Since I have it on my computer, I will focus on the XP Home Edition. Many things are the same as in the Windows 95, 98, and Me family, some things are similar, and a few things are new.

There is a substantial but insufficient amount of onscreen help. To look for help, simply click the "Start" button and Help and Support on the lower right side of the Start menu and choose a category.

I think basic computing can now be considered the "4th-R." Computer literacy in the Windows PC setting, as I see it, include the ability to navigate Windows and use the accessory programs including Windows Explorer to manage files, to do simple word processing with WordPad, to browse the Internet with Internet Explorer, to send e-mail with Outlook Express, and to use System Tools for maintaining ones computer. These accessory programs are enough to satisfy the needs of a lot of home computer users without any additional software. However, with these rudiments one has the prerequisite skills needed to move up to other Wintel programs.

If you decide to spend some time on this Web page, I suggest you save it on your "C" drive by clicking File, Save As, and then choosing a folder and file name. By saving it you can use it off line. To open the file from Internet Explorer, click File, Open, Browse, and then find your folder and file. You may have to,use the "Up one level" arrow to get to your folder.

This page doesn't have an index, but there is something better to use. Remember that you can use the Find function (under Edit) to find words or phrases.

If you want to use this Web page as a handy reference, you may want to print it by clicking the print button on the toolbar or clicking File and Print to bring up the Print menu and clicking Print. (If you want to print just a portion, select the portion and click Print and on the Print menu under Page Range click Selection and then Print.) Before doing so, you might want to reduce the font size. On Internet Explorer click View on the menu bar, click Text Size, and choose Smaller. With the Smaller font this Web page will be about 20 pages on paper.

For beginners I suggest actually performing the learning tasks to help remember various features of the program.

Windows programs tend to have a similar layout, so let's begin with a review of the parts of a typical window:

• The title bar is at the top. It turns blue when the window is active. It includes the name of the program on the left and the Minimize, Restore, and Close Buttons on the right. The box-like Restore button reduces a full screen to a smaller window, and if you click it again, if will restore it to a full window.
  
• The menu bar on most applications includes File, Edit, View, Help, etc. Each has a drop-down menu. (Click Edit and notice that some of the menu choices are followed by three dots indicating that there is a submenu or dialog box in which we can choose settings.)
  
• The tool bar may have buttons with icons for printing, saving, etc. There also may be a drop-down list box where you can see various choices. To see the name of a button, put the mouse pointer on the icon without clicking and wait a bit for the function to appear in a box.
  
• The vertical scroll bar is along the right side. We can drag the scroll bar up or down, or we can click the arrows at the top and bottom to move one line at a time. On some windows there is a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom.
  
• The work area is where you do your thing.
  
• The taskbar is at the bottom below the work area. On the left is the Start button and the names of programs or files that are open. On the right is the notification area (previously called the System Tray) with icons for programs that usually work in the background, and the time of day.
  Back to the Beginning

Notice that on WordPad, for example, you can click View and change which bars are shown. If a bar disappears, you click View and the bar's name.

Let's review the basic mouse moves which are as follows:

• Unless otherwise stated "click" means one click with the left mouse button.
  
• To choose a file or folder from a list, position the mouse pointer on one of them and click once to "select" the item. When you select it, it is highlighted in blue. You must select a file before you can work with it.
  
• Double-click an icon or name to open files and programs or select a word of text.(Select a word on this page by double-clicking it.)
  
• Right-click (one click with the right mouse button) to bring up the shortcut menu to choose copy, cut, paste, etc. Don't forget this button; it is very useful.
  
• The mouse pointer takes three forms: 1) In non-text files the pointer is an arrow. 2) In a text document it becomes an I-beam (looks like a capital "I"). 3) When the pointer is placed over a link, it takes the form of a hand and finger.
• In text there is an insertion point that is a vertical flashing line that is positioned between characters. To change the position of the insertion point, we move the I-beam to another point and click.
• To drag something put the pointer on it, hold down the left mouse button, and drag to the desired location. To drag a reduced page, hold down the button on the blue title bar. Sometimes we right-drag things as you shall see later.
  Back to the Beginning

Since many documents and Web pages are more than one screen full, we need to move up and down by scrolling. Here are three ways of scrolling:

• Press the up and down and left and right arrow keys. (Press the up arrow key now.) With a text document this moves the cursor first until it reaches the top or bottom of the page, and then it moves the page.
  
• Use the Page Up and Page Down keys above the arrow keys. They move one screen at a time.
  
• Use the vertical scroll bar on the right side by dragging the scroll box up or down. Also click above or below the scroll box. Move one line by clicking the single arrow at the top or bottom of the scroll bar. (Move up one line now by clicking the bottom arrow now.)
  
• Use keyboard shortcuts. You can move to the end of the document by pressing Ctrl-End and move to the beginning by pressing Ctrl-Home. (The Home and End keys are next to the Page Up, Page Down keys.
  Back to the Beginning

The "desktop" is the farfetched metaphor for the first screen we see after the computer has completed startup. (I would call it the switchboard since that is where you turn on designated programs.) My computer came with more shortcut icons on the desktop than I wanted. I deleted some of them by right-clicking the undesired icon, and on the shortcut menu left-clicking Delete and Yes to send it to the recycle bin. This does not delete the program, only its shortcut.

