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OT: Need computer advice

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Gloss
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
1916 Posts

Initially Posted - 12/21/2008 : 09:08:27

Hi folks
I have a new computer with Windows Vista. Maybe now I should start learning about it. Could anyone recommend a good book, or maybe a DVD which would teach me stuff such as:
How to E mail a photo.
How to transfer movies from my camera and print a DVD
How to copy DVD movies (what software to I need to bypass any encryption)
I know this is really basic, but I'm really adverse to computers.
Also, my new HP did not come with Word. Where do you get the best deal?
I just got a flyer from the University of Tennessee, and they have a vista class, but during the day only. Sorry if I have to work to support my sailing addiction. It's no wonder they rank 49 out of 50 in public universities (but they are paying their fired coach 125k/month for the next 48 months, sheesh)

Frank Gloss
Formerly 89WK/TR
85 Ericson 32-3 shoal draft "Molto Bene"

Edited by - on

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
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Response Posted - 12/21/2008 : 10:01:30

Try the "____ for Dummies" series. Except in Microsoft commercials, I haven't heard much good about Vista. Most people I know either stayed with XP - s.p. 2, changed back to it, or went Mac . I used it at a condo last year and it made me glad that I went Mac 6 - 7 yrs ago.

Edited by - on

Gloss
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
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Response Posted - 12/21/2008 : 10:50:56

I figured that Vista for dummies would be a good start. Unfortunately new computers come with vista only, not XP.
I was unwilling to spend an additional thousand dollars to get a comparably equipped Mac.
I spend the money instead on a Line Control Whisker pole for my Ericson.

I remember back in the early 80's that Lotus 123 came with a tutorial disc, that was why I figured some kind of tutorial disc would be good.

Edited by - on

Nautiduck
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USA
3704 Posts

Response Posted - 12/21/2008 : 11:22:28

The Dummy books are good but there is also a wealth of information online. Here is the MS Vista Help site and it seems to be fairly robust.

[url="http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-us/editions.mspx"]Vista Help[/url]

Type "e-mail photos" into the Search Help box and you'll get an online demo and other assistance.

Edited by - Nautiduck on 12/21/2008 11:26:22

britinusa
Web Editor

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USA
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Response Posted - 12/21/2008 : 12:04:41

Frank, if you don't have MS Office (I don't!!!!) then get open office from openoffice.org, it's free and is at least as good as MS Office. I use it for Spreadsheets, Word processing (when it has to look fancy), Powerpoints, calculator, and it is excellent. Strongly recommmend it.

Reality is that I rarely use the word processor anymore as my email accounts are all wysiwig and most of my delivered docs are emails.

Vista comes with MS Mail (a replacement for outlook) I don't use that either, gave up on pc based email clients years ago, now use gmail, or helloworld (see my sig), gmail is free and very good, helloworld is $10 a month and is (I'm biased as I am a reseller) excellent.

One simple rule with any windows based program. Adopt the attitude that it should be able to do what you want, you just have to figure out how. In most cases, practice right clicking on everything! (or you can hit the submenu key that is to the left of the right hand ctrl key does the same thing except right clicking on an object on screen will bring up a submenu if any that is relavant to what you clicked on.)

And if you don't already know, make sure you have an anti-virus installed (Symantec(preferred), AVG, etc.)

Probably the most important thing I would advise anyone using Vista as a newby would be to pay attention when you save something, make sure you put it where you can find it, pics in pictures, documents in documents, etc. And create sub folders! eg. I have a folder of Pictures, and that has a folder for Rotary, another for Catalina Assoc, another for JD, and more. By putting things where you would expect to find them you'll save a huge frustration of 'where the heck is that pic of my grandson?

Paul

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 12/21/2008 : 12:33:26

Randy--thanks for the Help site--perfect timing--I just cranked up my new notebook with Vista, fully aware of the problems being reported (and made fun of by Apple). I'm just beginning to explore... It has always annoyed me that MS has never put comprehensive Help right in Windows. That some of it, along with Windows Update, is built into IE is of little help to users of other browsers. (That wouldn't be intentional, would it??

