– From the Desk of David Pogue –
—————————————-
Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User
By DAVID POGUE
Last week, I wrote an entry on my blog
that began like this:
“One of these days, I’m going to write a book called, ‘The
Basics.’ It’s going to be a compendium of the essential
tech bits that you just assume everyone knows–but you’re
wrong.
(I’ll never forget watching a book editor at a publishing
house painstakingly drag across a word in a word processor
to select it. After 10 minutes of this, I couldn’t stand
it. ‘Why don’t you just double-click the word?’ She had no
clue you could do that!)”
Many readers chimed in with other “basics” that they assumed
every computer user knew–but soon discovered that what’s
common knowledge isn’t the same as universal knowledge.
I’m sure the basics could fill a book, but here are a few to
get you started. All of these are things that certain
friends, family or coworkers, over the years, did *not*
know. Clip, save and pass along to…well, you know who they
are.
* You can double-click a word to highlight it in any
document, e-mail or Web page.
* When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank,
claiming that you have an account problem or a question
from a buyer, it’s probably a “phishing scam” intended to
trick you into typing your password. Don’t click the link
in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type
“www.ebay.com” (or whatever) manually.
* Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80
million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased
millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.
* You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the
computer desktop, with one keystroke: Windows key+D in
Windows, F11 on Macs (or, on recent Mac laptops,
Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo).
That’s great when you want examine or delete something
you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press
the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.
* You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows,
press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or
smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus
or minus.
* You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by
pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of
your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen
image.
* The number of megapixels does not determine a camera’s
picture quality; that’s a marketing myth. The sensor size
is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example,
search for “sensor size Nikon D90.”)
* On most cellphones, press the Send key to open up a list
of recent calls. Instead of manually dialing, you can
return a call by highlighting one of these calls and
pressing Send again.
* When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests
that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first
confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority
on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes,
Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty
scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.
* You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one
screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.
* When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City,
State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to
box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump
through the boxes backwards.
* You can adjust the size and position of any window on your
computer. Drag the top strip to move it; drag the
lower-right corner (Mac) or any edge (Windows) to resize
it.
* Forcing the camera’s flash to go off prevents silhouetted,
too-dark faces when you’re outdoors.
* When you’re searching for something on the Web using, say,
Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched
together. For example, if you put quotes around “electric
curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of
Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set
containing the word “curtains.”
* You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the
equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.
* Oh, yeah: on the computer, * means “times” and / means
“divided by.”
* If you can’t find some obvious command, like Delete in a
photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse
button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)
* Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency
converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or
“euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.
* You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the
Windows logo on it.
* You can switch from one open program to the next by
pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).
* You generally can’t send someone more than a couple of
full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those
files are too big, and they’ll bounce back to you.
(Instead, use iPhone or Picasa–photo-organizing programs
that can automatically scale down photos in the process of
e-mailing them.)
* Whatever technology you buy today will be obsolete soon,
but you can avoid heartache by learning the cycles. New
iPods come out every September. New digital cameras come
out in February and October.
* Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin
doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the
Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody
whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no
files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79
gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never
emptied it.)
* You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser.
Just type the remainder: “nytimes.com” or “dilbert.com,”
for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off
the “.com” part.)
* On the iPhone, hit the Space bar twice at the end of a
sentence. You get a period, a space, and a capitalized
letter at the beginning of the next word.
* Come up with an automated backup system for your computer.
There’s no misery quite like the sick feeling of having
lost chunks of your life because you didn’t have a safety
copy.
Thanks Judy!
