I have come to realize that many things that I do on the computer everyday are things that beginners may not know about. And if no one ever tells them, they may never know how to do things that will make their computing experience more enjoyable. So, I've compiled a list of basic tasks that I feel every computer user should know.
There are many things you can do to customize your desktop. Fist right click (use the right button of the mouse instead of the left) on a blank area of the desktop (the screen), and then click Properties. The following are the options you will see:
This will customize the look of your screen by altering your wallpaper. You can pick any of the choices and click the Apply button. On the right, there is an option to center, stretch, or tile the wallpaper. Some look better stretched, others look better tiles. Centered is good for having a pictured in the middle of the screen, with a wide surrounding border. Click OK when finished.
A screen saver is a different screen that will pop up if the computer remains idle for a period of time. There are many to choose from, and many have settings that you can set. You can also pick the amount of time before the screen saver pops up. Unless you have an old monitor, you do not have to use a screen saver.
This section will customize the colors and fonts of your computer. You can pick on of the schemes or you can individually alter items. You can also edit items after choosing a scheme. Among other things, you can increase the size of fonts used here.
You can play with these if you want. I find that two options that are not set by default are really nice: Show icons using all possible colors and Show window contents while dragging.
Here you can set your colors and screen resolution. I suggest picking the highest number of colors that is available. For the resolution, the higher you make it, the smaller everything will appear. Using a higher resolution makes everything clearer and sharper and allows you to place more objects on the desktop. Make sure that you test the configuration. If you pick one that your computer does not support, you'll mess up your screen. I would suggest 800 X 600 for a 15" monitor, 1024 X 768 for a 17", 1152 x 864 for a 19", and 1280 x 1040 for a 21". Of course this is your personal preference. Clicking the Advanced button will bring up an option to use large fonts. This will enlarge your fonts and can be useful if you're using a higher resolution. This can also help people with less than effect vision.
You can save any picture that you find on the internet to your own computer. Simply right click (place the pointer on the picture and press the right mouse button) and then click on "Save As." Use the name it gives you or type another name and click the Save button.
Wallpaper is the background on your computer. Any picture you find on your computer or on the internet can be used as wallpaper. Right click on the picture and then click "Set As Wallpaper."
You can move icons on the desktop, within a folder, or from location to location by using Drag & Drop. Place the mouse pointer over the icon and press and hold the left mouse button. The move the pointer to the new location and then let go of the left mouse button.
This is the most useful skill you'll learn. I do it literally hundreds of times a day where I work. Windows allows you to "cut" or "copy" text or pictures from one location and "paste" them to another. There are many ways to do this. For text, put the mouse pointer to the left side of the text you want to move. Press and hold down the left mouse button and move the pointer to the end of what you want to move. Let go of the button. Then move the mouse pointer in the highlighted section and click the right mouse button. Select "Cut" if you want to delete the text and move it, or "Copy" if you simply want to copy the text to another location. Then, go to where you want to put the text and position the mouse pointer to exactly where you want it to go. Right click and select "Paste." There you go! Whatever you Copy or Cut is stored on a "Clipboard" until you restart the computer or Cut and Paste something else. This means you can paste whatever you Cut or Copied over and over if you want.
You can also Cut and Copy pictures but right clicking on the picture and selecting Cut or Copy. You may be limited to what you can paste a picture in to. One application that you can use, however, is Word.
Other ways to cut and paste
Highlight what you want to cut/copy and then go to the Edit menu at the top of the windows and select Cut or Copy from the drop down menu. You can also paste this way.
Highlight want you want to Cut, and use Ctrl/Dlt to Cut and Ctrl/Insert to Paste.
You can highlight text by holding the shift key and using the up/down/left/right arrows.
You can highlight a number of icons by "lassoing" them. Start at the upper left of the group of icons, hold down the left mouse button and then move the pointer the lower right. A "lasso: will appear around the icons and the icons will appear shaded. Cut or copy as normal.
Save all your work, and then reboot your computer. Always reboot by going to the Start button, the Shut Down and pick Reboot (or Shut Down). Don't turn the computer off with the power button.
Here is the steps you can use to try to get your computer running again without rebooting if it locks up. Of course you could always reboot.
First, try to close the Window causing the problem by clicking the X in the upper right up the Window.
Try to right click on the icon on the task bar (the bottom of the screen) and choose Close to see if you can close the Window causing the problem.
This is a little advanced- skip this step if you're not comfortable with this. Hit Ctrl/Alt/Del once. This brings up the Task Manager (Windows 2000/NT users will have to click on the Task Manager button.) If the program you were running says "not responding", click on it and then click End Task. If a another box comes up that says the program is busy, click End Task again. Do not do this for a program that is running normally. You could stop something that should be running. If nothing says "not responding" hit Cancel.
Go to the Start button and click Shut Down and then Choose Restart.
If the computer is so locked up that you can even bring up the Start menu, Hit Ctrl/Alt/del twice to reboot your computer.
As a last resort, if even Ctrl/Alt/Del won't restart your computer, turn the computer off with the power button. On some computers, you may have to hold it on until it goes off. This is not the greatest thing for the computer- use it only as last resort.
If for some reason the taskbar, which is the bottom of your screen is missing, first see if you pushed it down. Move the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen. If it changes to an up/down arrow, hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse up. This will bring the taskbar back up. If this doesn't work, press Alt/Esc.
I'll write other articles similar to this one as I think of other basic Windows tips.