)

Paul, I'll have to check out that Open Office--I was planning on istalling my old Office 2000, hoping it would work on Vista but not fully expecting it to... I'm something of a power-user of Word, doing page-layout work with it. Office still seems like it was built by five different companies, none of which built Windows. I think Microsoft has reached, as defined in the Peter Principle, its "level of incompetence", with a management culture that's beginning to sound like GM's 30 years ago. [/rant]

Edited by - Dave Bristle on 12/21/2008 12:37:10

Prospector
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Canada
3159 Posts

Response Posted - 12/22/2008 : 09:23:32

We have Vista on our home laptop, and the file structure in it is all new. Its difficult to navigate, but once we are used to it I am sure we will appreciate all the "added benefits". Whatever they are. Office's new layout is equally befuddling. Don't even try using the old keyboard shortcuts with it.

To email Photos, you should be able to drag and drop the file into the body text of the email once you have found the file on your hard drive - trouble is navigating the file structure in Vista is less than intuitive. My wife has figured it out pretty well, but I can't find anything on it.

Edited by - on

crystal_blue
1st Mate

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USA
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Response Posted - 12/22/2008 : 12:25:44

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">. . . with a management culture that's beginning to sound like GM's 30 years ago<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Not to worry, Dave. As we all know, Microsoft is simply too big to fail.

--Jim

Edited by - on

Champipple
Master Marine Consultant

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6855 Posts

Response Posted - 12/22/2008 : 12:36:34

Bill Gates has been pretty good about the tutorials, much like your lotus stuff back in the day.. Except these days, the hard drives are so big that there isn't a need for an additional disc. Take a look at

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-GB/winbasics.mspx

and then additionally surf around. There should be no reason you have to pay for something to learn this - it should all be on your hard drive already, or at the microsoft site.

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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4479 Posts

Response Posted - 12/22/2008 : 14:17:06

I spent about a decade at MSFT working on Windows. Because of this, everyone I knew, especially family, assumed that I knew how to fix whatever computer problem they came up with. While this turned out to be instrumental in meeting & eventually marrying Rita (another story), it was very frustrating for me. When XP came out, I immediately upgraded my folk's computers to it simply because of Remote Assistance, the absolute best reason (IMHO) to use XP. Once that was done, when they called for help, my first question was "what did help & support say". They learned that I was going to ask, so they learned to look in help first. I would always help them if they were stumped, and with RA, I could take control of their boxes if necessary, but like Champipple says, the help is already on your box, you just have to figure out where it is (most likely still a link on the Start button for "Help & Support" in Vista, which I never worked on, and don't own a copy of). Cut & paste this:

%windir%helphs.chm

into Start > Run & press enter. On an XP box it'll tell you how to get into Help & Support, on a Vista box it'll probably do the same thing, but I don't have one to test on, so YMMV.

The interesting part was that it was rarely a Windows problem, but the perception was (and is), that if it happens on your box, and that box is running Windows, then the problem must lie with MSFT. Usually the problem was new hardware or software that wasn't playing nice with whatever was already installed. Figuring out stuff like this over the phone is a nightmare, "what do you see now?", "what's the error message say?", that's where RA came into it's own, you didn't have to ask any of those questions, and as long as you had a high speed connection (don't try this when you're trying to helps someone on a dialup connection in SE Asia), you're golden.

Now when you talk about Office products, I'll agree it was and is difficult, I came from a WordPerfect background, so learning Word was a pain, and the new Office 2007 was nearly indecipherable in the short time I used it at work. They rolled it out about a week before I got laid off. I'm sure the new UI makes sense to someone, but certainly not me.

