Chapter 5

Lets get it together. 

The desktop. The single most important part of the computer. Except it isn't. Because you can turn it off and use the start button. So quite a crap intro really. 

Only I rarely use the start button. I rarely use desktop icons either. I have another trick up my sleeve which I shall let you into later, but first.

You see that desktop you have? You should have a few icons dotted around? Well as you install more software, those icons will slowly take up the real estate. What do you have so far? 

• Computer/My Computer: This icon is pretty essential. This is the main navigation button for your computer. If the file is anywhere on your computer it can and will be found here.
• Trashcan/recycle: The 'oh shit' folder. I highly recommend you keep this. If you delete a file, it ends up here. If you find you have deleted it by accident, then you can rummage around and fetch it back out. 
• My Documents: The default folder for anything you save. Good because it keeps it all in one location, bad because it keeps it all in one location. 

These icons are pretty much standard across all computers. Depending on where you got your computer from, you may have some of the following:

• Network/Homegroup:  This is the icon that opens up network connections, and allows you to access files on other computers.
• <Manufactures name> help: Usually, the company that supplies the computer will fill your hard drive with loads of useless crap. This is usually the place they put it. The only useful thing you will ever need in here, if it's in here, is the restore factory settings program. If you have your own windows disc, then this isn't a problem. If the computer came with Windows installed, and they did not give you a full copy of Windows on a disc, then I suggest you buy a copy of Windows. (I will explain more later)
• Some anti virus program: If you did what I said in the previous chapter, then this should be AVG free: If not, then find the program and remove it before installing AVG free. Usually, manufacturers put some overpriced crap, or a crap version of overpriced crap hoping you are stupid enough to pay for the full version of the overpriced crap. For 99% of average home users, you will not benefit from a paid anti virus software. AVG is perfectly capable of preventing 99% of the virus problems you will encounter.
• Printer: If your computer is the only one in the house with a printer attached to it, then you don't need this icon here. If however, you have several computers in the house, all networked, and a couple of printers connected, then it can be handy to have an icon for each printer so you can drag and drop the file to be printed onto the chosen printer. If you don't understand what I just said, then you don't need a printer icon on the desktop.

So how do you keep it tidy and icon free? The same principal for housing. As streets gets crowded, you need more space, what do you do? Create another layer or add floors to the buildings. Or with computers, you create folders.
So a busy desktop can be made to look sweet and clean:

Before

After

If it looks weird, that's because my desktop covers 2 monitors. The right one is my main monitor hence why all the icons are on there.
Doesn't it look much neater with all the icons tucked away?
Yeah, the folders are full of icons now but time for another little trick.
Now I am not sure if this will work, but I really hope so so here we go:
If you look in the bottom right corner, next to the system tray, there is a button marked 'desktop'. This is a pop up menu that allows you to manipulate the desktop like you can the folders in the start menu.

If you click on the '>>' part, a pop up menu happens thus:

This then allows you to access all the desktop folders, and the contents inside in a nice, alphabetical manner and keeping your desktop tidy. In fact, once you get the hang of this, you can even turn the desktop icons off altogether, leaving your wallpaper free for you to enjoy.

I keep all my icons in 2 folders. Games and Utilities. Games is for games, naturally. And utilities are for anything that is system bases or productive. The other icons you can see in that list are ones hidden by default, or temporary folders. For example the 'Donna's Backup' is a copy of a laptop hard drive I am fixing for someone. I am just waiting on parts before I copy it back after giving it a fresh windows install. The sharing folder, is a folder I created to pass files onto computers on my network running XP. Again, I am not a qualified expert on computers, I am largely self taught. But I struggled to find a nice way to network Windows 7 and XP together. So for XP to get files from 7, I put the files in that folder. Crude, but it works. The 2 images are ones I have used in this blog, and they will be shifted to archive once I finish writing. I always put Work in Progress on the desktop, then store it when I am finished.

So now I open up to you. If you have any questions or queries you would like to ask me, tweet them to me @theclunk or leave me a message here.
They could be about me, or about my computer, any problems you may have? Ask me for recommendation's, anything really. If I can help, I will.

All the best.

Chapter 4

Now what?

OK, so you have your wonderful new computer home, its all connected up, now what?

