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| NEED A LITTLE HELP? I GUESS THAT"S WHY YOU'RE HERE ! |
| First let me introduce myself. Some say I am a "Wanna-be" helper in Yahoo! Chat Help:1. Well that may be, but I see nothing wrong in wanting to help others avoid some of the problems and searching for answers that I had to suffer before I found YCH:1 (It's found under Computers and Internet in the room list by the way). Just for the record, I have never harmed another user, or acted maliciously toward others, just because they are unedumacated about chat or computers in general. Each person must make a decision who to trust in chat, accept help from, and learn about the things that make the internet a much easier and friendly place to work and play. I hope to earn your trust as a good place to find help and links for useful programs and stuff. If you ever feel I have done you a dis-service feel free to complain directly to me in an email at this address idiot_savant_i4@yahoo.com , I will try to answer all submissions promptly (as in "a few days at most"). Now onto the MEAT!!!! |
| THE MEAT OF THE MATTER |
| I needed to fill this space with sumthin |
| In this catagory we have stuff even experienced users may or may not know about. I collect and download a lot of programs from the internet, try them out, and discard the ones that don't work for me. Now, I happen to use the best OS (operating system) ever created by Microsquash which is Windows 2000 Professional. You might need to download a different version of some of this software if you use a different version like: (in order of, in my opinion, usefulness and stability) Windows 98 SE (second edition), Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME (millenium edition). I don't have any experience with Windows XP, but many complain it is a really sorry OS. In all fairness, some people profess to really like it. You might notice I also listed 98 after 95, the reason being 98 needs so many patches it becomes sorta unstable at times. Better to use 98 SE or 95 which are fairly stable in their current form. If you are one of those sorry people who bought a system with ME already in it, do yourself a BIG favor..... go get an OS that actually does something in the time you have left to live . ME is widely known as a resource hog, meaning it tends to hog memory space and be very slow. I have not tried to deal with alternative OSs as I have yet to even master Winblows, but there are some out there in case you hadn't heard. Linux or it's cousins Windux, & Lindows, UNIX and BeOS are some of them. MacIntosh users beware: I will not mention anything about OS/2 or whatever you call your OS, not that MacIntosh isn't a valid OS, it's just that the world seems to, for better or worse, use mostly Windows. Sorry!!!!!! Mediocrity has no valid excuse, but people do as people do and Billy Goats seems to stop at nothing to control everyone and everything in the internet/computer game with overbearing monopolistic pressure if not downright unethical business practices. |
| In this catagory we have all the stuff that you better learn to handle before beginning, some of it is obvious, some not so obvious. Never-the-less, you better be prepared to read a lot at first. If you can't read ,you have no business on a computer as, first and foremost, it is like a really BIG book. I love reading , but sometimes it can get really boring and technical, especially so in the world of computers. On the following pages is a list of stuff that you will need to understand before even attempting to comprehend all the subjects broached in web pages about chat, the internet, and computers. You can run off and start using the internet before learning this stuff, but sooner than later you will run into trouble you can't fix. By then it might be too late. Before you do anything further, I suggest you copy all model and serial numbers for your equipment onto paper somewhere and if you feel you can look inside the computer tower without electrocuting yourself, it doesn't hurt to copy the individual mod.#'s and ser.#'s off the components inside as the CD-ROMs and Harddrive usually are from a seperate manufacturer than the system itself, This goes for the components as well, look for little stickers and barcodes on parts. A note of caution, do NOT handle components without relieving static by grounding yourself to a metal object first. Rubber gloves ain't a bad idea either as the acid in your fingertip oils can be corrosive to delicate parts. Some of the components you might look for are: Motherboard, CPU (central processing unit), audio or sound card, Video or graphics card, modem, USB hub, power unit, case manufacturer, harddrive, CD_ROM (Cd player). DVD player, CD or DVD burner, & floppy drive. Externals might include USB or PS/2 mouse, camera, keyboard, speakers and your video monitor. While you're in the writing mode save all usernames & passwords too. |
| GOOD STUFF FOR NEWBIES (BEGINNERS) |
| USEFULL STUFF FOR EVERYBODY |
| PRIMARY KNOWLEDGE |
| WINDOWS UPDATES |
| Assuming you actually got the operating system up and running, what do you do with it? Well, 1st off, the nature of software these days is such that the OS you have already has updates, patches, and add-ons available. Make sure your OS is up-to-date by visiting Microsquishy's website for updates at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ Make sure to check your OS and Office for updates |
| For those of you who haven't heard yet, MS has released SP3 for Windows 2000. It is available as a downloadable file of aproximately 125 MB. Yup, 125 MEGABYTES . It contains all the cummulative patches, security stuff, and leak plugs from SP1 and SP2 + anything up to the release date. XP users, all I can say is do your DAILY (lol) updates for the most insecure OS yet released by "Macro-Squashed-Everybody". |
| Now it's time for that boring reading I warned you about. If you want to be efficient running your computer, it helps to understand the local language. The VERY next thing I recommend you do is to click the "Start" BUTTON" on your task bar (the little gray stripe along the bottom of the screen) and select the " Help" selection, this will open a new window. In the help book click the "Index" tab and type "glossary" in. LOOK OVER THERE ----------------------------------> |
| After you type in the word "glossary" click the "display" button on the bottom. It will display what looks like an alphabetical list of words, well that's what it is. It's a dictionary. I STRONGLY suggest about 2 days of solid reading and cross-referencing the terms and definitions, then you're ready to begin with SOME comprehension of "tech" talk. |
| COPYRIGHT BY IDIOT_SAVANT_i4 09-25-2002 |