Let's create a shortcut to a program that you may want, e.g., Internet Explorer: click Start, All Programs, right-click the IE's icon, left-click Create shortcut. At the end of the list of programs "Internet Explorer (2)" appears. Right-click it to show the shortcut menu. Left-click Cut and go to the desktop and left-click Paste.

I often work for a long time on a large file such as this one, and having a desktop shortcut to it is a time-saver because clicking the shortcut opens both the file and the program that originated it. We can make shortcuts to a file by clicking Start, All Programs, Accessories, and Windows Explorer. Select the file (You may need to double-click a folder to show the files.), right-click and drag the file icon to the desktop, release, and left-click Create Shortcuts Here. Another way is to click File, Open, look in the right folder, select the file, right-click and drag the icon to the desktop and release, and click Create Shortcuts Here.

To rename a shortcut, left-click it once to select it, click inside the box to select the text, click again to remove the highlighting, and then edit the name.

By the way, an icon that has a little curved black arrow in a box at the lower left corner of the icon indicates that this is a shortcut that was added and can be deleted.
Back to the Beginning

Notice the three little boxes in the title bar in the upper right-hand corner of this screen. Reduce the size of this page by clicking (now) the middle icon, which is the restore button. Click it again. This time it actually does "restore" the size of this page.

The first little box is the minimize button. Before you click it, notice that the file title is shown in the Windows taskbar below. When you click the minimize button, this page will be hidden, but you can make it reappear by clicking the file title in the taskbar.

The last button with the X icon is the close button. You only click it when you want to close the program that is open.

The Start menu is the gateway to your computer. In the standard configuration the "pinned" programs are shown on the upper left, which are the major programs that you use. You can change these programs, but why bother since you should have shortcuts for them on your desktop.

Windows keeps track of what programs and accessories you use most and puts them on the lower left for convenience.

On the right various components of your system are listed. This is the place to go to get to the Control Panel, Help and Support, Search, etc.

Near the bottom is the green arrow to All Programs. Below that is the button sending you to the options to shutdown--Stand By, Turn Off, and Restart. When I am going to be using the computer later in the day, I choose Stand By, which puts the system in hibernation. On most systems the hard drive quits spinning, but the computer holds in memory whatever you were working on. Don't forget to take advantage of this.

To get on the Internet, you probably used a portal or Internet Service Provider (ISP), which has computers called servers that are constantly running and are connected to a network of other servers all over the world. My service is an ISP with an access number that is a local call, and I have a flat-rate phone service with unlimited calls. My Web site resides on the hard drive of one of my ISP's servers.

Reduce this page to half of the screen and open another Internet Explorer page and reduce it to fit in the other half of this screen.

On the IE menu bar click each of these items to see what is included on their menus:

• File: Click Open (I usually use Browse to find the Web file that I want.), Save As, Print, etc.)
  
• Edit: This offers another way to select, copy, cut, and paste. It also has Find to use when you want to find a specific word or string of words on the current Web page.
  
• View: Click Text Size to see the choices. When you want to print a page, you may want to select a smaller size. Click Source if you want to see how the page was setup in HTML. If you click Full Screen, you can get back to normal by clicking the restore button in the upper left corner.
  
• Favorites is used to add or "bookmark" a Web page or to open a page. For more, see below.
  
• Tools: Click Mail and News and Read Mail, opens Outlook Express.

Check out each of these items on the tool bar:

• Back: Clicking the left arrow takes you back to the previous page. The right arrow takes you to the next page that you have had open.
• Stop icon: Used to stop a search.
  
• Refresh icon: For reloading, which is handy when you are making an HTML page.
  
• Home icon: Returns you to your opening page.
  
• There are three toggling buttons to control the left side panel of this window, and they are Search, Favorites, and History. (If the side panel on the left is showing, press one of the three buttons once or twice to remove it.} Click Search to open a search engine. Click Favorites to show your bookmarks in the side panel, and you can select and delete items. (You can't do that on the Favorites menu.) Click History to show the Web pages you have visited. You can reopen them by clicking them. Click History again to close the side panel.
  
• The next icons for e-mail, printer, and other buttons.

The Address bar shows the address of the page you are viewing. To enter another address, first click the address to highlight it. Click the Delete button to remove it. Type in or paste in the new address and click Enter.

Here are the steps for a search of the Internet:

1. The first step, of course, is to go online.
   
2. Open a search engine in your second window. You may have a search engine button on your tool bar. I use Google, and if you would like to try it, in the Address bar type www.google.com and press Enter.
   
3. Decide on appropriate search terms or phrases. Suppose you are interested in Benjamin Franklin. Type his name in the search term slot and press the Google Search button. There is a blue band near the top of the page. How many hits does it report? I got 4,930,000, but thousands are added daily. When I enclosed the name in quotes to limit the search to his full name, I got 2,140,000. When I added "biography," I got 201,000. When I added "online," I got 59,600. The moral is to narrow your search as much as possible.