Turn it on of course. Press that big round button on the front, watch as the Windows logo flashes before your eyes. Some new computers will have some kind of registration screen. Fill in the details here and follow the prompts until the desktop shows itself and awaits you to dirty it. 

Now a lot of ISP's will send you a disc with their router and tell you to use it to install the router. Don't bother. Most of the stuff on there is pretty much useless. If you have a router, and the patch lead, just plug it in. The computer will do the rest. Within 30 seconds you have internet.  

Now the first thing I recommend you do before anything else is use windows update. Keep updating till you can update no more.

The second thing I recommend is defrag the hard drive.
Defrag is such a dirty word to me, as it is often something people are told to do by helpline call centres and people who don't have a fucking clue about computers. But on a fresh windows install, in my mind, it is essential. 

• Technical bit. Feel free to skip to next paragraph:
  I will try and describe in laymans terms what a defrag actually does.
  Imagine if you will that your hard drive is a library. Imagine that there is a shelf, the first shelf you come to, and it is rammed solid with books. Everything from phone books to the local takeaway menu. Each book represents a file on your hard drive. Now how the file system works is this:
  When you delete a file, imagine that a book is taken out. Lets say you have deleted an email. Imagine that the email is a menu for 'burgers are us'. The computer takes that menu off the shelf, and throws it away. Now lets say you want to install a large program. For example, photoshop. Imagine that photoshop is a local telephone directory. What windows does is it searches for the first space in the hard drive. In this case, where the menu was. Obviously the space is not big enough. But Windows is a bit anal about this, so what it does is take as much as the phone book as possible, and ram it into that space. Once the space is full, it looks for the next space. Rams as much in there as possible, and so on until the whole file is stored.
  What defrag does is goes around the library, looking for all these part books, and fits them together so its a whole book again.
• Upside: Files are together, quicker to load, and more larger space is created:
• Downside: Time consuming, increases wear and tear alarmingly. (1 hour of defrag is equal to a months average hard drive use in normal circumstances) and can actually cause file curroption if used too often. 
• Do we understand? Good, then lets continue.

 The reason I say do a defrag now is quite simple. During a windows install, (or any program for that matter) the files are copied to the hard drive, then re-arranged as they are being decompressed, opened and installed. Believe me, a defraggle image on a hard drive with just windows installed has quite a lot of holes in it.

Now at this point, a lot of unseasoned people will be going on about no anti virus software, and being connected to the internet. So? There is no need for it just yet. You have only visited the windows update page, and I highly doubt that a Microsoft website will be compromised. You are safe at the moment.

Next thing to do is look at any software that may of came bundled with the computer. If it has any kind on anti virus software on there then uninstall it now. If you get any kind of pop up before this point telling you about it, just close the window with the red X in the top corner. With a lot of computers I have seen and worked on, bundled antivirus is a pain in the arse. You get 30 days then you get pop ups every 5 mins telling you to pay for it at a cost of £30 a year. On one computer the antivirus refused to be uninstalled until you bought it. I had to edit the registry and manually remove the program by extracting the hard drive, and connecting it to Bertha. There may of been an easier way, but at the time I didn't see one. So remove it now. There are plenty of free antivirus software programs online. I personally recommend AVG and I install it on every computer I build and I recommend it to everyone I need to. When you go to the AVG page, it will usually divert you to the cnet website to download. This is ok. So install and run AVG and let it scan.

Firewalls: Do you have a router supplied by your ISP? Then don't bother with one. The windows firewall is good enough. As a home user, it is very, very unlikely that a hacker will try and hack his way onto your computer unless you are Prince William, a bank manager, or a very well known rich man. There is no benefit to them spending half hour to hack Miss Jenny Jones, 131 Acia avenue, Little Bottomwood, Surreyshire, PI55 0FF, who is a single mum, with 32 kids, a 1994 Mondeo and £12.83 in the bank.
However, it is possible that you inadvertently download and activate a virus that will send hackers info from your hard drive. I will cover this in a later chapter.

Once this is done, you are pretty much ready to use the computer.
Start by installing any software you need. (printer drivers, mobile phone software, etc..)
Once that is done, I recommend having order to your desktop. There is nothing worse than having dozens of icons on the desktop, then spending hours looking for an icon you need.

In the next chapter, I will breifly touch on organising your desktop and keeping it tidy.

All the best.

Chapter 2

Box of Shineys

First off I would like to highlight that there are 3 different type of personal computers (PC's).

