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Linking it all together...
To get more information from websites you will, at some stage or another, click a 'text link'. On our website a text link will like this: Text Link. As you can see the text link is green on our website, on other websites it is blue, occasionally it is red, but they all do the same think - link the page you are looking at to another page or website. If you put you mouse cursor arrow over a text link you will see that the arrow changes to a 'hand' (and the words becomes underlined), in other words changes....
| from this... |  |
...to this. |  |
So now you know that the 'hand' is hovering over either a text link, or a graphic containing a link. All you have to do is left-click once using the 'hand' and you are sent off to where the link takes you!
Before you do that though, there are other things to help you see where you are going. Hover the mouse cursor over this link and pause it there. After a second or so, a small yellow box will appear over the link that contains a brief description of what is under the link. After a few seconds it disappears again. Not all websites do this, but we do.
Now there is a third way of descibing where the link is going to. Hover the mouse over the link again and this time look in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. This is called the 'onMouseover' command and displays anything the website designer wants other than the full name of the link.
Talking the talk...
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Jargon Buster! Jargon is as rife in the computer world as any other industry, perhaps more so. Some of this Jargon sound impressive, but doesn't actually mean a lot. If you would like to know about what computer technicians are actually talking about, (or are just trying to blind you with science) please click here. |
Blue Screen?
| This screen is affectionately (or otherwise) know as the 'Blue Screen of Death', and invariably indicates a serious problem for Window or a hardware failure.
The cause can be from bad hardware, or bad 'drivers' (software that comes with hardware to make it work with Windows), or catastrophic Windows failure. This paticularlar message was cause by a bad video (graphics card) driver. 9 times out of 10 the issue will not just 'go away', and professional help should be sought. If you do manage to get Windows to start up normally, the first thing you should do (in this particular case) is make sure your video drivers are up to date by going online to the manufacturers website and downloading the latest drivers. |
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Software
There is much spoken about what software is needed on your computer. Apart from the Operating System (Windows XP - Vista - 7), the must-have software (if you intend to use the internet), is anti-virus and anti-spyware software.
Both subject are dealt with in greater detail on our other Help pages. To read them, please click here for anti-virus, and click here for anti-spyware. Both will open in a new window, so you can return here easily.
Most new computers have Microsoft Works pre-installed, many also have Adobe Acrobat Reader - a must-have programme for reading .pdf files. Microsoft Works allows you to write, print and send basic word processing documents, plus spread sheets etc. It is basically a free version of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher etc.), and is okay for the basics.
e.Mail
When it comes to sending an e.Mail, the software required varies according to the Operating System you have installed. For Windows XP, there is Outlook Express, for Windows Vista there is Windows Mail, but with Windows 7 there is nothing, mainly due to a stupid idea by the EU to reduce the 'monopoly' that Microsoft has on sending and receiving e.Mail. The consequence is that Windows 7 does not have a designated e.Mail facility, so you have to download Windows Live Mail from the Microsoft website and use that.
Personally, we think this is the worst idea to come out of the EU beurocrats since the idea of a straight banana. The other alternative to Windows Live Mail, which is awful, is to use something like the excellent Mozilla Thunderbird, or install a 2003 version of Microsoft Office, which has Outlook - a posh version of outlook Express. Trouble is MS Office costs money, Thunderbird is free. Don't look at Office 2007 by the way, because Microsoft have removed Outlook from the package and replaced it with 'One Note' - a totally useless programme.
More to follow...
These are new pages for our website, and more will be added soon. If there is a topic you would like to see here, please contact us.
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