Wallpaper and Screensavers

If you’re bored with the appearance of your desktop you have some choices on how to spice it up a little. You can use wallpaper, screensavers, and even themes. Wallpaper is pictures you use as background on your desktop. Your computer probably comes with several choices. But if you don’t like any of those you can select your own. If you right click on an image online there should be the choice to Set as Background. You can also put pictures you already have on your computer as wallpaper. Right click the image and choose Set as Desktop Background. You can also choose how to place the picture you use as wallpaper by centering it, tiling it, or stretching it. If the picture doesn’t take up the whole screen you can customize the background color.
There should also be several different animated screen savers on your computer too. Right click on the desktop and select Properties. Then click on Screen Saver, and then choose one. If you want to make a slide show of pictures you have then choose My Pictures Slide Show. This will create a slide show of all the pictures in My Pictures. You can also choose None if you don’t want a Screen Saver.
Themes are fun as well. Right click on Properites, and then Themes. There are several to choose from. It changes things like sounds, icons, and other elements to further customize your desktop. You can also find cool themes online. I once had a Tori Amos theme. It was pretty cool. If your computer is sluggish you might not want themes or sreen savers.

System Maintenance

There are a few ways of maintaining your computer. Some of these ways include Disk Cleanup, System Defragmentation, System Restore, and restarting your computer. When you do a Disk Cleanup you are deleting Temporary Internet Files and whatever is in the Recycle Bin. This helps make room for your computer’s memory. System Defragmentation reorganizes the files on your computer so it’s not so cluttered and is easier for your computer to read. System Restore can restore the state of your computer to an earlier time to fix lots of different problems you may encounter. And of course, simply restarting your computer can fix some problems, and is just plainly a good idea every now and then.

Download Sites

The Internet has some sites devoted to downloading software and other stuff. The 2 sites I know the best are Download.com and Tucows. Each has tons of software from many different catagories to choose from, and can be free or free to try. You can look up what you’re looking for in the search box. There are ratings, number of downloads, and the date the files were added. Software has reviews and sometimes Publisher's website and even screenshots. You can find software for different Operating Systems and file sizes.There’s also News, Tips and Tricks, and Blogs.
You get to read about software before you download it. Reviews and ratings can be very helpful. Most information you need can be easily found. I’ve downloaded several things in the past from Download.com before. I’m pretty satisfied with it. I’ve never had serious problems with anything I got from there, and there are lots of cool things to find. Such things include computer repairing software, calculators, typing programs, and spyware cleaners.

YouTube

I found YouTube more than a year ago, and have been enjoying it ever since! I had discovered that finding some videos online was almost impossible. For example, I looked around for Belinda Carlisle or Cathy Dennis videos, without much success. Once I came across YouTube not only did I find plenty of those videos, but also commercials and funny home made videos.
YouTube is free, even if you decide to join. If you join, you can select favorites, and I think you can submit your own videos, (I never had any to submit). You can share videos from YouTube with anyone who has an e-mail. When you get to YouTube’s home page there are some videos at the top that are currently being watched by other people. Videos have ratings, (you can rate them too), and a number of how many views they’ve gotten. You can also find movie trailers. A week ago I saw a teaser trailer for Indiana Jones 4! I can’t wait for that to come out!
There are thousands of videos on YouTube to choose from. More videos are being uploaded every day. If you haven’t experienced YouTube yet you’re in for a treat!

Video

Watching videos online and on your computer is another great way to spend your time. There are different ways of doing it. One way is finding videos online you can download to your computer and then watch. There are different places online to find these videos. For instance, you can look them up using the Video tab on Yahoo. Another way of watching videos online is by using streaming video. Basicly that means you can watch these videos online without having to download them. A couple of websites with good streaming video are YouTube and Yahoo Music.
There are a few media players to play downloadable videos on. Probably the most used is Windows Media Player. I’ve found it to work well with plenty of options. Then there’s QuickTime. This is from Apple, and also works well. You get it automaticly when you download iTunes. There’s also RealPlayer. It has Real Guide which helps you find different kinds of media.
Of course, you can watch DVDs on your computer without even being hooked up to the Net if you have a DVD drive. You have to have software that plays DVDs, such as PowerDVD. It works pretty much like your standard DVD player for your TV.
Watching videos on your computer is fun and a good use for your PC.