• Netbook: Small things. Look like laptops. Usually with a screen size of 8 to 12 inches. Pretty much useless for anything more than checking emails or browsing the web. Keys (for me, anyway) tend to be too small to do any sustained type of typing. I find that I tend to miss type often on them. And often end up with cramp.
• Notebook/laptop: OK for occasional use for a home user. Tucks away when not in use, just like a normal computer in use. The name is misleading though. Laptop suggests you can sit it on your knee and use it all day. Don't. You will hurt after a while. Having the laptop so low down is an unnatural way to type. Your neck will hurt from looking down at it, and the heat it gives off will make it very uncomfortable to use on your lap. If you insist on getting a laptop, use it on a tray, laptop stand or table, and I highly recommend getting a USB mouse to go with it. Track pads can be awkward to use after a while, especially if playing games or trying to edit photos. They can be quite powerful machines, but their life expectancy is very short. And apart from memory upgrades, they are often hard to upgrade and repair.
• Desktop: This is pretty much any computer that is designed to be on a desk. In this category, we have towers, shuttles and, er, desktops. These are always the best value for money, the most customisable, and the best for prolonged use. Always get a dedicated desk for it, and set it up so the keyboard is at elbow height and your eyes are level with the top of the monitor.
  Generally it is understood that a PC is out of date once it gets to 18 months old. I will let you into a little secret here. My computer, which I call Bertha, is 16 years old. How I hear you ask? She started life as a computer bought in 1996. Back then she was a 200mmx Intel CPU, 32 Meg of ram with a 4 gig hard drive in a white case, with a 12 inch VGA monitor, and a web cam for £1,999. Since then, she has never been replaced as a whole. She just kept getting upgraded. In that 16 years, her upgrades have come to a total of around £1,600. That is £100 per year since new to keep her up to date. This is easily the cheapest and best way to go with computers.

OK, so you decide which type of computer you want. Now how do you go about getting one?

Most people, for arguments sake we will call them lemmings, will go to the large high street outlets. This is fine. And to be honest, I expect someone without a computer to do this. Just remember this though. No matter the spec of the personal computer you have just bought, you can find it up to 50% cheaper on line. Note I say up to. The internet has companies that rely on name to up their profits. Cough dell cough.

Now I have said it before, and I will say it again. I have a personal dislike to Dell computers. I am not saying that they are crap, but I do not like them. So I better explain why.

1. ten years ago or more, if you wanted to upgrade a dell computer, you had to buy dell parts. They would manufacture the internals so you could not use generic parts.
2. Drivers. I once had to fix a dell computer. Getting dell drivers at the time was a pain in the arse. You had to have Win OEM number, serial number, and other such info that was long gone.
3. Out of the 186 computers I have fixed so far, I have injured myself 6 times. Each of these times was on a dell.
4. Peoples attitudes. The amount of times I have heard 'It shouldn't break because its a Dell.' Seriously, in my experience, if it's a dell its harder to fix. In fact one computer repair guy I once knew charged a £20 surcharge on the repair of dell computers, regardless of faults. Partly to put people off using him to repair them as he hated doing so.
5. A friend once ordered a dell computer. The cost was £1,300. I told her I could build a computer for a similar spec for at least 25% less. She told me if I could she would give me 50% of the difference. So I did. Including monitor, windows Vista and peripherals, my computer came in at £815. that earned me £240. (2007 prices)

So there you have it. My reasons for not liking dell. Please understand though that Dell have millions of happy customers. And I respect that. But I will never be one of those customers.

Anyway, high street retailers are OK for your first computer, but do not go for the expensive option. As I said in chapter 1, get a basic machine for your first computer. A standard desktop will be fine.

But what if you want to upgrade?

Lets assume you have a standard desktop. You find it gathering dust. You use it maybe 2 or three times a week. In this instance I would recommend you get a laptop. Used properly, it will be issue free.

But what if you find your desktop lacking? You want to play games, but the computer isn't man enough? Then upgrade it. For £80 you can get more RAM and a GFX card. Your £400 desktop has just become a games rig.

Find other people within the household fighting over the computer? Your next option is to buy a second computer. You only need one printer, router, scanner. The second one could even be a laptop.

You find out about watching films on-line for less than a SKY TV subscription. Then what? Easy. Connect the PC to the TV. Or get a dedicated computer for the TV. This is where shuttle PC's come in handy.

