Answering Computer Question What LAN Means

What LAN Means in Plain English

It's Saturday evening and I'm warming up a bite to eat before recording some new lessons. While I'm waiting, I wanted to send you a new video computer lesson I haven't shared before.

The new lesson answers a question sent in to me a while back where I was asked what a LAN is, and what Gigabit LAN is.

The lesson explains these computer terms mean, and also offers advice on a few related topics that could save you some money and make things easier.

And always, it's all in Plain English.

Just click the image below for the video lesson on What LAN Means:





In this video, as mentioned, I answer the question about the computer terms "LAN" and "Gigabit LAN". While we're at it, I give you not only a non-technical understanding of what these terms mean, I also give some advice on whether you need to spend extra money on a faster router (and whether it will really make things faster for you).

For more lessons like this, plus easy basics that make it easy to navigate your computer both safely and confidently, you'll want to join students from around the world in our easy computer lessons member site. You can do this using the form below this post.

Until next time, take care, and enjoy,

Worth Godwin
Plain English Simplicity for This Complex Modern World

P.S. Use the form below to get even more easy computer lessons today:

Answering Computer Question About Problems Sending Email From Websites

Well, it's been a little while since I've had a chance to write a new newsletter (if you're a new subscriber or ordered my CDs recently, you may not have noticed).

This is partially because I wanted to give everyone a bit of a rest after the extra emails I was sending out during my "Help Worth go home to celebrate his dad's birthday" sale from the beginning of the month, but also because things have been even more hectic for me of late than usual (which is saying something, believe me!)

By the way, thanks again to everyone who got involved in my sale to raise money to visit my family. He still doesn't know I'm coming yet (I have a few relatives who are signed up for my emails, so don't tell him!) but he will get such a great surprise when my brother and I show up for his 80th birthday.

I also appreciate all of the emails I got from readers wishing me luck and wishing my dad a happy birthday.

But let's get back to what you guys signed up for -- computer lessons!

So I was going through the email folder where I keep emails from subscribers like yourself to try to get caught up with some of the backlog, and I came across a great question that had gotten buried in a ton of other email. The question comes from subscriber and new Gold Club member Dodie, who wrote:

>Dear Worth,
>
>I have a question if you can help me with Craigslist. When
>I want to reply to someone on Craigslist who does not leave
>their phone number you have to highlight the address and paste
>it on someplace so you can e-mail them. Whenever I highlight
>the address and try to paste, I get a window with an e-mail
>tablet but when I try to send the e-mail I get a response of
>"make sure your server is correct - SMTP unknown" I can
>never send and e-mail to get a hold of the ad. What am I
>doing wrong?
>
>Dodie

Well, Dodie, first off, you are not doing anything wrong, so don't be critical of yourself. A lot of my clients tend to beat up on themselves for not understanding everything about the computer, but it's not your fault! So if you or anyone else reading this feels like a dummy sometimes, it's OK. Be patient with yourself and take things one step at a time.

I know exactly what you're running into here; let me explain what's going on and give you a tip or two that might help.

OK. The basic problem is Dodie is using something called "web mail" which is where you are reading your email on a website. In her case, AOL.com.

The other way to read your email is using something called an "email client" or an email program. This is the method I prefer, personally, but web mail is pretty popular because it's often free and can be read from any computer with an Internet connection.

On the downside, if you use web mail, you run into problems like the one Dodie has run into, plus it's impossible to read your email if you are away from your Internet connection or the Internet connection isn't working at the moment.

One way to think about it is when you use web mail, it's like you're reading your mail (think real mail here, not email) at the post office, then storing anything you want to keep there in your post office box.

If you use an email client, you're "bringing it home" and storing it there.

So if your car breaks down and you can't make it to the post office, you can still read any letters you've already received if you're bringing them home with you, but if you keep them all at the post office, there's no way to read new or even old letters until you can actually get to the post office again.

Does that make sense?

So what to do about Dodie's problem?

It sounds to me like when you are trying to copy and paste the email from the page, you are accidentally clicking the email address and that is trying to open your email program to send it. But because you don't use an email program, your computer is not set up to be able to send email that way.

So you've got a couple of options:

1) Use your right mouse button to click the email link and in the menu that appears there should be an option similar to "copy email address" (or similar words). Click that option and then go to your email, click on the To: line and then go to the edit menu and chose "paste" to paste the email address in so you can send it.

Mac users who do not have a two button mouse can do these same steps by holding down the Control key on the keyboard and clicking on the email link instead of right clicking, then the rest of the steps are the same.

2) Alternatively, you could set up an email program to check your mail that way, or at least set it up so you can send from it. To do this, you need a couple pieces of information including the "pop server" (for incoming email) and the "smtp server" (for outgoing email).

