Computer Info – April 5, 2000

This Week’s Program

        Meeting canceled for this week due to the fact that the library needs to use the room. Therefore, this handout finally catches up with a few of the things that John discussed at his meeting – and which everyone likes typed up in the handout.

How we view color on a monitor and a printer

        This is a very good site for discussing the various levels of color in a computer and how we see and interpret the color for the monitor and the printer.
                  http://www.hp.com/photosmart/tech_center/digital_color.html

System Resources

        How many icons do you have next to your clock on the taskbar?? Most people should have less than six. All of these icons represent something that is running and therefore using system resources. Do you need to have all of them running? They should only be running IF it is a program that you use. But if you decide that you do not use one of these programs – how do you stop it from running?
        If you place your cursor over these icons, you will be able to identify what they are. If you right click on any of these icons, you can DISABLE them or EXIT them. This is a safe way of doing it because it only stops the program from running UNTIL the computer is rebooted – then the program (and icon) will be there again and running. If you wish to stop any of these programs from automatically running in the background every time that you start your computer – then the choice is different for each program.
        For instance, you do not have to have the Windows Scheduler running UNLESS it is something that you use. To stop this program from appearing (or running in the background), then you would double click on the icon to open up the program. Then under the ADVANCED menu, click on STOP USING THE TASK SCHEDULER.

Send To

        The Send To folder can be customized to your computer system. To locate the Send To folder, open MY COMPUTER – then C:DRIVE – then the WINDOWS folder – and you will find the SEND TO folder. Open it by double clicking on the folder. Everything that is located in that directory, should be a shortcut – so if you find that you do not use the items listed there – DELETE them. Of course, you will want to leave the A:DRIVE.
        Now you can place a shortcut to other drives – such as a ZIP DRIVE – or directory on another hard drive. You can do this by resizing your window so that it does not use more than half of your screen. Then you can open up a second copy of My Computer – resize that window so that it does not use more than half of your screen, right click on the drive or folder that you want to be able to send files to and drag it to the first window that you had (which is the SEND TO folder). When you release the right mouse button, you will be ask if you wish to create a shortcut here.
        The next time that you right click on a file, one of your choices will be to SEND TO –ZIP DRIVE (or whatever shortcut you made in the SEND TO folder.

Download with Demon – Run from location/save to disk

        When you are updating your DAT files for your McAfee anti-virus program, you have a choice of DOWNLOAD WITH DEMON or DOWNLOAD WITHOUT DEMON. What does that mean? If you download with demon and you are cut off during the download, then the next time that you start your download again, it will start from the spot where you left off.
        You also have a choice of RUN FROM LOCATION or SAVE TO DISK. Which should you use? Again the choice is yours. But, we do recommend using the SAVE TO DISK option. This way you have a backup of the file so that you can pass it on to someone else to save them from having to download it – and you will have it if you ever need to put your computer system back together.