After you find your page and if it is a long page, find your search term by using the Find function. It is like looking in an index. Click Edit and Find in This Page. Down at the bottom of the screen right in the word or phrase to be found.

Near the bottom of the Google home page there is a link to "Make Google Your Homepage."

The first thing to do is to create folders for your favorite subjects. Click Favorites (on the menu bar), Organize Favorites, and Create Folder. Delete the "New Folder" name and put in the new folder name and click Close.

To bookmark a page that is open, click Favorites and Add to Favorites. If you have a suitable folder, click it and OK. If you want to bookmark in a new folder, click New Folder, insert folder name, and click OK. The new folder will be open and now click OK.

To put an existing favorite that is not in a folder into a folder, click Favorites and Organize Favorites. select the listing to highlight it, and then click Move to Folder. Click the desired folder and OK.

If you have some "favorites" that you want to delete, click Favorites and Organize Folders. Click the folder and select the listing and click Delete.

If you desire to print the entire Web page using Internet Explorer, first consider using a smaller font size. Then click File, Print, and click Print in the Print dialog box.

If you only want to print a portion of the page, do this:

1. Select (highlight) the section to be printed.
   
2. Click File, Print, and in the Print dialog box under Print Range click Selection, and click Print.

Sometimes we need to tell how many paper pages a Web page will take.

1. Pull up the Web page and click View at the top, then Text Size, and choose text size.
2. Click File at the top, then Print Preview. See if the text size (e.g., Smallest) is large enough. If it is, the number of printed pages is shown at the upper right corner after a moment of two while it counts.

Here are a few ideas you might use:

• When you go to a link and want to be able to get back to your original page without backtracking all of the links that you went through, hold down the Shift key when you click the link. This will open the page in a second screen.
  
• If you are reading a Web page and want to save several passages, open WordPad in a second window. Then select a passage and drag it over to the WordPad window. (You actually drag a copy of the passage.)
  
• I have a tendency to print too many pages. I should save more pages on my "C" drive rather than printing them, or I should save selected passages in WordPad files.
  
• When you are looking for something in a long Web page, don't forget to use the Edit/Find function.
  
• If you see a nifty graphic that is in the public domain that you would like to use in your document, right-click it and click Copy. Go to your document and press Ctrl-V to insert it into your document.
  
• When you are looking at a Web page and want to save exactly what you see on one screen rather than the whole page, press the Print Screen key, which saves the screen shot to the clipboard. Now open Paint and press Ctrl-V to paste in the image. You can save the image or print it. If you don't want the Windows border to show, you can crop the image (read about cropping in Paint above) and save it again.
  
• If you are making a Web page and want to see how someone did something on his page, you can check their text file for the page by clicking View, Source.

When I open Internet Explorer, I want the opening page or home page to display the links I most often use rather than having them book marked in Favorites. If you would like to see a standard opening page that I made, click Master Links. If you would like to use it without any revision for your opening page, here are the steps:

1. With the Master Links page on your screen, click Tools, Internet Options, and the tab for General.
   
2. Under Home page click the Use Current button and OK.

1. With the Master Links page on your screen, click View and Source.
   
2. To select the full source page, on the menu bar click Edit and Select All.
   
3. To copy the page, press Ctrl-C.
   
4. Open WordPad and press Ctrl-V to paste in the page.
   
5. At the bottom delete "URL" in the last two "TD" lines (but do not delete the quotation marks). Fill in the complete Web URLs of your choice. Also replace the two "New Site" in the two cells with the names of the new Web sites of your choice. You can also change any other link that you want to. You can add another column by adding another TD line under each TR. You can add another row at the bottom after the last /TR by beginning with TR in angle brackets, following the TD examples above for the three cells, and ending with /TR in brackets.
   
6. Save your revised Master Links page in a file named masterlinks.html in My Documents folder and for Save as type change to Text Document.
   
7. On Internet Explorer click Tools, Internet Options, and the tab for General.
   
8. Under Home page at Address write the file name and path of your revised Master Links. Press OK.
   Back to the Beginning

I have a shortcut icon on my desk to access Outlook Express. It is also on the Start menu, and we can also access it by clicking the Mail button on Internet Explorer. Here are some operations you can try:

• Send a new e-mail message to yourself at your e-mail address: Click the first button on the tool bar, which is Create Mail. Type Test in the Subject slot and also in the body, click the Send button. Close Outlook Express and after a minute or two open it again and go to your message.
  
• Reply to your own message: Click Reply to send a message just to the sender, yourself. (You would click Reply All to send to all in a newsgroup)
  
• Forward a message to a third party, which for practice will be yourself: Click Forward and in the "To:" slot fill in your e-mail address, and click Send.
  
• Send a file attachment: After you have written a message, click Insert on the menu bar and click File Attachment. This will take you to the My Documents folder where you can change to a different folder if you need to and select a file and click the Attach button.
  
• Open or save a file attachment: You will see a paper clip to the left of the listing in your inbox indicating that there is an attachment. Look in the windowpane below in the "From," "To" shaded area. On the right side click the paper clip. You will get an Open Attachment Warning. Don't open an attachment from someone you don't know because it might contain a virus. You can choose to "Open it" or "Save it to disk." But if you don't want to open or save it, cancel and delete the message in your inbox.
  