Images

There are many different kinds of pictures, or images, to be found all over the web. JPEG is the picture format I’m most familiar with. There are several other kinds. Some pictures are only a few kilobytes large, while others are more than a megabyte in size. Images between 30 KB and 150 KB are the easiest to manage.
You can find pictures on celebrity, TV, movie, music, or game fan sites. Pictures can vary from images of a mountain to images of your favorite rock star. An easy way to find pictures is by looking them up with the images tab on a search engine like Yahoo. Once you find a good picture you can ether Save Picture As, or Copy and Paste to an appropriate folder. I like to make different folders for different categories of images.
When you have the picture you want you have a few options on what to do with it. You can send it to someone by e-mail, send the file through an Instant Messager, print it, put it on your desktop as wallpaper, or make a slide show of many different pictures for your screen saver. To look at your image you can use the Preview option, Internet Explorer, or a graphics program like Paint Shop Pro 8, which I have. Working with pictures is one of the simplest and most fun things you can do with a computer.

MP3s

MP3 is a compressed audio-specific format, but I’m just going to refer to it as songs you can put on portable players. The first MP3 player I ever got was about March of 2007. I didn’t know what I was missing! Before then if I wanted to listen to music while I was out and about I had to carry a bunch of CDs with me. It was awkward. But the 30 gigabyte iPod I now have allows me to bring 100 CDs worth of songs with me wherever I go. I don’t have to worry about it skipping, I can find any song almost insantly, the battery life is longer, and it lights up so it’s easy to read. From what I know I can even put pictures and videos on it. That’d be cool! Maybe one day I’ll put Twister on it!
There are a few good places online that you can find MP3s. Among these sites are Rhapsody, Napster, and iTunes. At each of these sites you can find songs by artist, track, or album. You can also download songs you like. Sometimes you can download songs for free, but other times you have to pay. I know that you can also find movies to download at iTunes.
When I got my iPod I got out my CDs one by one. I copied them to my computer. Once I had them on iTunes I hooked up my iPod and started transfering them. This process took about 2 days. I have more than one and a half thousand songs on my iPod now, and it only takes up about 5 gigabytes. That’s only 1 sixth of my availibe memory.
The iPod I have is slick and shiny, but I have it in a nice case that protects it. My brother had an iPod long before I ever did and told me that they can malfunction. Mine never has. Of course my brother hasn’t been as careful with his as I have with mine. Hopefully it will last for years. It cost me about $300.00 at Best Buy. I think they’ve gone down in price since then. But it was definitely worth it, and is the best portable audio player I’ve ever had. I’ve really enjoyed it!

Emulation

Did you know that it’s possible to play old NES or Super NES games on your computer? You can, and you’re not limited to just those 2. You can also play Sega, Gameboy, Intellivision, and more.
To do this you first need to find an emulator for the system you’ll be using. The emulator takes the place of whatever system you choose. Then you need roms, (which are the games). You need both the emulator and roms to play. Vimm's Lair is where I’ve usually gone before. They have roms and emulators. Click on Emulation Lair to find emulators. Click on The Vault to find roms, then click on the system you want. Look up your game alphabetically. Even though it says the roms cost something they don’t. Just click on the game’s name and then download.
If you want to find different emulators look them up on search engines. You can also find instructions on some sites. It can be frustrating to find a good one that works. But if you look hard enough you’ll succeed. My favorite NES emulator is the Jnes.
You can play lots of classic games. Some good NES games are Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Warrrior, Double Dragon, and Tetris. The SNES has good games like Super Mario World, Star Fox, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Metroid, and Donkey Kong Country.
One of my all time favorite game series is Dragon Warrior, (not to be confused with Dragon Wars the movie). I wasn’t even a teenager when I first started playing Dragon Warrior I. It’s a Role Playing Game. You basically walk around and fight monsters, building up your levels and making money. Then you buy better weapons and armor. The first Dragon Warrior is not very advanced as far as graphics or sound are concerned. But it gets better with each new game in the series. I really like Dragon Warrior III and IV. If you walk around enough outside, day turns to night. Towns and people are different at night than they are in the daytime. There are lots are monsters to fight, treasure to find, and places to explore in the Dragon Warrior games. The games have ships you can sail, ghosts, casinos, staffs that can transform your appearance, magical items, cool music, and interesting stories. The best site for the Dragon Warrior games I’ve found is Dragon’s Den. Check it out.
I probably play more emulation games on my computer than any other kind of game. It can be really fun, and I think it’s cool that even though these games are so old you can still play them. One more cool thing is that emulation is usually free.

