Mark All Your Cords

If you're reading this blog, chances are you've already got your computer up and running, and are only now facing problems - either with the applications on the computer like Word and Excel, or in your journeys around the World Wide Web.

But I'm a chronologist and I'm going to start at the very beginning.

These days, computers are very easy to set up. All the cords come with color-coordinated tips. You just match the appropriate color at the back of the computer tower. These days, for PCs anyway, it seems like everything plugs in at the back of the tower.

Run out of USB ports? You used to be able to buy keyboards that had a USB port in which to plug in your mouse. Now you can purchase "hubs". You stick one end into the USB port on your computer, and you now have five or six more USB receptacles. (The same as all the plug ins on an extension cord.) Depending on what you're using your computer for you might not need all those receptacles, but it's nice to have if you play games, have flash drives, external hard drives or DVD drivers, and so on.




However, that's for the future. Right now I want to talk about your cords. Depending on how old your computer is -and some people have computers that are pretty old and yet work just fine for their purposes, you might not even have USB ports - those are a "relatively" new thing.

If you look at the cord for your keyboard, for example - if you have a PC - chances are the tip of it, color coded purple, is not a USB port (a very small, rectangular plug in) but rather a small, circular plug in. That's the way all peripherals used to plug in to the computer.

There are so many cords - your power cord from the monitor, your power cord from the tower, the power cord from the speakers, and power cord from the printer (if you have one) that you will want to plug them all into a surge protecter.

And nothing is more annoying than bending down into the cubbyhole of your desk, peerig at the surge protector hidden behind the desk, trying to figure out which power cord goes to which piece of equipment.

The solution? Take some white out, or other non-corrosive marking tool, perhaps different colored types of tape. Place a bit of tape at the top of the cord, so you know what color you're looking for, and a piece of color halfway down the cord or at the bottom, to aid you in tracking down the right power cord.

Also, try to keep your cords with a straight shot to the plug in, rather than having them tangled together. Twist ties help with this.

You may need to identify your cords only once a year...but when it comes time to do it, it will sure make things easier if you have them marked appropriately.

*I* Tell the *Computer* What To Do!

I have been working with computers for over 20 years, and what irritates me about the current crop of operating systems is how restrictive they are. The Macs many years ago could be figured out intuitiviely, and there was always a "quick and dirty" fix you could implement. No longer. For many years the Mac's operating system has been as restrictive as their imitator, Windows, was, and continues to become.

For example, you buy a digital camera, and you install the applications that come with it to your hard drive. Forever afterward, whenever you hook up your camera in order to download pictures, you'll get a dialog box that says, "What do you want to do" and it will give you a list of things to do, including downloading photos into a folder which you will never be able to find again.

I don't like the computer doing things like that. I tell the computer where I want my photos downloaded.

So I close out of the dialog box, open up the camera's memory, and copy over the pictures manually into the folders that I desire.

(The existance of the My Documents folder, into which every document you create ends up, also annoys me. I don't need that. You don't need that. You create your own folders for your documents, and instead of your document defaulting to My Documents when you save it, you should be able to tell the computer where you want to place it.

Well, this is a bit of a rant and all will become clear very shortly, as how to download photos onto your computer is one of the first topics I'll cover.

Manifesto

Tips and notes on how to work with computers. A little bit about the Mac, but more about PCs with XP...and a bit about Vista.

I have a Sony Vaio running XP, and a Dell Dimension 4600 with a Topaz S 24 inch monitor. My dad has a Dell running Vista, my mom has a Dell running XP. My aunt has a Mac and a Lenovo running Vista, and since she has no idea how to do things with comoputers, I'm always helping her with the simplest of things.

My mom also has difficulty with computers. She's 70. (As is my Aunt.) So I am often asked questions of a really basic nature.

I intend to answer those questions here as well. My posts won't deal with complex things like how to do DOS or Linux, but simply how to use your ocmpouter to surf the web safely, use applications like Word and Excel or Open Office's suite of applications, how to use Windows Movie Maker, and so on.

If you have a computer question, email me at Nocturne_CVS@yahoo.com. I don't guarantee to be able to answer it - I may well have to ask the question myself at one of the websites that offer computer help, and then share that answer here - but one way or another, I hope that this blog will be of use to the novice computer user, whether you are young or old.