• Check your spelling: Outlook Express uses the dictionary in some other program. If you don't have the other program, you must add a spell checker. I use ABCSpell ($14.95) to spell check my messages. I also have a spell checker for WordPad, so I could write my e-mail messages in WP and paste them into Outlook Express.
  
• Put a name in your Address Book: If you receive an e-mail from someone you want in your address book, highlight his name, right-click, and click Add Sender to Address Book. Alternatively, you can click Contacts at the lower right and New Contact and fill in the name and address.
  
• Send a message to someone in the address book: Double-click one of your Contacts listed at the lower left.
  
• The Print or Delete buttons can be clicked after you select one of the incoming messages. If you want to delete several messages, use the techniques mentioned above.
  
• Review your options: Click Tools on the main menu bar of Outlook Express and click Options.
  
• Block sender: When you receive an e-mail from a sender that you want blocked, click on the name in the list of messages, on toolbar click Tools, Message Rules, and Blocked Senders List."

Get out your camcorder and be the Louis B. Mayer of your neighborhood. This is a large subject that you can explore yourself by clicking Start and Windows Movie Maker.

Now let's turn our attention to the great collection of free accessory programs that are bundled with Windows XP.

Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer) maps the organization of all of the folders and files in the system and enables us to view, open, and manage them.

There isn't much onscreen help for using Windows Explorer. The Help button is not specific for Windows Explorer. For an initial introduction I suggest going on the Web to see Windows Explorer: Managing Your Files.

Open Windows Explorer now as a second window beside your reduced browser window:

• Reduce this browser window: Click Restore (middle} button in the upper right corner and drag the reduced window (click and hold down on the menu bar) to the left so that there is no left margin showing in the text.
  
• Open Windows Explorer: Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and Windows Explorer.
  
• Reduce the Windows Explorer window size and drag it to the right so that the scroll bar is against the right edge of your screen. Drag the left border to the right so the window only covers the right half of the screen.
  

(When you open a second window without putting it beside the first window, you can switch from one to the other by clicking in their windows or press Alt-Tab.)

On the left of Windows Explorer you will see a list of folders and under My Documents a group of subfolders. The subfolders may be repeated on the right. To change their appearance from icons to a list, click View on the Tool Bar and click List. For information on the folders, select one, click View and Details. When you put the pointer over a folder on the right, a box will show the size of the folder and the names of the files in it. If you double-click a folder, it will open to show the files. If you right-click a file, you will get a shortcut menu with such choices as Open, Copy, Delete, and Properties. If you click Properties, the location, size, etc. is shown.

If a folder in the directory tree in the left windowpane has subfolders, there is a plus or minus sign in front of it. Try these clicks:

• There should be a minus sign in front of My Documents. Click it and see the subfolders Disappear.
  
• Click the plus sign in front of My Computer, and you will see the drives and Control Panel icon appear.
  
• Click the plus sign in front of Local Disk "C," and you will see the main folders on your "C" drive.
  
• Click the plus sign in front of Program Files, and you will see all of the programs on your "C" drive. Click the minus sign.
  
• Click the plus sign in front of WINDOWS and see how many folders it contains.
• Click the right-angle arrow on the toolbar and see how you move up one level in the file hierarchy.

An easy way to find files is to click Search in Windows Explorer's toolbar (or in the Start menu). Then you will have the option of searching for a file by name or simply by a word or phrase that it contains.

Now let's see how files can be managed with Windows Explorer:

• Select two or more files: In the left pane of WE select Recycle Bin (probably at the bottom). Notice that it shows the deleted files on the right. Now select three consecutive files by clicking the first one, holding down the Shift key, and clicking the last one. Select three nonconsecutive files by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the desired files. You can use these techniques for moving or deleting several files at once.
  
• Create a new subfolder: Select My documents and create a subfolder by clicking the Folder icon in the tool bar and on the left menu panel click "Make a new folder." The new folder will appear in the right windowpane with the tentative name New Folder. It will be selected, so press Delete button and type in new name. Click the folder above to remove brackets. Click Folders icon again to remove the left menu panel.
  
• Rename the folder: Select the new folder and after an instant click the text. It will be highlighted and bracketed. Press Delete button, and then write "Test Folder." Click elsewhere on the page to remove brackets.
  
• Delete the new subfolder: Select "Test Folder" and press the Delete button.
  
• Move a file: Later you may want to move a file to another folder. You open the folder that it is in and point to the file's icon and left-drag it over to the other folder. Alternatively, you can right-click the file, click Cut, right-click the other folder, and click Paste.
  
• Copy a file to another folder: Right-click the files icon, click Copy, point to the other folder, right-click, and click Paste.
  
• Opening a file in Notepad: Try double-clicking a file shown in the right pane to open the file in Notepad or WordPad, it that is where it was created.
  
• See file properties: If you want information on a file, select the file, go to the Menu bar and click the File button and Properties.
  
• Saving and backing up files: See WordPad.
  Back to the Beginning

WordPad is called a text editor, but it is also a nifty little word processor.

