In this article, I want to talk a little bit about two computer terms that I see people confusing or demonstrating that they don’t understand completely.  People often use the two interchangeably or consistently use the wrong one. These two terms are “cancel” and “delete.”

Let’s start with “delete.” To delete something is the process of taking something such as a file, like a Word document or photograph, and removing it.

The process generally involves moving it to the trash on a Mac or the recycle bin on a Windows machine and emptying the trash or recycle bin. The emptying part is what is actually deleting it.

When you delete a file, in most cases for most people, it’s gone. Technically, it’s still there but has been marked as available space on the drive — think of painting over a mark on a wall — it’s hidden but not technically gone.

Whatever space the file that has been deleted was taking up is marked as available. Until some other file comes along and is saved in that spot, or part of that same spot, the file is technically available and can be recovered with the right program.

However, as far as most people are concerned, once the recycle bin or trash is emptied, the file is gone for good. Until you empty it, it’s still available for you to pull back out and retrieve.

Another example of how to use the word “delete” correctly is when you delete not a file, but text.  For example, if I decided I didn’t want this specific sentence in this article anymore, I’d delete it with the “delete” or “backspace” key on my keyboard.  Again, as with deleting a file, this is the process of removing something.

In most writing programs (including word processing programs such as Microsoft Word, or email programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird, etc.) you can restore words you’ve deleted if you use “undo” to reverse the last thing you did.

Some programs may let you undo more than once, stepping back through each change you made, but in most or all cases once you close the program, any words you’ve deleted from your document are gone for good unless you’ve saved them in a different file.

What I see people doing sometimes is use the term “cancel” or “delete” inappropriately. Deleting is the process of taking information on a computer and getting rid of it. It is not the process of closing a window.

I have seen a lot of people refer to closing a window or getting rid of an error message that has come up as “deleting” it. That’s not deleting. If you close a window, you’re simply closing a window.

I’ve also seen people refer to closing a window as canceling. I’ve also seen people refer to deleting an item as canceling it. That’s not the correct terminology.

Canceling is when you have a process that has been started and you “cancel” that process. You stop it from continuing, or interrupt it in other words.  It takes you back to where you were immediately before the process.

What do I mean by that? Let me give you an example. Let’s say you in a word processor, like Microsoft Word. You’ve written something, and then you close the program without saving.

What’s going to happen? Traditionally, the program will pop up a window or dialog box that presents you with some options. It will say something along the lines of, “You’re trying to close, and you haven’t saved yet. Would you like to save, cancel or continue without saving?”

The wording does vary from one program to the next, but something along those lines is what you might see in the situation where you’re trying to close without having saved yet.

Let’s just say the phrasing is, “Do you want to save the changes you made? Your changes will be lost if you don’t save them.” Then you’re presented with three buttons: don’t save, cancel and save.

What would happen in this situation if you tried these different buttons?

If you don’t save, it will simply close the program or window without saving it, and you will lose whatever work you’ve done since the last time you saved. If you click save, it will save the file, and probably ask you for a file name if you haven’t saved it before.

The other option is to cancel. Cancel would cancel the process of closing and take you right back to where you were before you started to close the window.

At that point you could continue writing, you could save and close or you could decide you’re going to close anyway and that you don’t care about saving. Then it would present you with the same three options, and you would be able to hit “don’t save.”

What I’m trying to say here is that if you are presented with a cancel option, it doesn’t mean it’s going to delete anything.

It just means that whatever process you’re in the middle of, in our example exiting a program, it interrupts that. It takes you right back to where you were immediately before that.

It’s not correct to refer to closing a window as canceling it. It’s not correct to refer to deleting a file as canceling it. Canceling only applies to a situation where you’ve started a process (a series of automated steps) which you have the option of cancelling before all the steps are completed.

If you want to get technical, if you hit the cancel button, it does close the little window with the question in it (the little window with the question in it is referred to as a “dialogue box” because it’s asking a question and waiting for a response — trying to have a dialogue with you).

This is probably where the confusion comes from for a lot of people. Closing the window is not correctly referred to as canceling even if sometimes canceling something will close a window.

I hope that makes sense. I know it’s a little confusing sometimes because you see these words out of context, and you don’t fully understand how they work and relate to each other.

I hope that makes some sense and will help you use those computer terms more accurately in the future so you can recognize and understand what people are saying when they’re using them correctly around you in the future as well.

What you’ve just read is an edited transcription of one of an audio lesson I recorded some time ago.  If you like to study written material to learn computers, you might check out my selection of computer training books on Amazon.com or if you prefer a visual approach you might want to check out my easy video lesson computer courses including the Mac Basics course and the PC Basics course here on my site.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

This question was asked by Paul Prior. Paul wrote saying, “Out of curiosity, after updates I get a message saying to restart my computer, which I always do. What’s the reason for this?”

Transcription begins:

This is a pretty simple thing to understand when you think about it the right way.

First off, the updates he’s talking about are Windows updates, or software updates as they’re called on the Mac. These are fixes and improvements that have been issued by Microsoft, in the case of Windows, or, in the case of Mac OS X, by Apple.

Generally, on the Windows side, they’re almost exclusively fixes for problems. On the Mac side, they are maybe 50% to 75% fixes for problems, and 25% to 50% are actually improvements and enhancements they’ve added in.

You want to do these updates pretty much any time they come out, especially on the Windows side. It’s not just on the Windows side. I should be fair. Any time there’s a security update on the Mac or Windows side, you always want to do that as soon as you can. Most updates are security updates on the Windows side, generally speaking.

It’s never a bad idea to do a backup first just in case. Occasionally, some people will have problems with these updates. It’s a minority, but some people have run into problems. As a precaution, it’s a good idea to do a backup first.

Doing the updates is a really important thing to do because it fixes problems and security issues. If they’re not fixed, they can cause your computer to get invaded by a hacker, malicious program or what have you. You don’t want to have that happen.
By doing the updates, in many cases, the computer has to restart. Paul was wondering why this is.

Think of it this way. The files on your computer are like a rug. If you’re standing on a rug, can you take that rug, pick it up and clean it? Probably not because you’re standing on it. It’s in use. Files are much the same. If a file is in use, it can’t be picked up and replaced with a new version of the file just as you could not replace the rug with a new rug until you get everything off of it.

Essentially, what happens when you restart the computer after the update is it’s getting all the stuff off the rugs, picking the rugs up and replacing them with new rugs, so to speak. That’s why you have to restart the computer after you do an update.
Basically, it’s just a matter of getting out of the way of the files so they’re not in use and they can be replaced.

Hopefully that makes sense and answers your question.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

I’m happy to announce that the first four of a series of books covering computer basics and online privacy & security advice are now available to order from Amazon.com (and on the overseas “local branches” of Amazon) for Kindle.

You can see cover images and titles for the books – clicking them will take you to Amazon where you can order them and have them instantly delivered to you.

Kindle books are electronic books you can read not only on Kindle devices sold by Amazon, but they can also be read on free software available for Windows, Macs, iPhones, iPads, and many other devices.

You can view my author profile and always see the most current list of books with this link: Worth Godwin Computer Training on Amazon.

I have three more Kindle books I plan to publish later this month, and I’ll also be making all of the books (as well as future ones) available not only on Kindle but on Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble Nook, etc. I’ll post updates here when they become available.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Computer users have a wide range of experience and levels of understanding of their computers. The great majority of users have just learned the most basic features of a few of the thousands of programs out there. It really can be a help for you to learn computer basics that you may have been taught.

But that’s nothing to be ashamed of — even the most advanced computer user was at that level at some point, myself included. Even if you’re just using your computer for word processing, learning a few simple skills can make your life a lot easier.

