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Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things,
At The Computer!

Notes from the Seminar:

Email Clients and Webmail

Email clients are software programs which reside on your computer and allow your email, address book, etc. to be stored directly onto your computer.  Clients include programs such as:  Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, IncrediMail, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc. 

Some advantages of using an email client include: 
1) being able to read and work with your email even when you are not online.
2) having more storage. Most ISPs limit the amount of space you can use to store emails which means older emails may be deleted. With client email software, the amount of space is limited only by the size of the hard drive in your own computer.
3) having your address book more readily available.

You are using webmail whenever you open your browser and go to your ISP's mail portal.  Your emails are stored online as is your address book, etc. 

Some advantages of using webmail include:
1) having your email stored online and backed up by your ISP. This allows you to recover your email and contacts after a hard drive crash on your computer.  (Remember, ALL hard drives crash; it's just a matter of time.)
2) being able to access your email and contacts from another computer with Internet access, no matter where that computer is located.
3) having your ISP automatically delete old mail. Yes, if you are a person who never empties the "Deleted" folder, your ISP will take care of it for you.

I used the Post Office analogy to explain client and web email.  If you place a piece of mail out into your mailbox and a postal worker picks up the mail, takes it to the main, local post office, and then, on the other end, the receiving post office gives it to a carrier who delivers it to the address on the envelope, that is "client" to "client" mail.  If you take the mail to your local post office and the person on the other end goes to his/her post office to pick up the mail, that is basically how webmail works.

You can read a past Question Of The Week email regarding client and web mail programs by clicking HERE.

Email addresses

We talked about the fact that there can be NO spaces in an email address.

Adobe Reader

We talked about the fact that Adobe Reader is used to open files which end with .pdf.  (PDF stands for: Portable Document Format.)  You can read more details about Adobe Reader by re-reading on of our past Question Of The Week emails found HERE.

Picture Formats

Pictures come in different formats.  Here are a few examples:

In our quiz, I used a file name which ended in .avi, which is a movie format, not a picture ending.

For more info on pictures, please join us for our November, 2009, seminar which will be all about digital pictures!

Browsers

Remember, a browser is software which converts web pages from a mass of confusing coding into something we can easily see and work with.  Browsers include (but there are others) Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera.

Desktop

Your computer's desktop is the window which appears containing icons which represent programs, folders, files and shortcuts.

Virus Protection

Windows Updates, anti-virus programs and firewalls all work to keep viruses off your computer.  It's important to keep all three of these up-to-date.

BCC:

If you send an email to a group of people who don't know each other, you should always use the BCC: (Blind Carbon Copy) field.  Please re-read one of our Question Of The Week emails where you'll find more in-depth info on this subject - click HERE.

Storing Documents

Documents should be stored under "Documents" on your computer, not on the desktop or in pictures, etc.  Here is a good tutorial on organizing your computer files which we put together some time ago.  Please take some time and read through it by clicking HERE.

Hardware vs. Software

Hardware is concrete!  Examples include:  hard drive, motherboard, video card, webcam, mouse, etc.  Windows 7 is an example of software.

Windows 7 Tool

As I promised in the seminar, here is the link for the Windows 7 test tool - download and run this if you want to see if your computer is ready for Windows 7:  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx.  Please follow the instructions carefully.

Malware

I warned everyone to be careful as malware infections on computers have been terrible lately.  Some Malware, if let onto your computer, can turn off your anti-virus program and your firewall thus allowing someone else to have control over what your computer is doing - often in the background without your knowledge. 

Musical Quiz

Our "Swing" musical quiz included:

Thanks to everyone for all the good questions!

Previous Seminars

Someone asked if our previous seminars are still online and available.  The answer is "Yes!"  Here are the links:

Thanks again for coming.  We hope you learned a few things and that you enjoyed our time together!