Games on Disc

One of the best and most obvious ways to play games on your computer is by playing games that are on discs. There are tons of different disc games out there to find. They can be on a CD ROM or a DVD. DVDs hold more information. You can find packaged disc games online or at some stores.
Some disc games I have experience with are Neverwinter Nights, Chess Master, Flight Simulator, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle.
Neverwinter Nights is an awesome RPG. It has 3D imaging, and you can adjust the camera angle at you will. While walking around you hear the Non Playing Characters talking or dogs barking. There are several different races and classes to choose from for your character. You can also pick a henchman to support you. There is treasure to be found, traps to watch out for, zombies to fight, (along with other enemies), and quests to solve.
There are different versions of Chess Master. I’ve played a couple of them a little. Of course, Chess Master is about chess. I’ve been interested in chess my whole life. Right now I’m trying to improve my memory so I can really get good at chess. You can pick different boards, pieces, opponents, or other details. Even the basic levels can be very challenging for a beginner.
Flight Simulator is awesome! If you like airplanes you’ll love this game. There are different versions of this game too. It simulates flying a variety of different planes, in different weather, day or night, anywhere in the world. One really cool thing you can do is download planes that didn’t come with the package online. There are tons to choose from. If you’re a beginner just play around. But for a challenge learn how to fly with instruments and put yourself to the test.
What I’ve played of Star Wars Battlefront II is really cool! There are ground missions and flight missions. In the ground missions you usually fight droids and vehicles. In the space battles, (which I love), you can fight small fighters or even bring down a battle cruiser.
Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle is really spooky. You’re walking around at night and you keep hearing something sneaking up on you, and you turn around only to find nothing. Something about this place is not right. It’s up to you to find the clues and solve the puzzles of this scary story.
You can easily find a lot of console games for PC as well. I really haven’t played many disc games, but I will. I’ve always loved video games, and PC game can be awesome!

Online Games

There are many online games you can play. You can play by yourself, with others, or play for cash and prizes. You can find a lot of free games to play by looking them up on a search engine. Yahoo and MSN also have their own game sections too.
Neopets is one of my favorite websites. You can get your own virtual pets called Neopets. There are lots of different kinds of Neopets that look like different animals. They eat food and you can choose from a variety of different foods to give them. You can even build them a neohome. There are points called Neopoints you can earn by playing games and selling items in your shop. I love Neopets, but my mom loves it even more. She plays all the time, and believe it or not, has 5,000,000 Neopoints!
If you like casinos you might like the online casinos out there. I haven’t played too much cause I don’t like losing money. There are several online casinos you can choose from. Usually they give you bonus money when you sign up.
There are also sites online you can play games for money and prizes for free. IWon is one of these sites. You can win money by playing their games, or by entering into lotteries. You can also win things like gift certificates. I’ve never won anything though.
Downloading games from the Net is another option. You can usually find downloadable games for free, but you have to pay for some. Download sites like Download.com have plenty. Action, Arcade, Kids, Role-Playing, and Sports are some of the categories. One game I bought and downloaded a while ago is SolSuite. It has more than 300 Solitaire type games in it.
There is also a thing called MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. These are games you play at home with other people online. Three of these games I know of are Neverwinter Nights, EverQuest, and Guild Wars. You need to buy the games and put them on your computer before you play. I have yet to play with others online, but I have Guild Wars Factions, and will get around to it eventually. If you like chess you can play with others online. You can also play Fight Simulator online with others. Playing games online is one of the Internet’s coolest features