• First and foremost: save often!    If you type a long letter, or make a lot of changes to whatever you’re working on, and the power goes out or something else happens, you could lose everything you haven’t saved!Just imagine how upset you would be if you’d worked on something for half an hour, an hour, or longer, and *poof* it vanished.Just going to the File menu and clicking save can help you avoid losing all that work.
• Save as new versions periodically:   If you’re working on a large project — such as a story or essay, where you write multiple drafts — periodically use the “save as” option from the File menu to save your file with a new name.That way if the third draft had something good you deleted in the fourth draft, you can bring it back for the fifth.For example, if you’re working on a file called My Letter.doc and you’ve made a lot of changes since your last save, go to “save as…” from the File menu, and change the name to My Letter2.doc.This way, you have both versions.
• Remember you can click anywhere in the document with your mouse and make changes wherever you place the cursor (the blinking vertical line which indicates where what you type next will appear).So if you realize you’ve made a mistake two lines back, just click where you want to make the change instead of deleting everything back to the mistake, then retyping it all. When you’re done, just click at the bottom and pick up where you left off.
• Cutting, Copying & pasting:   If you want to move a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or even a page of text, you can cut it and paste it someplace else in the document.To do this, just highlight the section of text you want by dragging your mouse (click and hold the left button, then drag) across the text. You’ll see a highlight appear where you drag.Let go of the mouse button then go to the edit menu.In the edit menu you can select “copy” to make a copy of the text, or “cut” to remove the text that is highlighted.Then go to the part of the document where you want to move or copy the text and click there so the cursor appears where you want your text to appear.

  Go back to the edit menu and select paste.Your text will appear where you clicked.You can use this to move text around in a document, or copy and paste it into an other document or even an email, and vice versa. Copying and pasting also can work with graphics or even files and folders in some situations.

• Undo: if you make a mistake the “undo” option in the Edit menu will allow you to undo the last thing you did. Accidentally highlighted and deleted a paragraph in that letter?Just undo before you type anything else and it comes right back.  Like all of the skills I’m talking about in this article, you can undo in Microsoft Windows, and you can undo in Mac OS X
• Learn the common keyboard shortcuts which work in most applications:
  On Windows PCs, the common keyboard shortcuts include: CTRL-S to save, CTRL-C to copy, CTRL-X to cut, CTRL-V to paste. ALT-F4 will close a window or program (or prompt you to shut down Windows if you are not in a program).On a Macintosh computer, common keyboard shortcuts include: Command-S to save, Command-C to copy, Command-X to cut, Command-V to paste. Command-W will close a window, and Command-Q will quit the program you’re in.

  In all cases, these key combinations are done as follows: hold down CTRL (or Command), type the other key, and release both. Just like using the shift key to type a capital letter. On both Macs and PCs, these and additional shortcuts are typically printed in the menus next to the option.

These are just a few computer basics that can really make your life easier.

For more help, including easy video lessons, check out my computer courses or my new computer training app for iPhone and iPad.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Yesterday I announced the release of my new app
for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad – learn computers with the Basic Computer Training & Tips app

Computer Basics App

This iOS app, along with 2 others I’ll be announcing as soon as Apple approves them, is the first version of what may become the main “delivery system” for my computer training video and audio lessons.

Starting with six hours of quick & easy lessons which cover computer terms, online privacy and security advice, as well as step-by-step computer basics specific to Microsoft Windows and step-by-step basics specific to Apple’s Mac computers.

The app also has a built-in way to send me your computer questions and you can check the latest Q&A answers right in the app.

Take a look at the video tour above to see how it works and grab your copy by clicking the blue & yellow button above to open iTunes or the App Store.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

I’m very happy to announce the release of my new app
for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad – Basic Computer Training & Tips iOS app:

Computer Training App

This only came out today, but in future versions I plan to make many more of my lessons available, but this is just version 1.0 – got to start somewhere!

In addition to the lessons in the app, you can submit a computer question to me directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and you can also find links (and bonus free lessons from)  my computer training audio albums that are available on iTunes.

I’ve recorded a tour of the app which I’ll post separately.

If you have friends or family with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, please share this page with them with the share buttons above or below this post!

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

I thought I’d share the following infrographic (Image courtesy of HackCollege) which gives you tips on how to use Google and other search engines more effectively.

The guide has a bunch of good tips, many of which I share in my related video lessons in my Easy Internet course (see links below image). 

I do have to mention that I disagree with one part of the information below: they say never to google questions, but that CAN be useful sometimes.

The times you want to type questions into a search engine is when you’re looking for a forum or discussion where someone has asked the same question that you have — you will often find your question has been answered in the discussion!

So while they’re right that you don’t need to phrase your searches as questions, it can be helpful sometimes.

The guide is written with students in mind — it turns out about 75% of students have no idea how to use Google properly — but has tips most computer users will find useful.

Something else to keep in mind: if 3/4ths of college students, all of whom grew up using computers, don’t know how to use a search engine correctly, it kind of puts to rest the stereotype that “all young people know how to use computers”.

I mention this because many of my older students who grew up before home computers were widespread (or before they even existed) often think they’ll never learn to use the computer as well as their kids or grandkids because of this.

The fact is, from what I’ve seen, the majority of people do not really know how to use their computer that well, regardless of age.

This isn’t a criticism, just a simple fact. People who grew up with computers have the benefit of feeling more comfortable using them, but that doesn’t make them any better automatically.

It can help because they have fewer limiting beliefs about their ability to learn, which can make a big difference, but it can actually make things worse because it’s very common for those people to assume they know far more than they do.

Take a look at the infographic (instructional image) below and see what tips you can learn about how to use Google to search more effectively:

[The image below is very large; if it doesn't load try clicking here to view it]

You can learn more tips to use the search engines correctly, browse more easily and more safely, all explained visually with my easy video lessons in Plain English. Just use one of the following links:

How to Use the Internet for Microsoft Windows

or

How to Use the Internet for Apple Mac

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this audio lesson & transcript, I’m going to take a question from Mark. He writes and asks, “What’s a flash drive?”

Transcript of computer lesson begins:
A flash drive is a type of storage device for a computer. A storage device is the broad or general term for anything that is used to store data or files.

A hard drive in your computer is a storage device. An old floppy disk is a storage device. A CD-ROM or DVD is a storage device, and so is a flash drive.

A lot of people call flash drives by specific brand names. They think that is the correct name for them. Sometimes they’ll refer to them as a thumb drive, jump drive, go drive, key drive or any number of things. These are actually all brand names or partial brand names that people have mistakenly thought was the correct general term for that type of device.

A flash drive is a little piece of solid state storage. That means there are no moving parts. From the outside, it looks basically like a uniform block.

If you dig inside of it, there’s what’s referred to as a disk, but it’s not a disk shape, unlike a hard drive. Inside of a hard drive, there is a physical disk that looks like a disk. Even with floppy disks, I’ve heard people over the years say they aren’t disks. Technically they are. It’s square on the outside, but if you rip open an old floppy disk, you’ll find a disk inside. It would actually flop. It’s not rigid.

Basically, a flash drive uses something called flash memory. That’s solid state, so there are no physical moving parts unlike with a hard drive. That has a physical disk, like I mentioned, which spins much like an old record or a CD does when it’s playing.

That has a little thing called a read/write head that moves around and reads information from the disk and writes information to the disk. There are a lot of physical moving parts.
That uses more electricity than something that’s solid state. It also usually takes up more space than something that’s solid state. The big advantage of flash memory is that it’s very small and lightweight, and it doesn’t use much power.

You get these little devices that can store an increasing amount of information, or data, on them. They only take up a very small amount of room.

Any mobile device like an iPhone or any smartphone typically has some kind of flash memory in it. It wouldn’t make any sense to try to put a miniature hard drive in them. While there are hard drives that could fit in there, it would use way more battery power and run the battery down really fast.

There’s also an increased chance of damage to the disk and loss of files by impact. One of the liabilities of the hard drive is that because it has spinning and moving parts, if something hits it or it gets dropped, it can damage the drive, and you can lose files.

There are safeguards in modern hard drives that make it so they very rapidly will stop the disk spinning to minimize the risk of that damage, but it’s still one of the downsides of them and one of the reasons they’re not used in mobile devices.

The big advantage with flash drives is that they’re very small, light and portable.

In terms of dollar per megabyte or dollar per gigabyte, they are significantly more expensive than hard drives. The difference in price is getting less and less as time goes by, and you’re getting more and more storage space on these little flash drives.

I remember probably in 2002, I spent something close to $400 on a 1 gigabyte flash drive. These days in 2011, not a decade on from them but getting close, I don’t think you can even get a 1 gigabyte flash drive because it’s such a small amount.

The smallest amount you can get is at least 8 gigabytes. I’m not sure. I haven’t looked at this recently. It may be 16 gigabytes by this point. You can get that for a few dollars. That’s just how it is. It’s pretty crazy, but that’s a pretty typical thing with computers.