Create a shortcut to WordPad now: Click Start, All Programs, and Accessories. right-click WordPad and Create Shortcut. At end of the list of programs see WordPad(2). Drag the icon to the desktop with the left mouse button, and release.

Now put this IE page and the WordPad window side by side as you did with Windows Explorer. (Junior can use this technique when writing a term paper and referring to Web pages.)

When you move your mouse pointer into the WordPad work area, the insertion point vertical line will start flashing, and you are ready to create a document with these steps:

• Click File, Page Setup, and check the paper size, orientation, and margins.
  
• Click Format, Font, and choose a font style and size. (To change the line spacing from single-spacing to double-spacing, select text, press Ctrl-2, and change back to single-spacing, press Ctrl-1. For 1.5 spaces, press Ctrl-5.)
  
• Now enter two short paragraphs.

You are ready to edit your document, but first, you need to know how to select or highlight text. Try selecting text in these ways:

• Select a word by double-clicking it.
• Select a passage by positioning I-beam at one end of the words, holding down the left mouse button, and dragging over the passage. Alternatively, click at the beginning, hold down Shift, (and if necessary use the right or left or up or down arrows), and click at the end.
  
• Select a single line by moving the I-beam to the left margin where it changes to an arrow and then clicking. Select more than one line by holding down the mouse button and dragging the arrow down.
  
• Select a paragraph by triple clicking any word in it.
  
• To select the whole document, press Ctrl-A. For example, you can do this when you want to change the font for the whole document. To deselect, click off to the side of the text.

The most basic editing tools are the delete key for removing text to the right of the insertion point and the backspace key for removing text to the left of the insertion point. You can insert text by positioning the I-beam at the insertion point by moving the I-beam with the mouse and clicking where you want the insertion point to be.

Cut, copy, Paste, and Move are great editing tools for word processing. (Copy and Paste are also handy in other tasks such as in copying things from the Web and pasting them into a word processing document.) Try these operations:

• Copying text: Select some text in one of your WordPad paragraphs and press Ctrl-C. The text is copied on to the Clipboard.
  
• Pasting text: Position the I-beam at the end of your document and paste in the text by pressing Ctrl-V. Since the material stays on the Clipboard until you copy or cut something else, you can paste multiple copies. (If you want to make several slips of text, type text for one slip, copy it, and paste several copies on your page. Then you can print the page and cut off the slips.)
  
• Cutting text: Select some text and press Ctrl-X. Then paste it in at the end of your document.
• Moving text: Select some text and drag it to another place on the document.

Select the first word of your document and then press the Bold, Italic, Underline, and Color buttons and click red. To turn these off, select the text and click them again and click black.

These are great tools. To simply find something, click Edit and Find. Type in what you want to find. This need not be just a word or phrase. You can also find punctuation or spaces. I sometimes put a double space between words. I can search for them and fix them.

To find something and replace it, click Edit and Replace.

You have just made a new document, and you want to save it in a lessons folder.

• Click File and Save As. In the Save As window. Click My Documents in the left menu panel.
  
• Now you need to make a new subfolder by clicking the new folder icon to the right of the "up one level" button. Change the name of New Folder to Lessons. Do you remember how? At the bottom in the "File name:" slot enter "Lesson 1."
  
• In the "Save as type:" drop down box, it should say Text Document, MS format. You are ready to click Save.
  
• Exit WordPad by clicking File and Exit.

Reopen WordPad. Here is how to open your lesson file, revise it, and save it under the same file name as follows:

• Click File and at the bottom of the menu you will see your Lesson 1 file. Click it to open it.
  
• Change something in the text.
  
• To save your work by replacing the same named file, click the save button in your Tool Bar that has an icon that looks like a TV set or click File and Save rather than Save As.

Now hear this!

• When you are working on a long file, save it every few minutes to your "C" drive in the manner described in the previous paragraph. You never know when the power will go off or something else happens that will cause the loss of the file your are laboring on. Trust me; it will happen!
  
• Backup important files after you have saved them on your "C" drive. Since I don't have an internal floppy drive, I added an external floppy drive and a second external hard drive to my computer that I use for backing up files. I could make a backup copy on the "C" drive, but if the drive failed, I would lose everything. For a thorough authoritative discussion of this subject go to Backing Up Your Files.
  
• When I have a number of files to back up, I use this procedure:
  
  • Open Windows Explorer and show the files to be backed up. Click View and click Choose Details and choose Name and Date. Reduce the window to half of the screen.
    
  • Open a second Windows Explorer and show the files on the other drive.
    
  • Select a file on the "C" drive to be backed up, right-click it, click Copy. Go to other window and right click by the files but not on a file. Click Paste. If it is an existing file, you will be asked if you want to replace the file, and you click Yes. You can compare the dates of the files in My documents with dates on the back up files to see that the latest version is backed up.

To practice inserting an object, have your WordPad window open and sized and write some text and click Enter twice after the last text to provide some space.

• If you want to center the art, click the align center button or Ctrl-E.
  
• Click Insert, Object, click bullet for Create from File, change file path and name to desired path and name, OK.
  