Your options are endless. I hope to cover them all in future subjects.

Chapter one.

Choosing your computer.

Many years ago I was asked to leave a well known computer retailer. Why? Because I stopped them ripping off a customer.

Whilst browsing the wares within the aforementioned computer retailer within their Worcestershire branch, I happened upon a conversation between a middle aged lady and a store assistant. The conversation went thus:

(Note: This happened about 2001. Before most, if not all, video chat software we take for granted nowadays)

Assistant: 'Can I help you madam?'

Lady: 'Yes, my daughter has recently moved to Australia, and I would like a computer so I can email her.'

A: 'And what sort of computer were you thinking of?'

L: 'I have no idea, I know nothing about computers.'

A: 'Follow me madam'

The assistant walks past most of the computers and goes to the second most expensive computer in the shop. It was labelled at £3,500 ish. (It was 2001 remember)

A: 'May I suggest this computer madam. It has (Reels of tech spec)'

L: 'Will it email Australia?'

A: 'Yes.'

L: 'It's very expensive'

A: 'Well it does have to email Australia.'

I laughed out loud at this point, and asked if I could intervene. I informed the woman that the assistant was ripping her off, and I gave her the address of an independent computer store in a neighbouring town that did computers starting at £300. She thanked me and left the store. 5 minutes later, a store manager asked me to leave and refrain from entering the store again.

I did and I haven't.

And back to today. And still I find that people have, buy or use computers that do not fit in with the way they use them.

One example are people that have spent out on a top end machine, and all they do is email and facebook. For this sort of user, a netbook would surely be better.

Another example are some laptop users. Yes I can understand the need for a small uncluttered computer. But when the laptop is sat on the desk, permanently plugged into the mains, and connected via a cable to the router rather than the wireless, I can't help think 'what is the point of that?'. Especially when shuttle pc's can be bought or build for a less than a laptop, and gives you the option for cheaper upgrades in the future. A medium use laptop would last about 5 years before it needs replacing. A mid to low range laptop would cost about £400. For less than half that, you could upgrade a shuttle PC to last another 5 years. Yes you wont have the portability, but when the laptop sits on the same computer desk in the corner for 5 years, where is the issue?

And finally, we have the over eager netbook users. Those that got one with a mobile phone contract. They push that little box to its limits. Trying to watch a youtube video, while playing a facebook game, all on a tiny 10 inch screen. These people really want to get a laptop.

So why aren't there any guides out there for what you want, need and is best for your uses?

I would suggest that people looking at buying a computer and are pretty clueless on their best option to contact me and I will suggest them something. But that would be pretty pointless as 90% of people that read blogs are seasoned computer users so would know what they want/need.

Another option for replacing a computer is upgrading them. I have been doing this for years. I have never had a top end PC, but a capable one. It still meets the minimum requirement for a lot of new games. It has 2 screens so I can multi task with ease. In fact, as I write this on the main screen, my 7 year old daughter is sat beside me, watching 'Charlie and Lola' on the other screen.

As it currently stands it has a E7700 Dual core CPU, 3 gig of ram, a BFG Tech GTX280, and 2 hard drives totalling 860 gig. And due to me upgrading it has cost less than £100 a year to get it to this spec. Most of the old parts I have kept to make into another computer for the kids. My next set of upgrades will be expensive though, I need to change the motherboard, CPU and RAM in one hit. So that will be at least £200.

Finally, a lot of people say to me 'My computer is old and slow, I need a new one.' When they do, I say to them 'give me 24 hours with the computer and £20* and I can make it work as new. They are usually surprised at how much faster a computer can be just by basic maintenance. Basic stuff that anyone can do. No matter how computer illiterate they think they are. I hope to be doing a few guides on this in future blogs.

For a rough guide of what sort of PC suits your needs, then there is only really one option. If you don't know what you need, get a cheap desktop computer. Why? If you don't know anything about computers, it is the best starting place to learn. If you want more from your computer, a desktop is cheapest to upgrade. If you find that you don't use the resources to their limit, then trust me, in 5 years you will. Then it would still be cheaper to upgrade.

Coming next: Before you switch on. 

*I never used to charge. I used to do it for free. But I kept getting people taking the piss. So I decided to charge. It worked. The people who took the piss don't ask for help any more.