I've started using Google Docs when I can, simply because it's free, and available anywhere you've got an internet connection. I'm learning how to use their spreadsheet functions, which, while harder to find than Excel, it seems to have matching functionality. I still have MS Office on my computers, as an alumnus I still get company store pricing, but I'm finding that there are other ways to do things ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid#.22Drinking_the_Kool-Aid.22"]the Kool-Aid's wearing off[/url]).

Edited by - delliottg on 12/22/2008 14:17:51

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
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Response Posted - 12/23/2008 : 10:52:08

"The interesting part was that it was rarely a Windows problem, but the perception was (and is), that if it happens on your box, and that box is running Windows, then the problem must lie with MSFT"

Many old Windows problems arose from Windows commandeering interrupts that Intel intended to be dedicated hardware interrupts, MSFT expected hardware makers to work around MSFT's ignoring Intel's recommendations. It did get better, but it doesn't approach the stability of Apple's Unix based OS. You can be happy with any box you buy, but you have to take he time to learn it.

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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Response Posted - 12/23/2008 : 13:49:34

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Many old Windows problems arose from Windows commandeering interrupts that Intel intended to be dedicated hardware interrupts, MSFT expected hardware makers to work around MSFT's ignoring Intel's recommendations.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

This is an excellent point, and a major distinguishing difference between Windows 9x (95, 98, SE, & ME), Windows NT (3.x-2000), and XP.

(soapbox)
Win9x still allowed direct access to hardware, but deliberately limited it. If you wanted to talk to the hardware via interrupts, you could, but you had to ask permission from the kernel to do so, progressively more so as the OS progressed. The reason for this was because the PC has (almost) always allowed third party hardware, which meant that the OS had to accommodate their interrupt requests. Those requests weren't always well behaved, particularly with video, by far the biggest problem we dealt with. This resulted in an unstable condition because you could fairly easily get conflicting requests, which could lock up the machine.

Apple on the other hand didn't allow third party hardware, they made all their own, so it was far easier to handle hardware requests because they were all designed to play nice with each other. This is still true today (I think, I'm almost completely MAC stupid, so, don't quote me). I don't think it comes down to a UNIX based OS vs Windows, at least as far as hardware goes, it's that Apple's hardware is tightly integrated with their OS, whereas Window's hardware can be made by anyone. This is the reason for the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing"]WHQL [/url](Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certification. If you buy hardware that isn't WHQL certified, when you try to load the drivers, you'll get a warning telling you that the drivers aren't certified, giving you a chance to stop the install before you break your machine, you should take that opportunity to set a [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restore_point"]restore point[/url]. That way if you run into problems, you can get back to a point directly before you install your hardware. If it is certified, you know that the hardware has had compatibility testing performed on it, logs have been submitted to MSFT for verification, and you have a much better chance of not having problems with your new hardware. Given the staggering number of hardware manufacturers for PC, that the OS doesn't crash more often is stunning. We spent hours and hours every week going over WHQL results, triaging bugs, talking to manufacturers, and getting fixes into the OS. Some OEMs were very good about trying to fix their drivers, lots of others couldn't be bothered. This wasn't easy for the OEMs either, they had to have several versions of their drivers to work on the different flavors of Windows, 16, 32, 64 bit drivers, backwards compatibility with existing versions of Windows, and trying to come up to speed with upcoming versions (Vista, 7, etc.). And don't get me started on "[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_code"]legacy free[/url]".