I hope that makes sense. It’s basically another method of storing files. Typically, you can just plug flash drives into a USB port on your computer and drag and drop files. You’ll be able to then unplug it, plug it into another computer, and it’s a way of transferring files back and forth. It also is a way you can back up your files to make a spare copy of them to protect them.

That’s pretty much what a flash drive is.

You might have heard of them as jump drives, thumb drives, go drives or what have you, but those are all examples of flash drives. It’s not, in other words, the generic term for a flash drive.

Basically, that’s what a flash drive is. It’s a small storage device that’s easily carried around. You can put it in your pocket, plug it in, move files on and off a computer, unplug it, and put it back in your pocket. I hope that makes sense.

You can learn more about USB flash drives and how to use them on these easy video lesson courses:

• How to Back Up Your Mac
• How to Back Up Your Windows Computer
• Apple Mac Basics Course
• Microsoft Windows Basics Course

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

This computer question comes from Mahakali Ramesh Kumar, who writes:

“Dear Worth Godwin,

I want to know what is Bookmark in internet or in computers.

Thanking you,
Yours faithfully Mahakali”

TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
That’s a pretty simple thing to answer. A bookmark is sometimes also known as a favorite, although originally it was known as a bookmark in most web browsers. Those are the programs you use to navigate around on the internet.

It’s really Internet Explorer that refers to them as favorites. I think they did this originally because they were concerned about avoiding copyright infringement. I’m not positive about that. At any rate, a favorite or bookmark is the same thing.

When the web was created in the early to mid ‘90s, the way we thought about it is like pages like pages in a book. If you have a book you’re reading and you want to get back to a page in that book, what do you do? You bookmark it. It’s the same basic idea.

A bookmark is a way of getting back to a page on the internet that is located on some site on the internet. You just want to get back to it, so you bookmark it.

You do this typically by going to the Bookmark menu. Sometimes there may be a button on the toolbar toward the top of the window that has a little plus symbol on the button. Whatever way you do it, you hit the button or go to the menu that says “Bookmarks” and hit the option that says “Add bookmark” or “Add favorite,” in the case of Internet Explorer.

As a side note, I strongly recommend that you do not use Internet Explorer, for security reasons (instead you could use Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox for example).
Basically, you click “Add bookmark” or “Add favorite” as the case may be.

It creates some record of where you were. It will put in the name of that page as the description, although you are usually given the opportunity to change it to a potentially more descriptive or memorable name if you want to.

Then it gets added to that menu. In some cases it gets added to a horizontal bar called the bookmarks bar toward the top of your browser window. By going back to the menu or to the item on the bar, you would click it, and it would take you back to the page.

That’s basically what a bookmark is. It’s not a really complicated concept, but hopefully that makes sense and will help you get back to the pages you want to get back to in the future. It’s very useful.

I have found that there is a fairly surprisingly high number of people who do not use bookmarks or don’t know how to use bookmarks. It’s no criticism whatsoever. I hope that helps.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

I received a computer question by email from a subscriber named Willa Valdez, who is wondering what I think about Ubuntu and Open Source software in general. Here’s her question:

“Dear Worth,

Mahalo Nui Loa for your Newsletters. Your computer lessons have helped me tremendously.

I am thinking of purchasing a netbook. They both have the operating system Ubuntu (latest version) already installed. I am a newbie when it comes to Linux but I am curious about how how this system works. I installed Ubuntu via WUBI along side VISTA, however, my computer would freeze when I chose to boot with Ubuntu. I was able to boot with Ubuntu a couple of times and liked the Gnome desktop. Unfortunately, some of the applications I use were not supported i.e. Skype. I did not delve into learning the Command Line just yet.

I would appreciate your thoughts on Ubuntu and your general opinion on the Open Source concept.

Again, thank you for expertise and assistance.

Aloha,

Willa Valdez”

Below is a partial transcription of the audio:

What do I think about Ubuntu and open-source? There are a few things. Let’s start with some definitions. Not everybody is familiar with Ubuntu. A lot of people think it’s called Abuntu, but it’s Ubuntu. It’s an African word.

Ubuntu is a version of Linux. Linux is a type of operating system that is an alternative to the more mainstream Microsoft Windows and the mainstream, but not quite as mainstream as Microsoft Windows at least in terms of widespread use, Mac OS X. Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows are all examples of operating systems, which is just the underlying software that’s needed to let your computer run and allows everything else to work.

Linux is a project that has been going on for quite some time. It’s what is called an “open-source project,” and it’s part of the open-source movement.

Open source actually goes back to the roots of making software originally. The most widely used software is Microsoft Windows, and it’s developed by a particular company, which is Microsoft. That is not a value judgment but just how it is

That’s what you could call a closed-source program. It’s software that was designed by a particular company, and as a result, it’s guided a bit by the company’s agenda. That’s not some kind of “Microsoft is evil” kind of statement. Every company has some degree of agenda or plan.

Open source is an alternative to that. The way it works is you have a community of people from all over the world collaborating to find ways of improving the software and fixing problems.

They find problems in the first place. Person A finds a problem. Person B finds a solution, and then Person C implements the solution. That is perhaps how it might work. Basically, the whole idea is to work together to make the best software you can.

I think open-source is great. I don’t use it exclusively. There are some people who are very militant about it. It’s kind of cool in a way too, I should say. There are some people who insist on using only open-source software for ethical or moral reasons, but I don’t go that far.

I think open-source is great. It’s something that people can use in a lot of cases.
I try to recommend it in a lot of cases. Mozilla Firefox is an example of open-source software. Open-source generally, if not in every case, is free. They don’t charge for it, just like with Mozilla Firefox.

Mozilla Thunderbird, the email program I recommend for Windows users particularly, is another open-source program. I recommend using the OpenOffice program for Windows or NeoOffice for Mac.

Open-source is essentially just a collaboration of people from all over just trying to work together in a very altruistic kind of way to just try to make the world a better place through better software. That’s the principle behind it. Linux is an example of open-source software, and Ubuntu is one specific version of Linux, for there are many.

One of the downsides for Linux and one of the reasons that it has not been adopted widely is the fact that, on average, until recently, it has been significantly harder to use than Windows. I think Windows is harder to use than the Mac software.

It has really been something that was mostly used by the techy people who are really into tinkering. They want to be able to tinker with the computer as much as possible, and they’re perfectly happy with things not being set up and ready to go out of the box.

Ubuntu is one of the versions of Linux that has made a lot of strides to improve the situation and make it a lot more accessible to people. It’s not completely there, but certainly if you want to try it, I don’t want to discourage you.

A lot of the really inexpensive and lightweight laptops that have become popular over the last couple of years, and Netbooks particularly, are shipping with Ubuntu or some other version of Linux on it. It cuts down the cost of not just inexpensive hardware but also inexpensive software by providing this free open-source software.

It’s fairly easy to use the basic stuff now. You can get around. It’s usually going to come preloaded with most of the basic software you need, but you’re still going to run into issues.

I don’t have a copy of Ubuntu installed on any of my computers. I’ve played with it before, and it’s one of those things on my to-do list. When I theoretically start having free time to play with stuff like that, I definitely want to try it out because it has apparently become much better. I’ve seen a little bit with a couple of clients, and it has definitely come a long way.

It’s something that may not be for everybody yet, but it’s something that’s very cool. I really like the principles and ideals behind open-source software. It’s definitely something worth checking out.

One really neat thing about things like Ubuntu is that there is an easy way for you to try it if you want. They have something called a Live CD as you can do with a lot of Linux installations.

You go to their window and download an image of a CD. It’s stored in a file, and then you can use disc-burning software. They’ll have instructions on the website on how to do this.
You can burn a Live CD [or make a bootable USB drive] that allows you to start the computer and run Linux. You don’t have to worry about actually installing it, replacing anything, or trying to install it side-by-side with Windows, which doesn’t always work as Willa has discovered.

Those are some general thoughts about it. Hopefully that makes sense and answers some of your questions. Ubuntu and other versions of Linux are just going to keep getting better and better over the coming years.

I am a little bit hesitant about telling people to just rush off and start using it. If you’re a little more of an adventurous computer user and you want to try things out, then it’s definitely something worth trying.

I definitely support the concepts behind it, and I think that open-source software in general is a great thing. I’m actually using some to record this audio. WordPress is blogging software that I use for my websites many times. That’s free. It’s open source, and I highly recommend it.