• The image will have a frame with little black squares at the corners and sides. To size the picture, point to a square to change the pointer to a double arrow and drag the square in the directions indicated by the double arrow.
  
• To change the position of the picture horizontally, cursor down to the bottom of the picture and the space bar will move it toward the center.

To send a fax from WordPad, take these steps:

• Write your fax document.
  
• Click File, Print, under Select Printer click fax icon (If it doesn't appear, see next step.) bringing up Welcome to Fax Wizard, and follow its instructions. You can ignore the cover page and click Next.
  
• If Fax doesn't appear as a printer option, you need to install that component of Windows. Click Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, on the left margin click Add/Remove Windows Components, check Fax Services, and follow Wizards instructions.

The thing that WordPad doesn't have for spelling challenged people like me is a spell checker. Not to worry! You can add AutoSpell ($19.95). Go to AutoSpell, Complete Check. When it is turned on, it will check your spelling as you work and will underline in red the problem words. (It will not spell check your Outlook Express e-mail messages.)

Windows accessories also includes Notepad which is a small text editor that you probably won't use since you have the much more capable WordPad.
Back to the Beginning

Open Paint in a second window now by clicking Start, All Programs, Accessories, and Paint. By clicking Help you get tabs for Contents, Index, Search, and Favorites.

The white area in the Paint window is your canvas that you will paint on. When you save your drawing, you will save the whole canvas unless you crop your art. So you may want to change the size and shape of the canvas before you begin. To do so, click Images and Attributes. You can change the width and height in units of inches, centimeters, or pixels.

Remember that if you don't like a stroke that you have drawn, press Ctrl-Z. In fact you can press it three times to remove three strokes.

Move the mouse pointer to each of the tool icons on the left, hold for an instant or two, and read the name of the tool. Make a drawing by using the following tools:

• Click the pencil icon on the left, position the pencil in the white area where you want to start drawing, hold down the left mouse button, and move the mouse to draw. Use the paintbrush in the same way. Also try the spray can.
  
• Click the eraser tool (looks like a yellow brick). Click on a part of your drawing. The eraser removes a little square area or anything in the area. You can drag it as you would an eraser.
  
• Click the line tool and click the desired line thickness below. Then position the cursor cross where the line is to begin, hold down on the left mouse button, move the cross to where the line is to end and release. Do the same with the curve tool. After making a line, position the cross on the line and drag to make a curve.
  
• Try making a square box with the rectangle tool. Position the cross where the upper left corner is to be and drag to the right and down.
  
• To make a pencil ellipse, click the ellipse tool and below it click the first of three types (unfilled border). Position the cross at the upper left of where the ellipse is to be and drag to the right and down to make anything from an elongated ellipse to a circle. Also experiment with the other types of ellipses (filled and filled with border).
  
• Try the fill with color tool (a pouring paint can) by first making an unfilled circle. Click the fill tool, click the desired color below, position the paint can in the circle, and click. Now select another color, position the paint can outside of the circle and click to fill the background.
  
• If you erase something and want to fill in with a color that is in the picture, click the pick a color tool (looks like an eyedropper). Click on the desired color, position in the erased part, hold down on the mouse button, and move around.
  
• To add some text, click the text button (with the A icon), position at upper right corner of text location, drag right and down, and release. An insertion point line will blink. Click View and Text Toolbar. Choose font and point size. Start typing. Click outside of the box, and the box will disappear leaving the print.
  
• To select a drawing on the canvas, click the rectangular select tool at the top. Click at the upper left corner of the area to be selected and drag right and down and release. You may delete the selected area or copy it. Now you can do such things as clicking Edit and cut or copy and paste into WordPad document.
  
• To save your whole canvas, click File and Save As. To save part of it, select the part clicking the rectangle at the top of icons, trace around the object, click Edit, Copy to. which brings up My Pictures folder. Give it a name such as drawing1.bmp.

A very simple example of a Paint image is the graphic that I drew at the beginning of this Web page. I only used the rectangle tool, the paintbrush, and the fill with color tool.

Paint is not only a drawing tool, but you can also edit digital pictures.

• Open a graphic in Paint: Click File, Open, change Files of Type to All Picture Files, select a file, and click Open.
  
• Crop the picture: Click the rectangular Select button at the top, even if it is already on. Position the cross, hold down the left mouse button and drag right and down to include all of the desired part and release. Click Edit (or right-click graphic) and left-click Copy To. The Copy To save dialog appears where you can save the selected area or cutout in a file.
  
• Edit the picture: Erase a part and with the Pick a Color button, fill in the part erased with the desired color. You can draw a rectangle around your drawing and fill the rectangle with a color with the Fill with Color button. You can type in text, etc.

• Reduce the size of the page.
  
• Click the PrintScreen key to put the image on the clipboard.
  
• Open Paint and press Ctrl-V to paste in the page.
  
• Crop it as described above.

To open Microsoft Windows Media Player, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, and Windows Media Player.

For an orientation I suggest that you click Help, Help Topics, the Contents tab, and the various subjects.