Since you use AOL, Dodie, I don't think you have the above option, unfortunately, but you could contact your Internet Service Provider, and you should have an email account that came included in your Internet service, and they can help you set it up.

Another option would be to sign up for a free GMail account, since GMail (Google Email) gives you the ability to send and receive your email not just through web mail, but also using an email program like Outlook Express (not a great choice) or the free Mozilla Thunderbird, which I highly recommend to Windows users, or the Apple Mail program that comes on Macs.

Dodie recently ordered my Ultimate Beginners Bundle of easy computer lesson CDs, and so she can find the steps to do all of this, including getting Thunderbird for free & setting it up to be used, and she also has lessons on how to get a free Gmail account and set Thunderbird up to use it.

I also recommend listening to my audio CD called "Understanding the Internet", since it goes into more depth explaining a lot of these concepts than I can realistically do in this email.

If you're not already a subscriber to my free email newsletter, use the form below to sign up and get more easy lessons like this one sent to your inbox, as well as information on how you can get access to my easy, Plain English audio and video computer lessons.

until next time, take care, and enjoy,

Worth Godwin
Plain English Simplicity for This Complex Modern World

Computer Answers: Question About Email From Myself

In this newsletter lesson I want to answer a question from Lore
Grossman, a very nice lady who lives part time here on the island
and who I have helped in person for years now.

Lore has just run into a pretty common problem that she's been
lucky enough to avoid before. Maybe it's something you've seen
too and have wondered about. Well, in this email I'll explain it
for you and help you understand.

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Lore writes:

"Worth : I just received an e-mail FROM [here Lore wrote her own
email address which I have removed for her privacy]
Subject : Tired of waiting for you.
I KNOW that I have not send this to myself, and have NOT opened it.
Is it dangerous ? what and how should I dispose of it-- and WHO is
using my mail ?
Upset, Lore"

Well, Lore, it's nothing to worry too much about; it's just spam (i.e.
junk email).

I know it seems weird and maybe even kind of worrying that it is
coming in seemingly sent from your own email address. This can
conjure images of something out of that movie from the late 1970s
"When a Stranger Calls" where the call is coming from inside the
house.

Actually, it kind of *is* like that, except it's coming from inside your
neighbor's house, or your friend's, or somebody who knows you,
but not your own "house" (i.e. computer).

What has most likely happened is someone who knows you (or has
your email address in their address book at any rate) has probably
got an infected Windows PC.

Now Lore is smart enough to be using a Mac, which is basically
immune to all current viruses, so it's not her machine that's the
problem, nor is it any of her friends who also own Macs.

What a lot of people don't realize is that millions of Windows
computers are infected with viruses and worms without the owner
even realizing it.

Viruses and worms, by the way, are basically the same thing. The
only real difference is you have to open a virus yourself the first
time for it to infect your system or try to spread to another, while a
worm will spread on its own.

Another thing you may not realize is that most viruses and worms
these days are not about big, obvious damage the way they used to
be back in the day.

Originally, viruses (I'll just say viruses from now on, but understand
I'm including worms in most of what I'm saying) were written to
cause as big a problem as possible and basically were designed to
get as much attention as possible. A lot of them were written by
teenagers, actually, and it was done for much the same reason as
someone might "tag" a wall by spray painting graffiti on it -- to
show off and let people know they were there.

These days, viruses are now frequently written by programmers
who work for criminal organizations (think organized crime).

So they're motivated by profit, and what they try to do is lay low on
a person's computer and infect as many other computers in the
same sneaky way as possible, and use the resources of the infected
computer to do their dirty work.

This could be to harvest personal information for identity theft, or it
could be to group thousands of computers together to stage an
attack on an important website, or it could be just to send spam to
millions of computers, knowing that with millions of emails sent,
even if only a tiny percentage of people are willing to click on a link
for a purple pill in an email of gibberish, they can still make money.

What they usually do to make it harder to find the source of the
spam is they will "spoof" the return address to make it look like
it's coming from a different computer. Sometimes this means
you end up getting email "from yourself".

And this last option is what Lore has probably run into.

While it may not be trying to sell under the counter meds, and I
can't say for sure it came directly from an infected PC, it's some
kind of email she should just junk and not read.

The best thing to do with these types of emails where you know it's
spam is to use the "junk" or "spam" button in your email program.
This will mark the message as junk and in most cases remove it
from your inbox at the same time.

Don't ever use the junk or spam button to delete regular emails,
since this feature "trains" the computer to automatically junk
messages, and if you junk the wrong ones, you'll end up missing
important emails from people you want to hear from.