Open Source is a great thing. I hope that makes sense and answers your questions.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

This time I’m going to take a question from someone who asks, “What is grounding? I’ve heard it phrased in so many places but don’t know what it is.”

This refers to draining off excess electricity. That’s basically what it’s about.

I’ve talked about how it’s important for someone working on the inside of a computer or any kind of electronic device that they be grounded.

If I work on a computer, take it apart and am upgrading or repairing it, any time I have the case open and am working in the inside of it, I’m always making sure that I’m grounded. The way I do this is that I have a special mat. It has a wrist strap attached to it. Then the entire mat and wrist strapped are attached through a conductive cable to an outlet where I plug in.

You may have noticed that with many, but not all, electrical devices, the power plug has three prongs. The third prong is the ground. The other two are the positive and negative poles that allow the current to flow and create a circuit. It goes in a circle. Then there’s the third prong, and that’s the ground.

On any modern building that’s been wired properly, that third prong is a separate wire. They all essentially go together and eventually have some connection that goes down into the ground, hence the term “grounding.” That drains off excess current. That’s basically what’s going on. For electronics to operate properly, they need to have that excess current bled off.

In terms of static electricity as opposed to the electricity you get from your power outlet, static electricity is generated by moving your arms around, for example. As I’m recording this, I’m gesturing with my hands. That makes no real sense since no one is seeing me when I’m doing this, but I’m still talking with my hands. As I’m doing this, it’s generating static electricity in my body.

If I went and touched a piece of electronics that wasn’t shielded properly, like exposed electronics on the inside of a computer, there would be a static discharge. Whatever the difference is between the charge in myself and the charge in the electronics, when I touch it it’s going to go through. If I’m not grounded, it’s going to go through the electronics and could damage it.

One way to think about this is almost like water pressure. Electricity and water are kind of similar. I like to think of them as being very similar, at least in a metaphorical or analogy way.

Water always flows downwards. It goes down to the lowest point. That’s essentially what electricity does. It always goes down the path of least resistance. It tries to go to ground.

By grounding myself and having this wrist strap on me, the wrist strap is conductive. It conducts electricity, and it’s attached to my skin directly. Everybody’s skin is conductive, so as my body generates that static electricity, it drains right on out of there like water flowing down to the lowest point.

The more static electricity in me, it’s almost like the water pressure building up. Too much pressure in a pipe could potentially burst the pipe. If there’s enough water pressure going through there and nowhere for it to be released, it could burst and damage the pipe.

In our analogy, that’s a circuit. It could be a circuit in a computer or a circuit board that contains many circuits. Those circuits can be burst open by that surge of electricity that comes through from static electricity.

The third prong, the outlet my grounding mat is attached to, is attached to ground or earth. The excess current drains out. Essentially, that’s what grounding is.

How does this relate to the average person? Most people don’t really need to worry about it too much. The typical person is not going to open up their computer and work on the inside of it, I would hope. It’s not usually a good idea.

If you do ever have to do it, particularly if you’ve got a computer tech coming to you or you’re taking it to a shop to have it repaired or upgraded, you want to make sure they follow proper grounding procedures.

Some places will say that it’s good enough that they touch the case occasionally. This particular example really annoyed me when I saw it, but there was a particular place I went one time. The one person was working there picked up a circuit board. It was a motherboard, also known as a main logic board. Before she did, she made a not really valid attempt to ground herself by touching the plastic case.

Plastic, of course, is not conductive. Therefore, it doesn’t work to ground you. They touched the plastic case on a laptop that was sitting on a wooden bench. Wood is not conductive. Plastic is not conductive. The laptop wasn’t even plugged in, which might have provided some pathway for that static electricity to go to ground.

Because the laptop plastic case was nonconductive on a wooden nonconductive surface, when she touched that thing, it didn’t do anything. She did not ground herself. Then she handled the electronic, and that damages it. It may not break it instantly, but it will weaken it and shorten the lifespan of the electronic, so it’s really important.

How does this apply to you? You want to make sure people actually use grounding mats. At the very least, instead of a wrist strap that attaches to a mat, some places will use an ankle strap. That’s essentially the same thing, but it attaches to the ankle instead of the wrist. That’s just as good.

You want to make sure they’re doing something like that. If they’re not, your electronics are not going to be taken care of properly. When you take it in for a repair, they might be doing damage.

The other bit of advice I can give the typical user of a computer is whenever possible, try to use a power adapter with a third prong for ground. This is never really going to be an issue for a desktop computer. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one, and if I have it’s certainly been many years, that did not have that third prong on it to ground.

Laptops, on the other hand, a lot of times come with a power adapter that only has two prongs on it. I’m thinking of some of the Mac laptops. A lot of times the MacBooks have a power adapter that you can pull off the end. It comes with a little square adapter that a two-prong plug flips out of.

That whole little flip out part you can actually pull off, and they provide you with an alternative cable that’s longer and gives you more length to get to the wall. It also gives you a third prong.

I would strongly recommend that if you have a laptop, whether it’s made by Apple or anybody else, if you have the option of choosing a two-prong or three-prong adapter, always use the third prong. It will also protect your laptop better than the two-prong.

Essentially, that’s what grounding is. It’s a way of draining off too much water pressure, so to speak. It’s a matter of having some conductive path that leads between you and the device to earth, or other words, to ground. It drains off the excess.

This protects electronics. Potentially in some cases, it can even protect the person if they’re working with electronics and happen to touch it. If it’s not grounded properly, it could give them a shock. In terms of repairing and working on the inside of it, it’s the static electricity you’re trying to drain. You’re trying to protect the computer and electronics rather than yourself.

Hopefully that makes sense. We gave you a few tips that can help you avoid potential problems and help you choose a good place to repair your computer.
– Audio computer lesson transcription ends –

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Video Lesson Transcription Begins Here:


I want to explain the computer term “video card.” I’m answering a newsletter subscriber’s question about what a video card is. I’m going to explain to you what a video card is and what it basically does. I’m also going to give you a few suggestions on choosing the right video card for your computer.

I will not be going into specific makes and models of video cards because things change very rapidly. One of the fastest changing components in a computer is the video card because computers are putting greater and greater demands on it. Anything I could talk about that is specific to a particular make or model will be obsolete soon, so I’m not even going to get into that.

What I will do is give you the general ideas and principles that will always apply.

A video card is a piece of hardware. Hardware is the physical part to your computer, as opposed to software which is the nonphysical, intangible part of the computer.

A simple way I like to explain it is that hardware is like your brain, the physical part in your head that thinks. Software is like the thoughts in the brain. You can’t touch thoughts, but they’re there nonetheless and they make a difference.

In many cases, you have a video card that is a separate card. It’s thin and rectangular-shaped. It goes into a slot inside your computer. In other cases, you have what’s called an “integrated video card,” or it’s built into the motherboard or main logic board of the computer.

The ones that have integrated video or built-in video are usually not the best quality, and you won’t get the best performance out of the computer. There are a few reasons for this.

The video cards that are integrated are usually low-end video cards to begin with. It’s not always the case. Apple puts integrated video cards into their computers in a lot of cases, but depending on the make and model, they may or may not be a lower-end one.

That’s a generalization, but most of the time if you’re talking about a Windows computer with an integrated video card, it is a lower-end card and you’re potentially going to be sacrificing a little bit in performance. Part of this is because the video card itself is not the most powerful in the world.

Other times, it’s because the video card, which uses memory, borrows the main memory from the computer, so you can lose a quarter or more of your actual memory that it says on the box or label. You end up sacrificing a good chunk of it, so you don’t really get as much memory as you think you have or as much as the salesperson said if it’s an integrated video card.

All a video card really does is take the picture and put it on the screen. If you’re watching this on a computer, which I assume you probably are, it has a video card. You could be on an iPhone or something, and these have integrated video cards in them too.

It’s the same basic principle. The video card just takes the picture and puts it on the screen. It’s not just moving video but also all the desktop icons, your menu bars and so forth.

Then you have the higher-end cards. The cards that slot in separately are generally on a Windows computer because on the Apple side, they have integrated cards with most of the computers. Usually, they’re a little bit better quality than the integrated ones, or in some cases, a lot better quality than the integrated ones that you find on Windows computers.

The high-end Mac Pros do have separate cards that slot in. That’s partially because the cards that go in tend to be more beefy, robust or powerful than the integrated cards.