When you first open Windows Media Player, you should see the Media Guide view. (On the controls on the left Media View will be highlighted in blue.) The Media Guide is a bulletin board showing what is available. It has tabs for Music, Movies, Radio, and Entertainment.

To find out what all of the control icons a t the bottom do just point the mouse pointer at them.

I like to listen to CDs and Internet radio while I am working on the computer. Put on a CD, and a menu automatically appears. We can choose to play the CD or to copy it. Windows Media Player opens automatically and starts playing the CD to please our ears, but the eyes are not neglected. As an added attraction there is a light show. "Now Playing" is highlighted on the top left. The CD should start playing. A play list appears on the right side of the pane. To choose another song, double-click it.

When listening to radio, content is accumulated in the buffer to get the uninterrupted blocks of reception. The buffering takes a little time at the start, so be patient. I have a dial-up connection, and I often listen for long periods without much interruption.

To tune in to a radio station on the Internet, open Media Player and click Radio Tuner (on the left). This starts the dialing to put us online if we are not online. Featured stations are listed on the left. (Here is where I found WUMB Folk Radio, University of Mass., and Classical King FM from Seattle.) On the right side you can find other stations. To find out more on how Radio Tuner works, click Help, Help Topics, Using the Player (on the left), and "Listening to radio stations."

What may surprise you is that you can listen to radio online and at the same time browse the Web. The browsing doesn't interrupt the radio enough to matter.
Back to the Beginning

In case you want to record Junior's first words and don't have a tape recorder just fire up this accessory. You will need a microphone connected to your computer with a sound card (which you probably have) and speakers.

To record your voice, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, and Sound Recorder. To start recording, click the round black icon and speak. The green line in the black field should oscillate as you speak. To stop the recording, click the rectangular black icon. To play the recording, click the left double arrows to get back to the beginning. Then click the round button to play.

For more information go to Windows Sound Recorder.

If you are game player, go to Start, Programs, Games. You will find 11 games.

The calculator is very handy, and to make it handier, create a shorcut for your desktop. Click Start, All Programs, and Accessories. Right-click Calculator and left-click Create Shortcut. At the end of the list of programs "Calculator (2)" appears. Right-click it to show the shortcut menu. Left-click Cut and go to the desktop and left-click Paste.

The calculator uses computer symbols for operators: "multiply by" = * , "divide by" = /. You can enter the numbers by clicking them on the calculator or from the keyboard. (You can use the number pad on the left side of your keyboard by first pressing the "Num Lock" key.

I know; you want a tape so that you can check your entries. Well, you can make a "tape." Open WordPad, and type your calculation, 34+29+51=, select and copy it and paste it into your calculator and presto, you get your answer.

Let's see how smart this calculator is. Try a more complicated calculation: (3*5)+(20/4)/2=. See if the answer is 10. Is that cool or what?

Ah, but there is more. Someone will want a scientific calculator. On the calculator menu bar click View and then click Scientific. In the tool bar see that Dec is bulleted unless you want some other number system. What does the key marked x^2 do? Right-click the key and left-click "What's this?"

Suppose you want to use scientific notation: (5x10^3)x(4x10^2)=. Enter 5, Exp, 3, *, 4, Exp, 2, = (answer: 2000000). Now press F-E (answer: 2.e=6 or 2x10^6).

Windows XP accessories includes several important tune-up tools.

• Let's clean house. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and Disk Cleanup. Choose the drive, which will normally be (C:), OK. Check the files that you want deleted. Temporary files are usually taking up the most space. Click OK.

• What ever happened to ScanDisk, which was an important feature on the Windows Me family of OSs? The older OSs used the FAT file system on the hard drive. ScanDisk was needed to look for problems on the hard drive and fixed some of them. If your OS was installed on your computer when you bought it, you probably have the NTFS file system that is more advanced and doesn't need to be scanned.

• Disk Defragmenter. When we write a file to a drive, the data is stored in adjacent clusters. When we start deleting and adding to files, the data gets scattered around in clusters in different parts of the disk. This makes the drive work less efficiently and more slowly; therefore, after we have done a lot editing, we need to defragment the disk. First, do the disk cleanup. The procedure for Disk Defragmenter is as follows:
  • Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System tools, and Disk Defragmenter.
    
  • If it hasn't already been selected, select the drive and click the Analyze button. If it says, "You should defragment this volume," then close any programs that are running. Disable your virus protection program. Then click the Defragment button if you can spare the use of your computer for an hour or two.
    
  • Choose Rearrange Program Files So My Programs Start Faster and Check the Drive for Errors. Choose This Time Only--- or Every Time---.
    
  • Click OK, OK.

• Scheduled Tasks is used to schedule tasks such as virus scans so that they will be performed regularly:
  • Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System tools, and Scheduled Tasks to bring up the list of tasks that have been scheduled.
    
  • To add a task, click Add Scheduled Task and follow instructions.

• Character Map. Suppose you want to write a symbol that is not on your keyboard such as the division symbol used in arithmetic.

  • Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and Character Map.
    
  • Click the desired symbol and click Select, and Copy. Now go to the insert point in your document and press Ctrl-v.

