Congratulations – in your life you’ve been witness to a remarkable revolution. In just a few decades, computers have moved from being expensive behemoths that lived in corporate basements to being personal productivity and entertainment tools. They’ve empowered people to connect around the world in unprecedented ways, and they’ve made common tasks much easier to handle.
The following list walks you through some of the things your computer will enable you to do. Depending on what activities are important to you, you can make a more-informed purchasing choice.
❯❯ Keep in touch with friends and family. The Internet makes it possible to communicate with other people via email; share video images using built-in video recorders or webcams (tiny video cameras that capture and send your image to another computer); and make phone and video calls using your computer and Internet connection to place calls with services such as Skype. You can also chat with others by typing messages and sending them through your computer using a technology called instant messaging (IM). These messages are exchanged in real time, so that you and your grandchild, for example, can see and reply to text or share images immediately. Part 3 of this book explains these topics in more detail.
❯❯ Research any topic from the comfort of your home. Online, you can find many reputable websites that help you get information on anything from expert medical advice to the best travel deals. You can read news from around the corner or around the world. You can visit government websites to get information about your taxes and Social Security benefits, and go to entertainment sites to look up your local television listings or movie reviews.
❯❯ Create greeting cards, letters, or home inventories. Whether you’re organizing your holiday card list, tracking sales for your home business, or figuring out a monthly budget, computer programs can help. For example, Figure 1-1 shows a graph that the Excel program created from data in a spreadsheet.
❯❯ Pursue hobbies such as genealogy or sports. You can research your favorite team online (see Figure 1-2) or connect with people who have the same interests. The online world is full of special-interest discussion groups where you can talk about a wide variety of topics with others.
❯❯ Play interactive games with others over the Internet. You can play everything from shuffleboard to poker and even participate in action games in virtual worlds.
❯❯ Share and create photos, drawings, and videos. If you have a digital camera or smartphone, you can transfer photos to your computer (called uploading) or copy photos off the Internet (if their copyright permits it) and share them in emails or use them to create your own greeting cards. If you’re artistically inclined, you can create digital drawings. Many popular websites make sharing your homemade videos easy, too. If you have a digital video camera or smartphone and editing software, you can use editing tools to make a movie and share it with others via video-sharing sites such as YouTube or by email. Steven Spielberg, look out!
❯❯ Shop online and compare products easily, day or night. You can shop for anything from a garden shed to travel deals or a new camera. Using handy shopping site features, you can easily compare prices from several stores or read customer product reviews. Many websites, such as www.nextag.com, list product prices from a variety of vendors on one web page, so you can find the best deals. Beyond the convenience, all this information can help you save money.
❯❯ Manage your financial life. You can do your banking or investing online and get up-to-the-minute data about your bank account, credit card balances, and investments. And, if you’re online savvy, you can do this all without fear of having your financial data stolen. (See Chapter 13 for more about online safety.)
Your computing experience consists of interactions with hardware and software. The hardware is all the tangible computer equipment, such as the monitor, central processing unit, and keyboard.
Your computer hardware consists of
❯❯ A central processing unit (CPU), which is the very small, very high-tech semiconductor chip that acts as the brains of your computer. The CPU is stored in a computer tower – or in all-in-one computer models, laptops, and tablets, in a single unit along with the monitor. The CPU also contains other nuts and bolts used to run your computer.
❯❯ A monitor, which displays images on its screen such as the Microsoft Windows screen, a video you watch from an online entertainment site, or a document in a software program. Today, more and more computers sport touchscreen monitors, which allow you to use your finger on the screen to provide input to the computer.
❯❯ A keyboard, which is similar to a typewriter keyboard. In addition to typing words, you can use a keyboard to give the computer commands such as selecting, copying, and pasting text.
❯❯ A mouse, which you also use to give your computer commands. This little device is a more free-flowing way of providing input than your keyboard. You move the mouse around your desk with your hand, which moves a pointer around onscreen. Using this pointer, you can click an item – an onscreen button, for example – that causes an action, or click on the screen and drag the mouse to select text or an object to perform an action on it (such as deleting the text or making it bold). A mouse can be a separate device that is mouselike in shape, or can be built into devices like laptops in the form of a touch button or touchpad.
❯❯ Peripherals, such as printers, speakers, webcams, and headphones. These may or may not come with your computer when you buy it, but your computer does come with slots (called ports) where you plug in various peripherals.
Software is what makes computer hardware work and lets you get things done, such as writing documents with Microsoft Word or playing a game of solitaire. You can install software (also known as programs, applications, or apps) on your computer or use a version from an online website. Here are a few basics about software:
❯❯ You use software to get your work done, run entertainment programs, and browse the Internet. For example, Quicken is a financial management program you can use to balance your checkbook or keep track of your home inventory for insurance purposes.
❯❯ The software used to run your computer is the operating system. Some examples of operating systems are Apple OS X for Mac and Microsoft Windows. This book deals mainly with Windows 1 °Creators Update and the programs it runs.
❯❯ Some programs come preinstalled on your computer; you can buy and install other programs when you need them. For example, a computer always has an operating system because the operating system runs all the other programs. Also, some programs are included with a Windows computer, such as WordPad, a simple word-processing program, and Music and Video apps.
❯❯ You can uninstall programs you no longer need. Uninstalling unwanted programs helps to free up some space on your computer, which helps it perform better.
❯❯ Software programs called utilities exist to keep your computer in shape. An antivirus program is an example of