There is still a fairly wide range of quality. You have very cheap video cards and very high-end ones. Which one do you want to get? That’s a good question.

Again, with any of the ones that Apple is selling with their computers, you can fairly safely assume that it is going to be more than capable of handling the basic stuff that most people, the average computer users, are going to do. They don’t tend to put in cut-rate equipment.

On the Windows side of things, with a lot of the different brand names out there, this is not always the case. The low-end cards often make a fairly big sacrifice, especially if you’re running a newer version of Windows, like Windows Vista. It should be better with Windows 7, which is still forthcoming. Windows Vista does a lot better with a high-end video card.

You don’t need the highest high-end machine, but it’s helpful to have something other than the cheapest, least expensive, least powerful card. Something in the mid-range should be fine.

Who needs a really high-end video card? Someone who is going to be playing high-end games on the computer needs one. I don’t mean Solitaire. I mean a fast-paced, very complex, animated, fast-moving game with computer-generated images.

The games like first-person-perspective shooter games where you’re running around playing in a hostile environment tend to work better if they have a high-end video card. They’re going to look better. They will perform better. It’s not going to be slow. Someone who is a high-end gamer, of course, wants a high-end video card.

Generally speaking, if you play the latest, greatest games, you want to get the best video card you can possibly put in your computer. That’s the bottom line.

For someone who’s doing fairly high-end stuff with graphics or video editing, it doesn’t always make a big difference to have a high-end video card, but it can help. Someone who is doing CAD work or an architect perhaps might benefit from having a higher-end video card. They probably don’t need the highest end in the world, but it never hurts.

That’s basically what I want to cover. I can’t give you really specific advice about a particular make or model card because it gets outdated almost immediately.

The basic principle is that a video card is just a part of the computer. It’s a piece of hardware.

It puts the picture up on the screen and lets you hook your screen up. In the case of iMac or a laptop, it’s built in and internally hooked up to that video card, but you still have the screen hooked up to a card. Even something like a phone has a video card of sorts in it, and the screen is hooked up to it.

That’s what I wanted to cover in this lesson.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Today I want to answer another computer question, this one coming from Leslie G. who writes:

If you need more step-by-step help with working with photos on your Mac or Windows computer, take use one of the following links to learn more about these easy video lesson courses that cover easy programs for working with pictures:

How to Use Picasa – Course for Microsoft Windows
or
How to Use iPhoto – Course for Apple Mac

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

The following audio & transcript are from a live computer Q&A event I recorded back in 2008, discussing a topic which is just as important today as it was then. This segment is a lesson giving a few tips on choosing a safe password, and also explaining a why it’s important to use strong passwords (and why assuming no one would target you is missing the point).

Due to the nature of the live recording the audio will sound a little “thinner” than usual, and I may talk a little bit faster than I normally do on my “studio recordings”. Use the player below to listen and you can find a transcript of the audio below the player.

AUDIO LESSON TRANSCRIPT BEGINS HERE:

I want to give you a couple of guidelines when you’re setting passwords. There are a lot of mistakes I see people making with passwords.

 

You want to follow some guidelines. One, for example, would be to not use the same password for everything. I know it’s easier to remember, but it’s also an easy way to get into your stuff.

 

You have to think of passwords like keys. I would hope you would not use the same key for your house, car, post office box and safety deposit box. If someone gets one of the keys, they can unlock your life.

 

In addition to not using the same password over and over again, which I see people do all the time, you need to use a hard password. A “strong” password is the term. This is a more complicated one.

 

I want to go back to my analogy of a password being like a key. The type of passwords I see most people using tend to be simple, regular words that you find in the dictionary or a person’s name.

 

In a recent email, I told a story about how 10 or 12 years ago, I was working at a computer shop in upstate New York where I used to live. Someone brought in their laptop. When I flipped the thing open and turned it on, I was somewhat dismayed to find that it had a password lock on it, which was pretty uncommon at the time.

 

She hadn’t bothered to tell anybody that there was a password. I couldn’t get in without it, but it also happened to have “If lost, return to Lisa,” or whatever her first name was, and the address. When I saw that, the very first thing I typed in was her first name, and that was the password. Not only did she use her own name as the password, but she also had it printed right on the screen.

 

I guessed on literally the first try. If I had been a criminal, or if someone had stolen the laptop and made the same guess, they would have had full access to everything on the computer.

 

It’s really important to use a strong password. The general guideline suggested for this is to make it long, and the longer it is, the better. You want a mix of letters and numbers. Get it as far away from a regular word that you might find in the dictionary as you possibly can. Mix uppercase and lowercase letters in a random way and even put in symbols like an exclamation point.

 

This will create a much stronger password. You might be thinking, “Why do I need to worry about my password? Who is going to target my information? Who’s going to target my computer?”

 

You can’t think of it that way because criminals these days use the internet. They use the internet and programs on the computers to commit crimes just the way that they used a lock pick in the past.

 

If you think of a computer as like a house, these programs are like a burglar. They can basically clone themselves a thousand times over and go to every single house in a dozen neighborhoods all at the same time.

 

They try every single door to see if there is no lock on the door. In other words, there is no password. They look to see if it has a bad, weak lock or an old-fashioned type of lock, both of which, of course, are easy to pick.

 

To use my key analogy, if you have a weak password, it’s like having a really old-fashioned key in an old-fashioned lock, like something they had 150 years ago. The reason they make different keys now, smaller and more complicated, is to make them harder to pick.

 

It’s the same idea with your password. They use these things called “brute-force password cracks.” They are little programs that basically try all the words in the dictionary starting with common ones. They run through them a thousand times in a minute on each computer, on a thousand computers at once.

 

It doesn’t have to be targeted, but you can still have your privacy violated or identity theft done on your computer if you’re not protecting it properly. There’s a whole series of things you can do to protect it, including adding a firewall and doing a lot of other things, which I deliberately included in my computer training courses, and I talk about them in my newsletter and so forth.

 

That’s passwords.

You can find more in-depth audio and video lessons expanding on computer security topics in my online courses, especially in the Safe & Easy Internet course for Apple Mac and the Safe & Easy Internet course for Microsoft Windows.

More related lessons can be found in the Safe & Easy Email course for Apple Mac and the Safe & Easy email course for Microsoft Windows.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this audio computer training lesson I answer a question from Vasilis who writes wanting to know just what the computer term “default” means.  Click the triangle play button below to listen to this computer question and my Plain English answer:

As I explain in the audio lesson, the computer term “default” is one that confuses a lot of people.  Basically, it means “what the computer is set to do until you tell it to do otherwise”.

So for example, you might get a brand new computer and have a certain picture set as the wallpaper (background image on the desktop) when you first turn it on. This is the default background image.

If you change that default image to a new one, it’s no longer using the default picture.

Another example would be the “default browser” on your computer.  Windows PCs come with Internet Explorer (the blue “E” icon) as the default browser, just as Apple includes their own Safari browser as the default on their Mac computers.

You can always install a different browser (highly recommended for Windows users) such as Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.  When you install a new browser, it typically asks you if you’d like to make it the default.  If you do, any time you do something which should take you to a web page (like clicking a link in an email for example) it will then open whatever browser you have “set as the default” to display that web page.

But that doesn’t prevent you from opening that same web page in a different browser if you prefer — you’re just not opening it with the default.

So it’s kind of like what the computer “assumes” (so to speak) unless you tell it otherwise.

Hope that makes sense.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

The following is a computer question I was sent by ‘AlainAiso’ who wrote with a question about why a new hard drive they bought was so cheap and whether this was because there was a problem with the drive.  Click the player below to listen to this computer question and my Plain English answer:

“Question about my external Hard drivers

I just Bought an external hard drive in Wal-Mart now I am worry about why the price was that low also I worry about companies  who did the hard drive…

The hard drive is 1500GB and cost me only 98$ Canadian. To copy a file from to this  it takes about 35 seconds. It seems quite fast right? If so why was the price that low?

I guess it should be something due to the material this mean the material won’t work after an period of 6 months?

Please tell me if it is possible that an hard drive only ‘live’ few months before expire en then lose all files”.

Listen to my answer to this computer question below, where I not only explain why a pretty big hard drive is so inexpensive, why it won’t seem like a big drive for long, and help you understand this in context, as well as give you some advice on not making a common mistake when buying an external hard drive:

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

If you’re upgrading your Mac to OS X Tiger it’s a good idea to make a bootable USB drive or DVD install disc to keep you covered in case of  problems, and to save time downloading when upgrading multiple Macs. Click the image below to watch the video lesson where I show you exact steps for how to make a bootable Tiger disk. More advanced users can read a summary of the steps below the video:

The full video above is intended to be easily understood by more basic Apple Mac users.

