Computer Help - General Information
Where to find help and information
This section is a carefully selected set of pointers to some really good stuff.
The gold cup symbol indicates an outstandingly good site.
- Absolute Beginners Guide from the BBC
- This animated guide tells you (and shows you) the really basic stuff that everyone assumes you know (because you are psychic, presumably).
- Have you every wondered where the "Enter" key was on a keyboard that doesn’t have the word "Enter" written anywhere on it?
- If so – run yourself through this animated guide!
- Basics of computing or computer help for people over 50
- This is exactly what it says it is.
- Wiredguide – helps you to find help!
- “A beginner's guide to computer help, internet help and general computing interest from chat to shareware”.
- Actually it is a comprehensive and carefully selected collection of very useful links – and not just for beginners. What you see when you first arrive at the site is just the tip of the iceberg!
- Its section called Instruction is where you can find the knowledge you need about all kinds of things to do with general computing and using the internet, including browsers, downloading and e-mail.
- PC resources or Mac resources is where you can find sources of help and information on anything to do with your type of computer (if you’re not sure, assume it’s a PC rather than a Mac). You can e-mail the site if you can’t find something, and they’ll do the research for you. And you will also find lots of good stuff on products (books), search engines, tips, and terms.
- This web page would be much bigger if it weren’t for the presence of this site. Great stuff.
- Wikipedia
- If you want to know anything about computers or software, or anything else come to that, try looking it up here. This is the greatest free knowledge resource in the world.
- Black Viper's Operating System Guides
- This is just part of a really useful site that provides great help on all kinds of software topics. Its home page is here.
- XP users should check out the vast amount of useful information in Black Viper's Windows XP Home and Professional Service Configurations and Windows XP Strange Service Information. But there's lots more good stuff.
- Pilot's Assistant Directory
- If you use your PC for flight simulation, this is a free information resource of my own that is full of stuff that may help you.
- Even if you're not a flight simmer, you might still find some useful stuff there - particularly towards the end of the directory.
Free and open source software
You don't have to buy Microsoft Office software; you can get the equivalent for free from www.openoffice.org.
This software runs not just on Microsoft Windows, but on a number of other platforms.
This is part of the open source initiative, which seems to be gaining ground at present. For example, Linux (a free open source operating system) is now coming pre-installed on a laptop - see this news story.
You will find lots more free programming resources, free webmasters' resources, free security resources and free utilities at www.thefreecountry.com.
Some Additional Tips For Windows Users
Here is a tip of my own - it is one that I find many people don't know, even people who have used Windows a lot.
- Dragging items to a hidden window
- If you want to drag information between windows, and the destination window (or the part of it that you want) is not visible, drag the source information to the icon on the taskbar that represents the destination window, but don't release the mouse button.
- The destination window will then appear on top, you can continue moving the mouse and drop the information where you want.
- As usual, if you hold the right mouse button down as you drag, you'll get different options (move, copy, cancel) when you let go.
I will add more tips here as time goes on.