Apples

I bought a Macbook Pro from the Apple store last summer. It is just a laptop but there are a few differences. Firstly the price- about 3 times more than a standard laptop. A different operating system, compact and light, long battery life, fast, not so prone to collapse and viruses and nice to look at. It is made out of a solid piece of aluminium.

My learning curve was steep!

If you are thinking about getting one, you are investing in something that will still work fast in 10 years, which is a real positive. There are some great aspects, but I would heartily recommend that you took up the course of lessons offered by Apple to new users. This costs £79 for a year of one to one lessons. (This needs to be bought with the Macbook or Apple computer) Needless to say there is a catch! You can only book up to 2 weeks ahead, and only book one lesson at a time. The lessons are really popular, so it is sometimes hard to get a lesson when you want. The trainers are great in general, but vary!

One word of advice learned from experience is that whilst Apple have the reputation of not getting viruses or suffering from total failure, this is not correct! They need to be backed up just like any other computer. This is made easy by their software called Time Machine which comes as standard. All it requires is for an external hard drive to be plugged in and it does the rest for you. Apple is now one of the largest companies in the world and virus writers are now targeting them ( in the past there were so few users that it wasn't worthwhile!)

I can offer lessons using Apple products, Macbooks and Apple Mac as well as ipods and ipod touch, and iphones.

Printers, Photocopiers and scanners

I have noticed a rather surprising misconception amongst many folk...
Several clients have thought they were scanning things when they are actually only photocopying.
There seems to be quite a lot of confusion about this, so I thought it worthy of a mention on the blog.
Just to clarify things...

A photocopy is simply a paper copy of something you want to duplicate. This can be done in black and white or colour (if your printer has a colour ink cartridge!)
A photocopy doesn't need your computer to be turned on and your printer doesn't even need to be connected to the computer to do this.

Printing needs a computer connection and the computer must be turned on. The printer must also have been "introduced" to the computer so they know and recognise one another. Once this has been done you can print out emails, letters or other documents and pages from the internet as well as photos.

Scanning is really printing in reverse....You can copy photos and documents onto your computer by placing them on the glass plate of the printer/scanner face down and closing the lid.
It can be a good idea to scan in your important documents so that you have a computer copy of them should you ever lose them. You can also scan in old and precious photographs and store them on your computer.
You have to tell your computer where to save the scans and you need to give them a name too.

Right and Left Click

There is much confusion amongst my students about whether to right or left click.

In case you are one of those people. Let me make it simple for you.

Left click to tell the computer where you want to type, what you want to look at and to make menus go away when you don't want them.

Double left click- usually a tap tap, quite close together if you want to open a document or folder, or navigate to a website from a website address

If you make a mistake about which button to click- there is no need to panic or worry- you won't do any damage, all that will happen is that a menu will open. You can just left click anywhere to make it go away. If you do want to use the menu that you get if you right click, you can then usually cut, copy, paste, save and delete from the menu on the list.

Try it now! Don't be afraid! That's just the way children learn- press all the buttons and see what they do!

Back to school

September is the start of a new school year. Not just for children either! I have had lots of enquiries about computer lessons in the last couple of weeks from people eager to learn new skills after the summer break. Many of them have to pluck up courage to call me and reveal their fear of computers and most are relieved at how they can overcome this very quickly after the first lesson! Mrs PC is well rested after her summer break and ready to help!

Back ups

Backing up is so often overlooked until it is too late...

If your computer or laptop were stolen or lost... what would you lose?
For most people, it is a disaster, especially if they are keen photographers. To lose all your photos is a tragedy.
It is therefore vital to keep a backup somewhere that can't be lost or stolen.

There are many ways to back up- onto CD rom or DVD, onto an external hard drive- many of these back up automatically- but could be stolen if your computer goes walkabout, or online.
I favour all 3- a belt and braces approach!

I have recently backed up my whole hard drive to an online backup service called Carbonite.
This saves all my data in cyberspace and can never be lost or stolen. It costs £50 a year and backs up my computer continuously. There is no limit to how much can be uploaded, unlike many other online backup services. It took a very long time, but I can now relax!

What to dust with!

This is a good kind of duster for computers and keyboards. It is a synthetic type of feather duster.

Dust

Common household dust is the enemy of computers. Have you noticed that your computer or laptop seems to attract dust?
It is a good idea to keep the place you use your computer dusted, and to open up the case of your computer and dust with an air duster and hoover every so often (do this carefully).
When your computer or laptop is turned off you can give your screen a wipe- you can buy special screen wipes- but a damp cloth works fine- and also wipe the keyboard clean and dust between the keys.