• System Restore is a very comforting utility on Windows XP because it can undo bad changes made to the system by faulty software or other things and restore previous settings. For example, I recently lost my sound. I restored the system to a restore point of a week earlier, and I got my sound back.

  • Close any programs that are running.
    
  • Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System tools, and System Restore.
    
  • To choose the date to which you want it restored. click "Create a restore point" and follow the instructions.
    
  • Then click "Restore my computer to an earlier time" and follow instructions.

• System Information gives a lot of technical and useful information about your system. Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System tools, and System Information. First, it will show you the System Summary. You can get information on four parts of your system by clicking the parts in the column on the left. For example, click the plus sign by Hardware Resources.
  Back to the Beginning.

Windows XP has a firewall accessory. The purpose of a firewall is to keep the bad guys out and, if they get in, to keep them from sending your personal information out. Windows comes with a firewall that does the former but not the latter. Therefore, I turned it off and obtained a two-way firewall.

To turn Firewall on or off, click Start, Control Panel, Security Center, and under Virus Protection click Windows Firewall. Click the On or Off button.

In addition to a firewall you need other protection from viruses, malware (spyware and adware), worms, and trojans. I use Norton Internet Security, which is advertised as all-purpose protection, and I update it frequently. I also scan with Spybot and Adaware, which are free programs. For more information go to Virus and Security Center.

If you want to review or change your system component's settings, the Control Panel is the main place to look. You can reach it from the Start menu. There are buttons for ten categories that you need to know about.

Even if you are a skilled computer user, you will have problems from time to time. Before trying to remedy the problem, think about it for a while, consider what troubleshooting information might be pertinent, and proceed cautiously. In some instances you will need professional technical help depending upon your level of skills.

Windows XP is more stable than the Windows 95, 98, Me family of operating systems, but it will lock up (freeze, crash) occasionally. You can usually move the mouse pointer, but when you click buttons, nothing happens. When your computer locks, the first thing to do is wait for a few minutes. Then the time-honored solution with XP as well as previous editions is to press Ctrl-Alt-Del once to summon the Windows Task Manager. It shows which task is "Not Responding." Select its name and End Task button. If you do not get a response, wait a minute, and click End Task again and wait several minutes. If you still get a message that the program isn't responding, go through the shutdown, restart procedure.

Once upon a time there was a preacher, an engineer, and a computer technician traveling in a car, and the engine started sputtering. The preacher said, “Let us pray.” The engineer said, “Let's check the fuel system.” The computer technician said, “Let's stop, shut down the engine, and restart it.” This probably wouldn't fix the engine problem, but you would be surprised how often it will fix a computer problem.

For a problem you can't solve a good first step is to go to Start, Help and Support Center, and Fixing a Problem and other topics.

The Internet includes an enormous amount of material on computers. The trick is to decide on which search words to use to find what is needed.

Here is a sample of some good sites:

• Newbie Club.com
  
• HowStuffWorks
  
• Don Lamont's site
• Compguys Techweb

Before we add a new program, we should ask ourselves if we really want that program. Adding too many programs has been one of my weaknesses.

The first step is to close all programs. Then insert the program CD and follow the instructions. Usually the setup program will be opened automatically. If it doesn't open, click Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, Add New Programs, and CD or Floppy. The next step is to register your software. Before you use the program, it is necessary to restart the computer.

One good source of shareware and freeware on the Internet is Download.com. Another is Tucows. Since downloading programs is a slow process, I like to do it after 10:00 PM when the internet traffic is lighter and when I am not likely to get a phone call on my one line. I also often run another program such as a word processor while I am downloading.

Downloading some files such as music files has the risk of infecting your computer with a virus or other badware.

As an example, here is how I downloaded the WinZip program:

1. I went to Download.com, searched for WinZip, and clicked "Download now."
2. On the next sreen, "Opening WinZip 90.exe," the "Save to Disk" was already bulleted, which is the choice I would have made. (Sometimes you are given another choice that is "Run the program--", which you don't want.)
3. The downloading begins, and when it is finished, click "All files downloaded to Desktop," which opens the Desktop folder.
4. Double click WinZip 90 for Setup.
5. Click Setup, and it says "Will install to Program Files," click OK. (Additional steps for WinZip: "Thank you for installing WinZip," click Next; "WinZip Quick Start," click Next: "WinZip Setup," "Express Setup," click Next; "Association," OK, Next; click Finish.)

Program files that we download are often compressed into .zip files, but they are usually automatically unzipped when they are downloaded and are then “.exe” files. If the downloaded file has a .zip file extension, you need to unzip it with an extraction utility.

If you want to compress files, you will need a compression utility, such as WinZip. A good alternative is Stuffit Standard Addition. If you buy it, you can download a free extraction program.

You might be tempted to remove a program by deleting it. Don't! First, click Start, All Programs, point to the program, and if the submenu includes the Uninstall or remove option, click it. If there is no Uninstall option, go to Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Program, select the program and click Remove.

I probably can't help you with technical problems, but your feedback will be welcome. If you have comments, suggestions, criticisms, or corrections to offer, please e-mail them to me, Bob Parvin: bandcparvinXhotmail.com (Substitute @ for X. I'm trying to hide my address from spammers.)