Browsers

Web browsers are the software programs that enable you to use the Internet. The browsers I know the best are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, AOL, Opera, and Netscape. I’m most familiar with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and AOL. I've heard that Netscape may cause some problems though.
Explorer is probably the most standard web browser, and is part of the essential programs you’ll get with a computer operated by Windows. It is also the most popular of the browsers, and works really well. You need Internet Explorer to operate some programs on the web. Mozilla Firefox is also a pretty good browser. My mom prefers it to others. You use to have to pay for AOL, but not anymore. I like the voice that says, “You’ve got mail!” When you have mail on AOL.
Each of these share similar features. Explorer and Firefox both have the tab feature, where you can have several sites available at the same time in the same window connected to tabs. You can make and organize bookmarks, go forward and backward in pages, change font size, set up various tool bars such as Google or Yahoo, make a homepage which will be the first page you come to when you sign on, view a history of pages you’ve visited, and refresh the page you’re on if it gets stuck. You can have more than one browser window up at the same time if you’d like. To go to a website you can type the URL in the web address box at the top of the screen.
My favorite browser is, of course, Internet Explorer, and I rarely use anything else. But it’s not the only good one. You can test the different types out yourself to find your own favorite.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is a way to chat in real time with people over the Internet. You can download chat client programs such as AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, and/or MSN Instant Messengers for free to use to talk to people. I’ve never known anyone who used ICQ or MSN Instant Messengers, so I can’t really say much about them. As far as I know they are fine programs. I have used Yahoo and AOL Instant Messaging with great success.
When using these programs you can adjust to font size, color, and formatting. One cool thing I found out about is the way you can make smileys, (or smiley faces). You can choose pre-made smileys, or make them manually. For example typing :, -, and ) makes the most basic smiley.
After downloading and signing up for a chat client you will have your own username and be able to chat with people. It’s easy to add friends and family to your list of contacts. Clicking on one of you contact’s usernames will bring up a chat window. It will show if that person is currently online or not. You can actually talk to more than one person at a time. People don’t always type out full words when chatting to save time. For instance, someone might write “omg” for “Oh, my gosh!” or “brb” for “Be right back.”
You can also send pictures, videos, or files through IM, (or Instant Messaging). A log of everything said between you and your contact is displayed above the box where you type. You can even save your chat if you want to. If you need to step away from your computer for a while you can put up an Away Message.
Instant Messaging certainly has its’ advantages over e-mail. You don’t have to wait forever for someone to get back to you. You can talk as fast as you can type. I know from personal experience that you can really get into a conversation with someone and not be able to type fast enough. Instant Messaging is one of the best fairly new communication inventions in the world, and usually it is pretty fun.

Fan Sites

Celebrities, movies, and popular TV shows usually have their own fan sites online. Fan sites are places on the web devoted to famous people, shows, and movies. They can be official or unofficial. Official fan sites are approved and/or put together by the celebrities, or people involved in the movie or TV show. Unofficial sites are usually put together by fans.
Fan sites can be really fun to go to and look around. They can have pictures, articles, celebrity information, and sometimes videos. There can be forums where fans can talk about different topics on the site. Sometimes there are fun games too. Also, there are usually news updates that keep people informed. For example, if the site is about a singer there might be a news update about concerts coming soon.
My favorite singer is Tori Amos. So I go to some of her fan sites. HEREINMYHEAD.COM is my favorite Tori site, even though it’s not her official fan site. Her official site is toriamos.com. At HEREINMYHEAD.COM there are lots of pictures, lyrics to all of her songs, discography, art, and videography. One of the best Tori Amos fan sites is A Dent In The Tori Amos Net Universe, even though they stopped updating it a year ago. Perhaps the coolest thing about this site is an extensive database of all of her tours, concerts, and songs performed up to 2006.
There are tons of different fan sites on the web. They’re easy to find if you look for them on search engines. MySpace has fan pages too. It’s a fun way to spend your time if you are bored.

Social Networking Sites

I don’t have a lot of experience with social networking sites, but I’ll write about what I do know. Social networking sites are places on the Internet where people can set up a personal page and meet other people. This is much easier than trying to build your own personal web page from scratch, plus you usually meet more people. The two sites I know the most about are MySpace and Yahoo 360.
These sites usually have their own e-mail that you can use to reach other people on the site. You can post blogs, search for other users, and post comments. MySpace has other things you can do besides talking to people there. It has a video section, (kind of like YouTube), a music section, (where you can find music and even musical artist’s personal pages), forums, and classifieds. Pages can be very simple, or very sophisticated depending on how much work people put into them. People post pictures and videos sometimes, which can be cool. If you like someone it’s easy to add them to your favorites, and you can request for them to be added to your friends group. Several people I know are on MySpace.
I think you need to have an e-mail account with Yahoo to join Yahoo 360. You can find other people on Yahoo 360 by looking at featured sites. And you can invite friends from Yahoo e-mail. I don’t think you have as many options as with MySpace, but it’s still cool.
There are several other social networking sites out there such as Gather, Yuwie, Flixster, and WAYN. I know very little about them, but they are similar to Yahoo 360, and MySpace.

