to the right Ctrl+P.) The Print window will open. In this Print window you have lots of options and full control of the printer: color, no color, # of copies, all pages, one page, and a connection to the printer’s control window.

b) A very old method is holding the Ctrl (Control) key and hitting the P key. The Print window will open. See a) above.

c) Clicking on the icon will start the printer printing with no further input. Good for one copy.

11) SAVING things: Word processor files, letters, documents, pictures, email, parts of a browser page can all be saved to a place/folder on the computer hard drive for later use. Click on FILE menu and go down to SAVE. Click on SAVE and a very important window opens. You should save things to specific places/folders so you can find them again later. Computers have helped you out. Most now have folders called MY Documents, MY Pictures, etc. Make sure the SAVE TO box says the right folder name. Next make sure the NAME of file is filled out correctly. Click on OK and it is saved. CAUTION: don’t save items with the same name, the old one will be covered over with the new file.

12) BRINGING files back to life: Most programs have an item on the FILE menu called OPEN. Click on it and a window opens with choices: places/folders and files. Find your choice/folder and highlight your file, then click on the bottom on OPEN and the document or picture, etc. should open. Also many programs have an icon on the toolbar that looks like an open file folder. Click on the file folder and you get to the same window with choices/folders/files.

13) BROWSERS/INTERNET: You must keep Microsoft & Virus Checker (Annual fee! But some free) Updates current, i.e. weekly! I also suggest using a Malware software like Spybot or Adaware or Microsoft's Defender, which are all free. Keep them updated weekly also. There are other browsers: Opera, Google Chrome, Firefox, Mozilla.

a) Click on the icon that is a blue 'e' -the Microsoft Browser called Internet Explorer

b) The Explorer program will open-it is called a browser

c) Also with a dial up connection, the Dial Up Connection window will open on top of the Explorer. Make sure the Connect Automatically box is checked or click on the Connect box. If the Connect Automatically box is checked, the program will dial the ISP automatically. Just wait until it is connected. You might have to enter your name and password.

d) If you have a cable or DSL connection, follow your instructions to start.

e) The browser window will open to whatever home page you have set up (it is changeable-Tools).

f) Now you can go anywhere in the world-type URL’s in the Address entry box or use a Favorite and surf the net. This is my URL.
g) Surfing the internet is as simple as clicking on hot links on web pages. Notice on my page all the blue underlined titles. Each is a hot link. Put your pointer on one and notice the address in the bottom left corner. Click one and your browser goes to it. Web Surfing! Try my web sites: http://mysite.verizon.net/marbob.bohn

14) EMAIL: You use the Internet for email:

a) You can check you email anywhere-enter your ISP’s URL for Microsoft email-or go to Hotmail.com using Address entry block.

b) Microsoft has 2 email programs: Find the Outlook Express icon that looks like an envelope with 2 arrows, or the Outlook icon or outlook Click on yours and the email program opens. Then you can read new mail or send an email.

c) ((On old software, you can also get to the email from the Internet Explorer. Find the icon that is an envelope and might say MAIL. Click and the email program should open. Or click on Tools and then Mail.))

d) Hotmail: To read or send your mail if you have a Hotmail email address, you must start up the browser and enter the address www.hotmail.com and then enter your name and password at the log in window. Try tutor1500@hotmail.com with password of computer

15) NEW PROGRAMS: To get your computer to run a new program you just bought, put the CD into the drawer and close the drawer. Open or close the drawer by pressing a small button on the face of the drive. New programs usually have an automatic start program built in, so the desktop should show a new window with instructions with how to proceed. Once in a while, the auto run doesn’t work. You will have to go to MY COMPUTER and click on the proper drive and then click on a SETUP file that should show up. Most programs have another method printed on the disc. You can follow that also.

Computer Tutor-—Bob Bohn----260-982-6003----www.mysite.verizon.net/marbob.net

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