On the NT side, hardware requests were always handled via software (I'm a bit fuzzy on this, I didn't work on any pre-NT2k OS, so don't quote me). By the time XP came around, hardware manufacturers no longer made gear that needed to talk directly to the hardware, MSFT had inculcated them to use software requests to do so. Any direct requests were ignored, just as you said. However, Intel/AMD/etc. had made adjustments to their chipsets to accommodate this as well. Now, the only way to make hardware adjustments is via the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS"]BIOS [/url](Basic Input/Output System), and very few people ever touch theirs. Some OEMs have created software apps to let you make those modifications inside the OS, but this isn't very common.
(/soapbox)

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 12/23/2008 : 21:15:48

I understand the issue... Apple went for the consumer at the expense of the enterprise market (so Mac would work like a microwave) and IBM/Microsoft went for the enterprise, so anyone could build anything to run off (or inside) the PC. IBM gambled that the enterprise solution would leak down to the consumer market, since people would want to come home from work and be able to use their home PCs. Trouble was, at home there was no tech support staff! But Mac never made it up into the enterprise (except for some graphic work), and PC did leak down, so IBM/Microsoft, and the later clones, won. As noted, the plethora of manufacturers and devices made it difficult or impossible to manage, but also allowed the PC to meet needs and go places never envisioned by its inventors or even by its builders at any point it its history--especially the many iterations of complex corporate networking.

I'm disappointed that Microsoft never understood or was really interested in the consumer market when consumers over age 14 couldn't deal with updating drivers, repairing registries, dealing with hardware that didn't "play nicely", as was often the case in the nineties. I directed many neophyte consumers to Apple so they'd be in the security zone of stuff (hardware and software) that plugged-and-played, with never an issue. For my 80-year-old dad, I got something beyond Apple: the I-Opener, an internet/e-mail "appliance" that periodically dialed up its server, exchanged e-mail, and then turned on a light under the color LED screen if new mail was there. He never saw Windows, Apple's OS, dial-up communications (when that was all we had), or Internet Explorer. Their browser was more structured but infinitely easier for him to explore the world, which amazingly he did! Of course, he was nobody's target market (except I-Opener's)--for good reason I guess... He's gone now. Thank you I-Opener for giving him the World Wide Web and e-mail! But I-Opener is gone now too... Your elderly parents have to deal with Gates or Jobs, and expect you to dig them out (if they'll persevere)... Too bad.

Edited by - Dave Bristle on 12/23/2008 21:28:31

dblitz
Navigator

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Response Posted - 12/23/2008 : 22:14:27

Funny how memory fails, guess it was somewhere late 90's or may early 00's that the windows blue screen of death disappeared and XP became "stable". Now though it seems that an operating system is actually just whatever gets us on the internet. Running XP at work, vista and xp at home, not really a big deal, because we just use it to run firefox and get online. If you need a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database program and you don't need to create a humongous file that will be shared/edited by many people across a huge organization why would anybody give Microsoft a penny (actually hundreds of dollars) when they can get openoffice for FREE?
Which brings me to ask the following question.
Has anybody been using Ubuntu? I loaded it from CD on an old Pentium with 500 meg of ram I have and it ran ok. But when I loaded it on that computer's HD via WUBI it doesn't load the GUI and defaults to the Grub command line. Just running from the CD, it seems prety good and I would like to take it further. Heard that it has visuals (if you have a good graphics card) that are stunning.
Don't know if Microsoft deserves our patience and I'm prepared for all the hassles when the Vista upgrade to Win7 comes out in a few months. I want to be prepared with something else.

Edited by - dblitz on 12/23/2008 22:18:48

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 12/23/2008 : 22:41:50

Dave,
Well said.

My mom was like your father, even though she had experience with Wang computers for word processing, she basically wanted to be able to do email and the occasional letter to be printed out, she spent some time on the internet, but she wasn't all that interested.

My dad on the other hand (who actually worked with [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper"]Grace Hopper[/url] as a freshly minted [url="http://www.bluejacket.com/sea-service_tradition.htm#Butter"]butter bar[/url] in the USN) was completely disinterested in our computer until I brought home a golf game for him to try. He got hooked on the game in one session, and would eventually end up an alpha tester for Links, and twice president of the San Diego Old Farts Computer Club. He liked to tinker with his computer, and knew just enough to really screw it up for himself, which entailed hours long tech support calls to fix whatever it was that he'd done that time and infuriated my mom. She would eventually get her own machine that my dad wasn't allowed to touch.