For those of you who understandably need to see step-by-step
lessons on how to do things like work with email and other parts of
using the computer, you might want to take a look at my easy video
lessons (available for either Apple Mac or Windows PC) you can
learn more by clicking one of the two following links:

Basic Mac Computer Skills

Basic Windows Computer Skills

until next time, take care, and enjoy,

Worth Godwin

Computer questions answered: question from Carla about using Mozilla Firefox

A computer question from Carla about using Mozilla Firefox

I got another email recently from a subscriber named Carla who asks a very good question:

" Hi Worth, My computer in a Compaq. And just recently I downloaded the Microsoft 2007 to update for the computer course I'm taking online. What I was wondering was, would it be safe to download the Mozilla Firefox onto my computer you talked about in one of your emails. I wanted to ask before doing it. Don't want to mess up more than I usually do. "

Hi Carla, I'd be glad to answer that for you.

First off, I assume you're saying you installed Microsoft Office 2007?

Understand, I'm not criticizing at all, just helping to explain computer terms that a lot of people understandably mix up, so we're all on the same page and understand each other.

To clarify, as I explained in my last email, "download" means to deliver something to your computer like delivering something you ordered from a catalog by mail or FedEx, while "install" means to set it up for use just like you have to set up a TV before you can use it by plugging in the cables, etc.

Also, Microsoft is the name of the company that makes Windows and Microsoft Office -- Office is the suite of programs including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, which are used by millions of Windows and Mac users across the world.

Again, it's OK if you misunderstood or misused these terms before; it's a common mix-up and since so many people use the wrong terms, you end up learning the wrong info by example. But that's what I'm here to help with.

Also, as a side note, Office can be very expensive, and there is actually a free alternative called OpenOffice for Windows, or NeoOffice for Mac. These programs offer all the same basic features as the programs in Office, but literally cost nothing, and yet still allow you to share Word documents, Excel documents, etc. with others.

I cover how to download and install it on my Simple Secrets of Word CD that comes with my Ultimate Beginners Bundle of CDs that's available to Gold Club members at a huge discount (in fact, the entire Ulitimate Beginners Bundle only costs about as much as a single visit from a good consultant, but covers more in the dozens of quick, easy lessons than you'd be able to cover in 10 visits from a consultant). You can even order them with the discount while you're still in the free trial period for the Easy Computer Lessons Gold Club.

But to answer your question, now that we're on the same page with the computer terminology, it should be perfectly safe to download and then install Mozilla Firefox onto your computer. It's set up to be pretty straightforward to install, and using it instead of Internet Explorer can help you *avoid* potential problems because of the increased security.

Again, if you feel more comfortable with the idea of seeing it done and being walked through it step-by-step, any current Gold Club members or people who sign up in the next few days will get video lessons with all of the steps on one of the 2 CDs I'll be sending out around the end of the month as part of the regular monthly shipment.

Here's the thing about Mozilla Firefox, or any "web browser" (a program that lets you view web pages).

Web browsers are like cars -- they are vehicles to take you places on the Internet. And just like cars, nothing prevents you from having two of them in the garage so you can drive either one at any time.

Now understand, as I've mentioned, "driving" Internet Explorer is a lot less safe than Mozilla Firefox, generally speaking. But occasionally you might run into a minority of sites that just won't work with Firefox.

This is not because of anything deficient in Firefox, it's actually a lot more to do with lazy web designers who are used to designing their sites for Internet Explorer, or in some cases Microsoft has bribed or otherwise convinced a company to exclusively work with Internet Explorer.

This sort of behavior has gotten Microsoft in hot water more than once, but they have deep pockets so they don't ever stop trying to create a monopoly for themselves. Not very nice on their part, since the little people like you and me end up caught in the middle.

Fortunately this is rare, but in these cases if you have a known legitimate site that only works with Internet Explorer, it will still be "in the garage" so you can just use that to visit that one site, then go back to Firefox for everything else, and be a lot safer in the process.

Hope that helps and makes sense.

until next time, stay safe and enjoy,

Worth Godwin


P.S. If you have computer questions, feel free to subscribe to my free newsletter using the form below, and reply to any of my newsletter emails and I may answer the question in a future newsletter email. I also have a monthly live computer Q&A call-in where you can ask computer questions online, which I announce to my newsletter.

P.P.S. As I mentioned in my last email, I'll be recording video lessons for Windows and Mac that show step-by-step how to download and install the new version of Firefox, as well as an overview of using it on this month's Gold Club video lesson CD, and the lessons will also be available on the password-protected Gold Club members-only area of my website.

If you'd like to join in and empower yourself with more knowledge about the computer and how to make it easier, more fun, and more safe & secure, you can take advantage of my free trial membership to the computer lessons Gold Club right now and gain instant access to a large library of my video and audio computer lessons.