If you’re impatient you can skip the introduction by going to 1:07.

Instructions on how to make a bootable DVD begin at 2:45.

The steps if you want to make a bootable USB flash drive (I suggest 8GB or larger) or any USB or Firewire external hard drive begin at 4:03

More advanced users might find this quick summary of the steps helpful:

1. Download Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” in the Apple App Store
2. Once downloaded, before you install, double-click the Macintosh HD icon (or click the Finder face icon on your Dock) then double-click your Applications folder.
3. Locate “Install Mac OS X Lion” & right-click (Control click) the icon.
4. Click the “Show Package Contents” menu item
5. Double-click the Contents folder in the new window, followed by the SharedSupport folder
6. You should see file called  – this is the disk image you’ll make the boot disk from
7. Open Disk Utility (using the Spotlight search box in the upper right corner of the screen is the quickest way to do this)
8. Drag the InstallESD.dmg file into the column on the left side of the Disk Utility window

scroll down for either the bootable Tiger DVD instructions, or the bootable USB/external drive instructions…

To make a bootable Tiger DVD disc after completing numbered steps above:

• In the Disk Utility window, right-click (Control click) on where it says “InstallESD.dmg” and then click “BurnInstallESD.dmg”
• Put in a blank DVD when the new window drops down and click the blue Burn button
• Wait a few minutes and you’re done

To make a bootable Lion disk using a USB flash drive, or an external drive (USB, Firewire, etc.)

• In the Disk Utility window, right-click (Control click) on where it says “InstallESD.dmg” and then click Restore
• A new window will open. From the column on the left in Disk Utility, drag InstallESD.dmg into the top “source” box in the new window
• From your desktop, drag the icon for the external drive you want to back up to (drive recommended to have 4.7GB free at a minimum)
• Click the Restore button, followed by the Erase button (do NOT use a drive with important files or you will lose them at this point!)
• The drive icon will vanish from your desktop and then reappear once the process is completed. May take a few minutes or longer.

By making a bootable Mac OS X Lion disk, you’re protecting yourself and making your life easier.  Please comment below, and feel free to share this video lesson on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

This computer question comes from a student named Edward, who writes:

“Dear sir,
I have followed your comments on here with great interest and find them very helpful.  I have a problem I am trying to sort out first with an Apple iBook. My problem is I cannot download applications, and when I do they will not mount or the image is corrupt?
Yours respectfully.
Edward O’Toole”

Hi Edward,
I’m glad you’re finding my newsletter helpful, and thanks for writing!

I suspect the problem is that you have very out of date software on your iBook. OS X (the “operating system” software for Macs) is currently on version 10.6 — that’s three major versions (and several years) newer than what you have.

New versions add new features, and sometimes things on the Internet rely on those new features to work, which means computers running older software sometimes run into problems like this.

What you might do is ask around and see if you know anybody who could help you put OS X 10.4 (a.k.a. “Tiger”) on your computer. This isn’t the newest version, but your Mac may not be able to run the more recent versions of OS X released after Tiger, but Tiger should be enough to get things working for you.

Whenever possible, you should keep your computer’s software up to date to avoid a variety of problems.

I hope that answer makes sense and helps!

If you found this lesson helpful, you might want to look into the Apple Mac Basics Course or the Microsoft Windows Basics Course — quick, easy step-by-step computer training in Plain English.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

There is an online threat which has been common on Microsoft Windows computers for years now, but which is now becoming a real problem for Apple’s Macs as well. Click the image below to watch the video lesson:

The threat involves a scam where a you encounter a website that’s designed to trick you into installing a “trojan”. The trojan attempts to get you to enter your credit card number so the criminals behind the scam can steal your money.

This video shows you an actual example of one of these dangerous websites and what happens if you make the mistake of installing the trojan and teaches you what you need to know to protect yourself.

Update: I’ve resized the video to allow it to play on more mobile devices.

After watching the video, to get more step-by-step help with safely & easily using the computer online, click one of the two options below:

Apple Mac Safe & Easy Internet Basics Course

or

Microsoft Windows Safe & Easy Internet Basics Course

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days – as mentioned in a previous post on my site, I’ve brought my style of quick & easy, Plain English video lessons to help you learn how to use the iPhone.  Beginning with over 150 short step-by-step videos, you get iPhone basics, iPhone tips & more in a new easy iPhone Video Tips & Training App available now in the iOS App Store.

I’ve recorded this video and quick demo so you can see for yourself:

Whether you use an iPod Touch or an iPhone, I think you’ll find this is a quick & easy way to look up information on how to use your iPhone or iPod Touch is pretty handy.  The app is really a complete & comprehensive basic course on how to use the iPhone which will help very basic users, but people who’ve owned their iPhone for years have found it’s a great way to look up a quick iPhone tip or two.

I’ll be releasing a similar video training app for the iPad that teaches you how to use the tablet computer. That app is based on this one, so anyone looking for iPad training can get an idea of what to expect from the video above.

Watch the video to learn more or use the link below to launch iTunes to buy it on a computer to sync to your phone later, or if you’re reading this on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, it’ll take you straight into the App Store.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

A lot of people are unwittingly publishing information about themselves online when they share photos and videos online. This information is revealed in something called “metadata” which you can think about as “data about the data”, or info about the information (data) in the file.

This information about the file can be something as simple and visible as the file name, but the information most people are talking about when they mention metadata tends to be more “hidden” inside the file.

One example is “ID3 tags” in MP3 files which hold the musician’s name and other information, another example is the data in a photo which can reveal mundane information such as the camera settings when taking the photo and the date, but also GPS location information revealing exactly where the photo was taken.

This information is visible in typical photo viewing and editing programs such as Picasa for Windows or iPhoto for Mac OS X. It also often is revealed automatically on photo sharing websites.

A file name could be thought of as the simplest example of metadata since it can be used to describe the contents.

However, many types of files contain more information stored inside a special part of the file. Common examples of files with metadata include music, photos, & video files.

In photographs and videos the camera or smartphone typically records GPS information about your location and this can end up visible to the world when you share those files online.

This may not be a problem with all photos or videos, depending on where you shoot them, but ones taken of your home reveal where you live and what kinds of things you own. In effect, you’re casing your own home for potential burglars.

Most cameras and phones that can record this information will have a setting to prevent saving location information to the image. Consider sharing your photos privately with family and friends instead of in public galleries. When uploading to any site, look around (under privacy on the settings screen for example) for a setting that lets you turn off displaying GPS location data.

I show you how to disable location services in one of the video lessons in my How to Use the iPhone App.

Listen to the audio above for the full Plain English explanation and understanding of metadata and how it can affect your privacy.

You can also take a look at my easy online computer training courses for more in-depth and step-by-step computer help.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

This latest computer question comes from someone named Morgan who writes:

I have a question for you. My internet seems to be very slow. I am not sure if it is because of the ISP that our family uses or if it could be a problem with the modem or router. Our basement flooded and water got on the router. The router still works but it just feels like it is lacking power and performance. I was wondering if the reason our internet is slow is because of our ISP or because our router has water damage. I also believe our router is getting to be quite old as well. It is really impacting my ability to stream videos and play online on my xbox 360. Any advice you can give on this matter would be very helpful. Thank you for your time.

Morgan

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this article I’ll answer a question sent in by a student named Daniel McClutchy who writes:

“Hi Worth:  Your CDs have helped a great deal to understand the internet and computer basics.

Thanks.

I have a question for you.  Can you explain what a torrent site is? I followed a recommendation of a co-worker and logged on to one.

My Kasperksy went crazy, not allowing me to access it.  Is this because they contain viruses?

Thanks, Daniel”

Well Daniel, I’m glad you’ve found my lessons to be a help; I always appreciate it when people take the time to let me know how they’re benefiting from my hard work!

So, let’s start off by explaining what a torrent site is, and then I’ll answer your question about whether they’re dangerous.

A “torrent” is short for “BitTorrent” which is a technology used to distribute files over the Internet.  Like any technology, it can be used positively or negatively.

