mortiz019

Today’s How-To Guide for the Computer Beginning is setting the computer Clock. When learning computer basics you will notice on the right hand corner of the bottom of your screen is a clock.   Most of the time when you setup your computer the operating system will prompt you to set the clock.  The computer clock has come a long way, because most of the time you can set it and forget it!     I realize those of you that have landed here need to change the clock for some reason, and we will be going over that.   As I mentioned the computer clock will be located in your computer’s system tray.     Below are two screen shots of clocks on the computer.     Since all computers have a small battery inside to keep the clock running on your computer, even when unplugged, the time should not be off much unless the battery is getting old in most cases. It is important that the date and time be ...

One of the first basic computer training lessons I received was change home page in Internet Explorer. Set the home page in Firefox will also be covered today! What is a home page? Generally the first page retrieved when accessing a Web site. When you turn on your computer, and you access the internet that first image you see is the home page. When I first brought home my computer, and set it up and FIRED up the internet I noticed it went to page that I really didn't have much use for! I can understand the marketing efforts of the maker of the computer brand WANTING me to see their homepage, but the first thing I wanted to do was change the homepage in internet explorer. If you use Firefox it was: Change homepage in Firefox! The reason I wanted to change the homepage was for easy access to my email account! You may have different reasons, but I wanted to check my email first thing so change home page was needed when I first got the computer! In beginner computer training you will...

Part of basic computer training is learning to use the internet. Today we are going to learn about the web browser! What is a web browser? What are the parts of the web browser? Display Window The web browser has a 'display window' you are viewing this lesson in! Its basically the work space you are reading this computer basic lesson in! Web browsers pulls documents up on your screen! There are a couple of different kinds of web browsers that seem to be the most popular!   IE or Internet Explorer was my first one! At one time that was pretty much all that was available as well! Later came Mozilla FireFox as well - also very popular! There are number of different ones now of course - not just these two! No matter what web browser you use it will have tools to navigate the web (or internet)! In addition to finding web pages (like the one you are on now), web browsers can MARK pages that interest you as well called favorites.   Most web bro...

Last time we spoke about Menu options , and I mentioned if the option has "..." following it you will need to input information into a dialog box! 'FIND...' was the example in the last lesson. I have pictured today a PRINTER menu screen, and we can use the different dialog boxes to tell the computer which printer to use, how many copies of the document we wish to have, what pages to print, etc. When you click on these menu options you will open a type of dialog box.  Today’s How-To Guide for the Computer Beginner is what are Dialog boxes, and what do they do? Dialog Box Examples The most common one that I see these days is the tabs which I'm sure look familiar!  In the menu options below you would be choosing a tab by clicking on it.  Then the dialog boxes will ask more information about BUTTONS in this case with the picture below. Here you can see what the some common types of dialog boxes look like.  I have numbered them for us, and ...

When I started to help some friends and family with their computer skills one of the first questions they asked was, “What is a start button?”   That is when I realized I need to slow down, because some of the computer stuff maybe second nature to me!  It hardly is the case with the person I was speaking to.   The Start Button and the Start Menu are something you will be using on a regular basis when using your computer.   Today’s How-To Guide for the Computer beginning is: What is the start button?  Where is the Start Menu?   What is a Start Button This is what the Windows 7 Start Button looks like       This is the Windows Vista Start Button     The Geekzone.co.nz had a awesome picture of different start buttons you might see on your computer! Same principal as above!                       Wha...

Windows have TONS of menus! What is a menu option? Today’s How-To Guide for the Computer Beginner is our explanation of Menu Options. Compare the term menu options to when you go out to eat at a restaurant.    You tell the wait staff what meal you would like to have, and they tell you that you have  MENU OPTIONS for your choice of potatoes.  You have a choice between mashed, hash browns, French fries, or baked. The concept of menu options is pretty much the same, and YES I realize the wait staff ISN’T going to use ‘menu options’ at your table (giggles). For example, lets click your start menu.  I have pictured here a older operating system , Called Windows 98. Notice next to PROGRAMS, DOCUMENTS, SETTINGS, FIND you have an arrow.  I have circled and pointed to the ‘documents’ example in our picture today. That arrow will tell you that you will get a submenu when you click on it (remember our potatoes example). In thi...