My all time favorite was during DOS/Win 3.x days when he decided to rename the c:at directory where I'd set up all the shortcuts to their various programs and created environment variables in the path pointing to all of them in that directory. He decided it was more appropriate to call it "batch" since it housed batch files. He insisted that he'd changed nothing, but none of his programs worked any more. It took about 90 minutes to back track what he'd done.

Those were the days. I just wish both of them were still around to screw up their computer, I'd gladly spend a few hours talking them through it, just to hear their voices again.

Edited by - on

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3758 Posts

Response Posted - 12/23/2008 : 23:53:29

Dave,

You are pretty accurate, Apple has always built a system with only a few suppliers products tightly integrated. Unfortunately, HP, Compaq, and all the other ready to go boxes could also build a system by verifying that every thing plays well together. They didn't, and I went Mac when I started working with a lot of video in P-III days with W 9x. When Gates bought "dirty dos" and resold it to IBM the enterprise market was established. Apple now has a growing presence in enterprise, but they will always be a minor player there except in servers. Apple gained its graphics reputation with rare crashing and RISK processors - much more processing per clock cycle meant faster graphics rendering. Unfortunately, the processors do a lot less work per watt consumed. The standing joke was that if they put a G-5 in a laptop, would the battery die before it set your lap on fire (you should see the elegant cooling system inside my dual G-5). Notebook battery life sent them to Intel and Intel developed extended instruction sets that let them do much of what RISK processors did with minimal loss of speed. Makes the world an easier place, especially since the change also lets you create a partition and run Windows on your Mac. I was ready to do that, but Garmin released a utility to convert map data to Mac format to load on my handhelds and that was all I needed Windows for. XP is a good OS, but the great thing about Vista is how much it increased Mac's market share. I am finished rambling, but I did avoid a Gates/MSFT rant.

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 12/24/2008 : 10:43:26

I find it interesting to contemplate the following scenario... IBM builds its own OS for the PC (which they did later), while Apple puts a 10MB hard disk (like the PC/XT) into the early Mac (which they did later, but too late). Those two decisions would have changed the world we live in now! Steve Jobs would be Bill Gates, and Bill would be trying to put Mrs. Fields out of business with a oookie recipe off the internet--free cookies for everybody! ...until after she's gone.

David--I was worried this morning that I'd pulled a stunt like your dad's... I was exploring Vista's "network management" areas, clicked on something to find out more about it, and it went away! "Holy crap!" Well, I backed out and went back in, and whatever it was, it was there again. I won't go anywhere near there again! Talk about counterintuitive gobbledygook! (Ya, I know... Maybe my intuition is what's "counter".

)

Not sure what this has to do with sailing, but there's not much sailing going on around these parts anyway. It does have to do with my new Vista machine... I feel like a dinghy sailor who just took command of a 50' trimaran, having been told the standing rigging is prone to failure.

Edited by - Dave Bristle on 12/24/2008 10:48:55

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 12/24/2008 : 11:17:22

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how much of this has been a hijack, and how much might actually be helpful. I've learned that a post on the forum rarely makes it past it's first page w/o being hijacked into an entirely different, usually tangential, topic.

Gloss, did you get any answers to your questions?

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 12/24/2008 : 13:22:01

OK, just now I downloaded QuickTime Player, only to be told by the installer I should have downloaded the 64-bit version (I have 4-gig RAM). But nowhere on Apple's site can I find mention of that, much less an option to download it. I'm wondering if this is an omen of things to come with my 64-bit Vista...

Edited by - on

Gloss
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
1916 Posts

Response Posted - 12/24/2008 : 15:23:54

Yeah David,
the first few posts were helpful.
But then we got into Mac vs. PC or general Microsoft bashing.
Thanks to all who helped me with my first question

Merry Christmas, Happy Chonukah, Merry Festivus

Edited by - on

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