Torrents can potentially speed up the downloading of large files (downloading is the process of copying a file “down” to your computer from another one, usually over the Internet — when sending a file it’s called uploading).

It speeds up downloads by basically chopping up (so to speak) a file into tiny pieces which can be sent in a “swarm” from dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers at once, each only having to send a small amount of the file.

While there are many legitimate uses for this, perhaps the most common use for torrents is to share pirated movies, music and other copyrighted files.

Now I’m not going to go into a moral lecture on whether or not it’s right to take other people’s content without paying for it, but I will warn you that there are a lot of risks involved in using the “torrent sites” you’re asking about.

Now as I said, there are many completely legal and legitimate uses for the BitTorrent technology, but when people talk about “torrent sites”, they’re generally referring to the ones using BitTorrent to distribute copyrighted material without paying for it.

Those sites you do need to be wary of. Let me explain why.

First off, many of those torrent sites are hosting ads from less legitimate advertising networks which tend to be used by “shady” sites such as gambling and pornography sites.

These ads are more likely to contain “malware”, which is software (including, but not limited to viruses and worms) designed to cause damage. Malware is written these days to make money by infecting computers, and so shady sites often do this as a cheap way to make money, and they apparently don’t care whether they cause harm!

So many torrent sites are capable of infecting a computer simply by you visiting it, especially if you’re not protecting yourself with good
Internet security software (such as Kaspersky) and by avoiding using the Internet Explorer web browser.

Beyond the potential risk of simply visiting a torrent site, many of the files a person might try to download from those sites are themselves
infected with dangerous malware.

It’s well known that Apple’s Mac computers tend to have far fewer threats than Windows computers do, but the biggest threats for Macs that I recall from the last few years have all come from downloading illegal copyrighted material from sites like these.

And it’s a far bigger problem for Microsoft Windows computers!

One study I’ve heard of says that as much as 47% of all “zero-day malware” (one of the most dangerous kinds) is distributed through BitTorrent!

Lastly, beyond the potential threats to your computer posed by torrent sites and other file trading sites, there’s a very real risk to your wallet.

The recording industry, including the film and music industries have been very aggressively pursuing people who do illegal file sharing and are happy to sue you for a lot of money if they catch you.

And believe me, they can afford better lawyers than you or I!

Internet Service Providers will often shut down your Internet connection if they detect you’ve been sharing files illegally, so there’s that risk too.

So my advice is to steer clear of torrent sites. There are plenty of inexpensive ways to listen to music and watch TV shows and movies online or offline without exposing yourself to the risks of file trading sites such as torrent sites.

I hope that makes sense, and helps.

Until next time, take care, and enjoy,

Worth Godwin
Plain English Simplicity for This Complex Modern World

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Here is one of my early video lessons (please excuse the video quality) where I use one of my Plain English explanations of computer terms — explaining what a hard drive is and what RAM is, and what they do in your computer.  Many people confuse those two terms with each other, and many people don’t understand either at all.

If this is true for you, it’s not your fault — it’s just never been explained to you in a way that you could relate to. Watch this video and both computer terms will finally make sense, even if you feel like the most basic computer user in the world:

If you need help understanding computer basics and mastering the fundamental computer skills, look no further than my Computer Basics Course, available for either Windows or Apple Mac computers:

Microsoft Windows Basic Computer Skills

or

Apple Mac Basic Computer Skills

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Here is a simple thing to learn but is a big time saver you really need to know about when using the Internet.

I see many rookie, and even experienced computer users making this blunder (and remember, I’m not being critical; it’s not your fault if you’re making this computer mistake)

Don’t use a search engine like Google or Bing to search for web pages or web sites if you already know the address!

Search engines are like phone books. A lot of people don’t use them at all anymore, but when woukd you use one? You’d use one to look up a number if you don’t know it, right?

You don’t use a phone book when you already know the number, because that would be a waste of time and wouldn’t make sense, right?

But that’s exactly the mistake I’ve seen people making again and again over the many years I’ve helped people with their computers.

So for example, in my computer newsletter I may send out a link to a lesson on my site. Now normally you should be able to click on, but sometimes email programs will “break” the link so clicking it doesn’t work.

So what some people do is they try typing the address of the link into a search engine, and end up not being able to find the page!

That’s because the page in the example is for my subscribers only, and so is an “unlisted number” (so to speak) which isn’t listed in Google or any other search engines, just like an unlisted number isn’t found in the phone book.

Make sense?

So how do you “directly dial the number” of a web page you know?

Simple. In your web browser window (a web browser is the program you use to look at web pages, such as Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer) at the top of the window you should normally see a bar with the address of the website you are currently viewing.

So if you are on Amazon you’d see

http://www.amazon.com/

or if you’re using Google you’d see:

http://www.google.com/

etc.  In most cases you’d actually see something longer, but it will always begin with the “domain name” of the website.

That bar where you see the address of the site is called the location bar, or the address bar.

All you need to do to go to a website you know the address of, whether it’s a public page a private page, is to click ONCE on the address bar and typically this will “highlight” that address.

You can then either hit the delete or backspace key on your keyboard to clear it, or usually you can simply start typing and everything that is highlighted in blue will be replaced by what you’re typing.

So if you wanted to go to Facebook, you could type

http://www.facebook.com/

into that address bar and press Enter or Return on your keyboard and it would take you directly there.

You could also just type

facebook.com

and that would work too because the first part is almost always optional.

This is much better than *searching* for an address, finding it in the search results (or maybe not even finding it at all). Then clicking the link in the search results to get there, when you could just dial direct.

Even if it’s a public page that is listed, at the very least you’ve wasted time and effort searching for something you don’t need to search for, because you already know where it is.

Again, this is like using a phone book to look up a number you already know — and if it’s a private, unlisted web page, like the ones I share with my newsletter, it won’t even turn up.

Personally, the only time I type the address of a website into a search engine and search for it is when I’m trying to learn more *about* the site, rather than searching to get there.

So learn this basic computer tip:

If you know an address of a website, just type it into the address bar at the top of your web browser window and press the enter key on your keyboard.

Do not search for it as you are at best wasting time and effort, and at worst will not get where you’re trying to go.

I hope that helps.

Since I’ve seen so many people making this mistake over the years, I made a point of including an easy step-by-step video lesson on exactly what I talked about in this article as one of the first lessons on my “Safe & Easy Internet” course.

You can learn more tips to use the search engines correctly, browse more easily and more safely, all explained visually with my easy video lessons in Plain English. Just use one of the following links:

How to Use the Internet for Microsoft Windows

or

How to Use the Internet for Apple Mac

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this article I’m going to help you understand a computer term you’ve probably heard but may not have understood, and give you some advice that will protect you from a computer mistake.

There was a rumor floating around that Facebook was shutting down for good on March 15th of 2011. This is obviously not true (depending on your view of Facebook, that may be good news or it may be bad news).

The rumor most likely started with the fact that the original Yahoo Video shut down for good on that date. I want to use what happened as an example to help you understand a couple of things that are very important and will become more important in the coming months and the next few years.

If you’re wondering, Yahoo Video was a video sharing service Yahoo has offered for years, and was basically the same idea as YouTube, only not as widely used.

It may not be as big as YouTube, but it’s still used by millions and millions of people, so it’s a shame it’s going away, but is only a symptom of the larger problems going on with Yahoo at the moment.

As a matter of fact, things are not looking good for Yahoo right now, and the company may not be around at all for much longer — it’s rapidly shedding employees and closing down very popular and widely-used services.

This brings me to one of the main things I want to write about: why it’s a bad idea to trust your files to “The Cloud” and give up ownership of your personal or business data in the process.

There’s been a lot of talk about “the Cloud” over the last few years — if you’re not sure what the term means, it’s basically referring to storage and services accessed through the Internet instead of directly off your computer.

The cloud can provide seemingly unlimited storage and basically gives access to the tremendous computing resources of companies such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and others.

A lot of companies are spending a lot of money to convince people that they want to put everything “in the cloud” and like to paint it as a huge benefit for you with no risks or downsides at all.

While “cloud-based” services can be very useful, they are not without their risks and I don’t think it’s a good idea to rely on them too much. Let me give you an example of why.

As I mentioned, Yahoo Video is shutting down for good in March. This means that all of the videos stored on the service will be gone forever unless the person who posted the video either has a spare copy or downloads a copy before the service shuts down.

