KEEPING YOUR COMPUTER CLEAN

Take a damp sponge, and gently wipe the exterior of the computer. You may also run a soft brush back and forth over the keyboard, to remove the dust that has collected between the keys. Well, that's it. Is it? 'Fraid not. Supposing you kept the exterior of your car cleaned and polished, but never had the engine or mechanical parts serviced. Obviously, your car would deteriorate rapidly, and soon come to a crunching, wallet-bending halt. Similarly there are simple, but not widely known processes which you can easily perform yourself, to keep your computer running at its peak and extend its life. But first a warning. Stay well clear of programs which claim to tidy up your computer, remove unnecessary files, prevent crashes and so forth. It has been my unfortunate experience that most of these programs are likely to actually delete essential files, and do all manner of ghastly things to your computer. I am not suggesting that ALL such programs are potentially harmful, but you can do the housekeeping safely yourself with programs which are already installed as part of your Windows software. The principal functions are Scandisk and Defragmentation. In Windows 95 and up, they are found by going to Start Menu; Programs; Accessories and finally System Tools. Windows has this messy habit of splattering, seemingly at random, bits of your files all over the hard disk. When you open a program, the computer's built-in filing system has to gather all these bits together before the program is ready to run. Obviously, then, the more scattered (fragmented) is your filing system, the slower your computer will operate. When you select Disk Defragmenter, it will report that the hard drive is, say, 2% fragmented, or 98% unfragmented. Regardless of whether the computer says that defragmentation is necessary or not, do it anyway, even if the figure given is 0%. Select the box at the bottom right which says "Show Details." I personally find it fascinating to watch as all the little bits are carefully gathered tightly together. If your computer becomes unfragmented to the degree of about 92%, the whole functioning of the machine will be noticeably slowed down. The other process which should be carried out periodically is Scandisk. This facility checks that the filing system is in order, and checks for any damaged sectors on your hard drive. These "bad sectors" are marked, and any data in them moved to a clean sector. There are two other simple procedures which help to keep your computer tidy. Most functions which you perform create temporary files which take up space, but serve no purpose. These may be removed by opening "File Manager," highlighting "C" drive, and from the File menu selecting "Search." In the box type the following: "*.tmp" This is known as a "wild card" search, and will find all files with the extension "tmp." These may then safely be highlighted and deleted. Finally, open Internet Explorer, from the toolbar select "Tools," then "Internet Options," and finally "Delete Temporary Files." After performing these simple tasks, your computer will be running at its optimum, and your hard drive won't be cluttered up with unnecessary files. [For the benefit of anyone who is still running Windows 3.1, you must exit Windows and type the "defrag" and "scandisk" commands at the MS-DOS prompt, that is "C:>"]