E-mail

When someone sends a letter through the post office to someone’s house it’s called snail mail. When someone sends someone a letter on the Internet it’s called e-mail, which means electronic mail. There are lots of different e-mail providers. The ones I’m most familiar with are Yahoo, Google, Myway, AOL, and Hotmail. I prefer Yahoo. There are several advantages sending e-mail rather than snail mail. For one, it’s instantaneous. It’s also very easy to change the style of lettering, background, size and color of font, and general formatting. You can usually include links to websites, pictures, and attachments. Attachments can be lots of different things, such as pictures, videos, games, software, or MP3s.
The amount of storage space you have varies between the different e-mail providers. If you want to e-mail more than one person at a time you can usually make a list of e-mail addresses separated by commas in the Send to box.
Yahoo is one e-mail provider that has calendars. You can set reminders for things like appointments or birthdays with the calendar. Addresses can also be stored with some e-mail providers. You can set up folders that can organize different e-mail subjects. With my Yahoo mail I have a Bulk folder that sorts out most of the spam I get. Spam is unwanted advertising e-mails. One good thing about online e-mail is even if your computer crashes, your e-mail will remain safe.
I’ve used e-mail now for about 7 years. I write my friends and family. I get lots of interesting e-mails from my mom. I’ve sent and received e-cards from friends and family too. E-cards are like greeting cards online, and can be funny or touching. They can also include sound and animation. It’s nice to have e-mail, because it gives me something to do, and a way to talk to people.

Search Engines

The first search engine I found out about was Dogpile, which is actually a Meta search engine. A Meta search engine uses several regular search engines, like Google and Yahoo, to make a search. For quite a while Dogpile was pretty much the only search engine I used. My favorite now is Yahoo. Search engines are very useful when you are trying to find stuff on the web. You can find pretty much anything with a search engine, and there are many to choose from. Some of the most common on the web are Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, Lycos, About, Ask, and MSN. Usually a search engine will let you specify just what you’re looking for with tabs like Web, Images, and Video. Just type the name of whatever you what to find in the search box at the top of the page. If you were looking for cats, type cats press the Search button, and you will get a list of results that were found. If you want to find pictures of cats, click on the Images tab above the search box, type cats, and press the Search button again. You will get a page full of cat pictures that were found.
Search engines don’t always work perfectly. Sometimes you get results that are completely different than what you were looking for. You can also easily come across very offensive material. But at least some search engines, like Yahoo, filter your results. You can adjust the filter to your tastes.
There’s more to search engines than merely searching though. Usually they have categories of different topics on pages accessible through the main search engine page. For example, you can find information about movies on the movie page. You can find and play games, look up maps, find cars, read news, look at personals, or even shop online. Some search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, also have e-mail services.
I use search engines every day. I like to use the Images tab to find pictures of everything between roses to Tori Amos. I use the Local tab to find phone numbers to places in town, like a pizza parlor or Target. Sometimes I use Ask.com to find the answers to general questions I have. Search engines are like the Index to the web.

My Experience with Computers

My first experience with computers happened when I was in elementary school. This was in the 1980’s, and the computers were old Apples, not iMacs. They weren’t as impressive as today’s computers, but they were still very interesting to me. We would play games like Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego.
I was first introduced to fairly modern home PCs from my uncle up in Phoenix. It was in the mid 90’s, and his computer was pretty sophisticated for the time. That’s the first time I saw a Flight Simulator game as well.
I wanted a computer for a long time, but since they went for about $1,000.00 I was 19 before we finally got one. The first one we had was an old used one. It wasn’t much, but better than nothing. Only a few months later, around the end of 1999, my mom was able to get a new Gateway, I think with credit. That was a pretty nice computer. I learned how to type on that, and met my first e-pal. But a few months later it was lost in a fire.
It was half a year later before we could replace it. This time we got a Dell. That PC served us well for years. My mom bought an eMachines in 2005, and I inherited the old Dell. Finally in 2006 I replaced the old Dell with a new, fairly state-of-the-art Dell, and gave my friend Teri the old one. I’m typing on the new one right now.
There was a time I didn’t even know what a computer was. But now they are an essential part of my life. I can write to friends, check the weather, or see when a movie is coming on at the theater. I’ve bought tickets to music concerts, reserved hotel rooms, and used online maps to find my way around. Not to mention games on disc or the Internet I’ve played, or DVD’s I’ve watched on my computer. A few months ago I was able to buy an MP3 player. With my computer’s help I now have more than 1,500 songs I can easily take places with me. I also use Word to write things occasionally.
Even though I’ve had computers in the house now for about 7 years, I still know very little about them. I have plans to learn more. In fact I am currently trying to learn HTML. It’s going pretty slow. :-) In addition to HTML I’d like to learn some basic computer stuff, Paint Shop Pro 8, as well as computer programming. I hope to one day be able to design my own RPG video games. I already have some cool game ideas. Well, it will take a while.