Unfortunately, it’s very likely that a lot of Yahoo Video users uploaded their video and then deleted it off their computer, which was a mistake.

I say this because it’s a known fact that people are heedlessly doing this very thing every day when uploading photos to Facebook or to Flickr, or with videos they’re uploading to YouTube, documents they’re creating or storing on Google Documents, etc.

People do this because they’re not aware of the risks and because the big companies who are sinking their capital into developing cloud-based services are doing their best to convince you it’s the way to go.

But it ignores the fact that Internet connections still aren’t always as fast or as reliable as we’d like them to be (which means if you keep your only copy of an important file online you might not be able to get to it when it really matters).

It also ignores the very real possibility that the company you’re trusting your files to won’t be around forever and could vanish or be bought out with little or no warning to you.

It may seem impossible to imagine Facebook or Google could shutting down, or being bought by another company, but you could’ve said the same thing about Yahoo or AOL not that long ago, and it’s very possible both of those companies will be just memories in a year or two.

This isn’t just an online thing, either. Business history is littered with companies which seemed unbeatable at the time which floundered and failed due to mismanagement or bad luck.

So if you store the only copies of your files online and the company holding on to them for you fails, you could lose the files for good, or even worse, have them sold to the highest bidder and put to who knows what use?

The thing is, in many cases the user agreements you agree to when you join many sites says that you don’t really own the files you upload to them!

So my advice is this — you’ll keep hearing a lot of hype about “the Cloud” in the future and many companies will be encouraging you to store more and more online and not where you have physical access to it (like on your computer’s hard drive).

Try to remember that while this can be convenient, it does have its risks and you should at least make sure to keep copies of your files on your computer AND make sure to back up those files and keep one or more copies (the more the better) where you have physical access to them.

Otherwise you may not have those files when you really need them.

For step-by-step help with backing up your computer the right way, take a look at my easy video lesson courses on:

How to Back Up for Microsoft Windows

or

How to Back Up for Mac OS X

Note: article updated 6-12-11, mainly changing intro from future to past tense.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this video lesson I explain the two general methods of backing up your important files, namely incremental backup (a.k.a. versioned backup) and “cloning” backup.

I also give specific suggestions about how to do either one or both to protect the important files on your computer. Failing to back up is perhaps the biggest single computer mistake I see people making, and failing to back up correctly and regularly can lead to the loss of time, money and irreplaceable files, which can have devastating consequences.

Watch and learn how to protect yourself.

This video appears as part of my course on how to back up. To learn more, use one of the following links:

How to Backup – Apple Mac

or

How to Backup – Windows (XP, Vista & 7)

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this computer question & answer audio lesson I’m taking a question from user brandang17 who asks:
“So because I have wireless internet an stuff with my phone when I turn WiFi on does that mean I am getting free Internet or am I still paying for it though my plan? Thank you”

Use the player to listen to the audio computer lesson where I’ll not just answer the question “Is WiFi free?” but give my usual Plain English explanation of what I’m talking about so everyone can understand the answer, even non-technical people.

Bottom line is, someone always has to pay for an Internet connection somewhere along the line, so whether you’re using a computer or a mobile device like a smartphone it’s not “free” even if you’re not paying to use the wireless signal. And while using WiFi on your phone may not count against any monthly limits on data that your phone plan offers, it doesn’t mean you won’t get charged the regular monthly fee for phone data (Internet) connections.

You may be able to cancel the data part of your phone service, depending on the details of your contract, however. If you do, keep in mind you’ll be limited to *only* using WiFi signals and so will be much more limited about where you can go online with your phone.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

Heat is one of the most damaging things for electronics. People are often not aware of this and are causing their computers and other devices to fail long before their time because they’re not doing what they need to do to keep them cool.

You’ve probably noticed that computers typically have fans which you can spinning whenever the computer is running. You may also have noticed that the fans get louder sometimes more than others.

Most parts of a computer generate some amount of heat, with certain parts such as the hard drive and the processor generating more than others. The fans are designed to keep the computer from overheating and burning out.

Because of this, it’s important to make sure the fans are able to do their job, or you might end up having to replace your computer before its time.

A few steps you should take to help keep your computer and other electronics from overheating:

1. Keep them out of direct sunlight - I often see people who keep their laptop or desktop computer near a window where it’s exposed to direct sunlight for a few or several hours a day. This will, understandably, raise the temperature in the computer above what it’s supposed to be.The internal fans are designed mainly to cool off components from the heat those parts generate themselves, not from external heat sources
2. Don’t put them on a desk right next to a radiator or over a floor vent – this one is pretty self-explanatory; basically the same idea as keeping them out of direct sunlight
3. Don’t put your computer in a tight space – this is one I see a lot. People will hide their desktop computer in a cabinet or one of those desks with the internal space for a computer, or perhaps they’ll hide the computer in a cramped space between the desk and the wall.

   This is a bad idea because this usually will block the vents and trap heat, or trap the heat in the space surrounding the computer, which is just as bad.

4. Never pile stuff on top of the computer – a couple of things is fine, but don’t go overboard with stuff packed in around or on top of the computer as this can also trap heat and block vents
5. Avoid using a laptop on a soft surface where the computer sinks into the surface, such as in bed with the laptop resting on the blanket; this will usually mean at least one of the fan vents is blocked, plus the blanket is an insulator (that’s why it keeps you warm, after all) and it will trap the heat in the laptop, causing damage over time.

   If you like to use the laptop in bed, or while sitting on the couch wrapped up in a blanket, you can still do this, just rest the laptop on a hard flat surface to give it plenty of airflow and to avoid blocking the vents.One great way to do this is by using one of those trays you can buy very inexpensively that have a nice flat surface on the top and a built-in cushion underneath.

   These help protect the laptop from trapped heat, and have the side benefit of make it more comfortable to work with the laptop by keeping your lap cool and putting the computer at a more comfortable angle and height.

6. Use a laptop cooling pad whenever possible – this will help save your computer and keeps your legs cool too.  Some of them come with fans, and this is the type I suggest using as it does the best job cooling. Usually these will require you to provide power through a power cord, or more commonly, through the laptop’s USB port.

   Just as with the internal fans, make sure not to block the fans on the cooling pad with papers or a bedspread or anything similar, or they can’t do their job.

7. Avoid keeping computers in dusty environments such as on the floor – dust can get inside computers and coat the parts inside and can even block the air vents in extreme cases. If either one of these happens, heat is trapped inside causing damage.It’s also a good idea to use a can of compressed air, which you can pick up pretty much anywhere that they sell electronics, and periodically open up the case and use the compressed air to clear out the dust.

   Be careful when you do this, however, as touching the electronics inside can cause damage, something I explain in another article.  If you feel more comfortable doing so, consider letting a technician do this for you to prevent accidentally damaging something.

Hopefully by following the advice I’ve given you, you can avoid causing  your computer to break down before its time by not making these common computer mistakes.

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.

In this video computer lesson I want to share some tips to help you understand how forms work (including order forms, surveys, newsletter signup forms, etc.).  This covers a lot of fundamentals that more basic computer users often need help with, but also includes tips for how you can use your keyboard and mouse together to navigate more easily and save time and effort — using simple steps that even experienced computer users often aren’t aware of!

In the video I use the order form on my website as an example, but the same principles work on most forms you’ll ever have to fill out on a computer — whether you’re talking about a form on a website, or a form in a program stored locally on your computer which has nothing to do with the Internet.

This lesson will be added as part of a new disc in the updated version of the Safe & Easy Internet computer course (both the Windows and the Mac version). The site doesn’t list it yet, but any orders will include the new disc.

(If you’re watching this video lesson on my website, you should see two players below for compatibility reasons. The first should give you a sharper picture & the option of full-screen on a computer, the second is for mobile devices such as the iPod Touch, iPhone & iPad, and for that reason is the version which goes out on the podcast.)

Click the player below for the high quality computer version:

or tap the image below for the version of  the video lesson formatted for mobile devices:

“Discover How to Use the Internet Safely & Easily With Simple,
Step-By-Step Video Lessons”

Wish you had a complete course to make it easier using the Internet,
from finding what you’re looking for when searching online, to tips
to save time and make you safer? Use one of the two links below for
either the Windows version or the Mac version of the Safe & Easy
Internet course:

How to Use the Internet Apple Mac Course

or

How to Use the Internet Windows PC Course

Audio and video lessons also available via computer training podcast.