DEMYSTIFYING COMPUTER TERMINOLOGY

Gigabytes, MegaHertz, RAMs and ROMs Well, I certainly didn’t learn these words in English lessons at school. Do these words represent a message from some alien civilisation which is trying to contact us earthlings? On face value, I would guess that a gigabyte was a very large mouthful, while megahertz sounds like some excruciating pain. A ram, of course, as we all know, is a male sheep and as for rom, well I guess that might be an incorrect spelling of the capital city of Italy. Anyone who owns a computer, or who has browsed through a store with the intention of possibly buying one, will recognise these terms as part of the ever increasing vocabulary of Computer Jargon. To both the browser and the purchaser, these terms constitute an almost unsurmountable barrier to selecting a computer, or using the thing once it is installed in your home. As a sometime instructor to computer beginners, I have found that the jargon is the most difficult hurdle to overcome in the process of learning to operate the machine. Most of these seemingly esoteric terms are merely acronyms, used for the sake of brevity. [An acronym is a word comprised of the first letters of a phrase or series of words, as for example NSW is an acronym for New South Wales]. While it is quite possible to drive a motor vehicle satisfactorily without having a clue as to the meaning of terms like “distributor,” or “crankshaft, one’s awareness of the performance of the car is aided if the fundamental “operating system” is vaguely understood. And so it is with computers. You can operate the things with little or no understanding of the jargon, but some knowledge is essential when making an initial purchase, and helpful when “configuring” the thing (a fancy term that means adjusting the computer to meet your individual requirements). Just to get you started, here are the meanings of a few basic terms. A “byte” is the smallest amount of data which a computer requires to represent, for example, an alphabetical character. A “megabyte” is one million bytes. Hence, the more bytes, the more data the computer can process. “Hertz” is a term originally meaning “cycles per second,” and in the computer world it represents the speed at which the machine can operate. Hence, the more “hertz,” the faster the computer. You will also encounter the term “Kbps,” which describes the nominal speed at which a particular modem transfers data to and from the Internet. It means “kilobytes per second.” RAM is an acronym for “random access memory,” and refers to that part of the computer in which all the calculations take place. ROM stands for “read only memory,” and thus represents stored data that cannot be altered. Most “software” (programs) are purchased in the form of CD-ROMs, which interprets as “Compact Disc - Read Only Memory.” Thus, you can access all the data (text, pictures, or sounds) on the disc, but you can’t alter the content or at least you couldn’t until the very clever “read/write” CD drive and discs were recently introduced. The newer DVD which functions in the same way as a CD but has a much larger storage capacity stands for “Digital Versatile Disc.”

SEARCH ENGINES

We are all too familiar with the term "Surfing the Net." It is descriptive of the process whereby, using one or more "search engines," we look for some particular information that we need for a project, or just to answer some question that has been gnawing at us. In order to surf the net we need to use one or more "Search Engines." Most people who have had even the barest experience in using the Internet will have discovered that there are many different search engines. Some of the more familiar ones are: Altavista, Excite, Yahoo!, Google and Go. But what exactly is a search engine, and how does it work? There are actually many types of search engines, some covering only a highly specialised area of data. A search engine is defined as "Software that searches for data based on some criteria." Although search engines have been around for decades, they have been brought to the forefront since the World Wide Web (www) exploded onto the scene. Every Web search site uses a search engine that it has either developed itself or has purchased from a third party. Search engines can differ dramatically in the way they find and index material on the Web, and the way they search the indexes from the user's query. The terms "search engine" and "Web search site" are used synonymously, although the former technically describes the software and methodology used, while the latter refers to the site itself. There are various Web sites that maintain databases about the contents of other Web sites. Most sites are free and are paid for by advertising banners, while others charge for the service. Yahoo! was the first site to gain worldwide attention, and it differs from most other search sites because its content is indexed by people who create a hierachical directory by subject. As a result, Yahoo! and similar sites are technically called "directories" rather than search engines. Most other sites are highly automated, sending spider programs out on the Web around the clock to collect the text of Web pages. Spiders follow all the links on a page and put all the text into one gigantic database, which is what you search when you use the site. Sometimes, a Web site will offer both search engine and directory capabilities. There are also sites that do nothing but search other sites. These metasearch engines bring you results from multiple search engines at one time. Major search sites have evolved into the so-called "portal," which is a term meaning "We've got everything you want." Instead of just linking to other sites, they contain the information themselves. Thus, many search sites have evolved into content sites with a host of other features, including free email, chat rooms and shopping. If you are interested in learning more about search engines, you should visit www.searchenginewatch.com .The site maintains a list of all major search engines and goes into details about how they work and explains their significant features. Following is a list of some of the better known search engine sites: http://www.altavista.com http://www.askjeeves.com http://www.directhit.com http://www.excite.com http://www.go.com http://www.go2.com http://www.google.com http://www.hotbot.com http://www.lycos.com http://www.search.com These are internationally based search engines, but there are others native to Australia. I won't list them here, but you can browse through them by doing a general search using the keywords "search" "engine" "Australia." A new kind of search engines gives direct answers when available instead of just a list of possible websites. It incorporates "Wikipedia" -- a user-contributed encyclopaedia. www.answers.com