Everything you need to know about computers, but never knew you needed to know.

If you have got this far and are reading this, then you obviously know enough about computers to turn them on, load up your web browser and read pages on the Internet, right? So you already know the very basics about computers.

What else is there I need to know? You might ask.

Well that can depend on what you use your computer for, but I will attempt to explain what I think are the basics of computers that not everyone knows, which are useful to know. This explanation is for Windows computers, although some of the techniques might equally apply to Mac's there is no guarantee of this.

First of all if you are using the Internet, you should have a firewall, an anti virus and an anti Spyware application. You should run the Anti Virus and the Anti Spyware application at least once per week and make sure that you get it to fix any problems you might have. All of these three items can be downloaded as freeware, and you can also buy more advanced applications, once you get used to using them. A good download site is download.com, and you can filter out freeware versions which you can download at no cost.

You may well know how to use a word processor and Spreadsheet. If you don't, then you should. These two are very useful skills to have, for typing letters and for doing household or business accounts. Perhaps you think that the Microsoft Office package is too expensive, so you are getting by with the built in WordPad or Mac equivalent?

A useful thing to know is that there is a free Office Suite that can do everything the Microsoft Version can do, and more. It is called Open Office. It is easy to find at OpenOffice.org. You can download it there for free and then install it following the instructions with the application. Then you have a free Office Suite that is just as capable as Microsoft Office. You can even save files as Microsoft format as well so there will be no problems with anyone else reading them!

In your word processor and Spreadsheet, perhaps you sometimes use Cut, Copy and Paste. If you don't know what these are, then imagine a real world equivalent, of a piece of paper that you are using like a scrapbook. You can cut out pieces of text, paste on new text (or pictures) and you can get a copy text or pictures and paste it into another part of the document. You might well use the menu of the application to do this.

A quicker way is by the use of keyboard shortcuts.

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