|
|
 |
|
|
|
Microsoft® Windows® Me At a Glance
|
|
|
Author |
|
Jerry Joyce and Marianne Moon
|
|
|
Pages |
208
|
|
Disk |
N/A
|
|
Level |
Beg/Int
|
|
Published |
08/02/2000
|
|
ISBN |
9780735609709
|
|
ISBN-10 |
0-7356-0970-5
|
|
Price(USD) |
$19.99
To see this book's discounted price, select a reseller below.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 1: About This Book
Chapter 1 About This Book
If you want to get the most from your computer and your software with the least amount of time and effort—and who doesn’t?—this book is for you. You’ll find Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition At a Glance to be a straightforward, easy-to-read reference tool. With the premise that your computer should work for you, not you for it, this book’s purpose is to help you get your work done quickly and efficiently so that you can get away from the computer and live your life.
No Computerese!
Let’s face it—when there’s a task you don’t know how to do but you need to get it done in a hurry, or when you’re stuck in the middle of a task and can’t figure out what to do next, there’s nothing more frustrating than having to read page after page of technical background material. You want the information you need—nothing more, nothing less—and you want it now! And it should be easy to find and understand.
That’s what this book is all about. It’s written in plain English—no technical jargon and no computerese. There’s no single task in the book that takes more than two pages. Just look the task up in the index or the table of contents, turn to the page, and there’s the information you need, laid out in an illustrated step-by-step format. You don’t get bogged down by the whys and wherefores: just follow the steps and get your work done with a minimum of hassle.
Occasionally you might have to turn to another page if the procedure you’re working on is accompanied by a "See Also." That’s because there’s a lot of overlap among tasks, and we didn’t want to keep repeating ourselves. We’ve scattered some useful Tips here and there, and thrown in a "Try This" once in a while, but by and large we’ve tried to remain true to the heart and soul of the book, which is that the information you need should be available to you at a glance.
Useful Tasks…
Whether you use Windows Me at home or on the road, we’ve tried to pack this book with procedures for everything we could think of that you might want to do, from the simplest tasks to some of the more esoteric ones.
…And the Easiest Way to Do Them
Another thing we’ve tried to do in this book is find and document the easiest way to accomplish a task. Windows Me often provides a multitude of methods to accomplish a single end result—which can be daunting or delightful, depending on the way you like to work. If you tend to stick with one favorite and familiar approach, we think the methods described in this book are the way to go. If you like trying out alternative techniques, go ahead! The intuitiveness of Windows Me invites exploration, and you’re likely to discover ways of doing things that you think are easier or that you like better than ours. If you do, that’s great! It’s exactly what the developers of Windows Me had in mind when they provided so many alternatives.
A Quick Overview
Your computer probably came with Windows Me preinstalled, but if you do have to install it yourself, the Setup Wizard makes installation so simple that you won’t need our help anyway. So, unlike many computer books, this one doesn’t start with installation instructions and a list of system requirements.
Next, you don’t have to read this book in any particular order. It’s designed so that you can jump in, get the information you need, and then close the book and keep it near your computer until the next time you need to know how to get something done. But that doesn’t mean we scattered the information about with wild abandon. We’ve organized the book so that the tasks you want to accomplish are arranged in two levels—you’ll find the overall type of task you’re looking for under a main section title such as "Accessing and Organizing," "Playing Games," "Running Programs," and so on. Then, in each of those sections, the smaller tasks within the main task are arranged in a loose progression from the simplest to the more complex.
Sections 2 and 3 cover the basics: starting Windows Me and shutting it down, changing users if more than one person uses your computer, starting programs and working with program windows, using shortcut menus, taking a class at Mouse School, and getting help if you need it. There’s also a lot of useful information about accessing and organizing your documents, files, and folders: moving or copying files and creating a system of folders in which to keep them, recovering deleted items, using compressed folders to minimize large files, and arranging the items on your Desktop. You’ll also learn about exploring the Internet, setting your home page, and saving your favorite Internet locations so that you can get back to them quickly.
Section 4 is all about networking—the different types of networks you’re likely to encounter, how to find what you need on your network, and how to use the power of a network to your best advantage. You’ll find the information helpful whether you have two computers connected to share a printer, a multicomputer household that shares a single Internet connection, or a home office where you want to share certain files. We’ll show you, among other things, how to set up your network, how to share files and folders, and how to connect to your network.
Section 5 focuses on running programs, including some of the programs that come with Windows Me. Here’s where you’ll find information about your everyday tasks: composing, editing, and printing documents; copying material between documents; using the Calculator; even what to do if your computer "freezes up." There’s also a short section here for all you MS-DOS fans!
Sections 6, 7, and 8 are all about having fun—playing games, either by yourself or with an international group of opponents via the Internet; working with different types of pictures, including drawings and photographs; creating and listening to your own music playlist; assembling slide shows; and making movies with narration, soundtracks, and fade-in/fade-out transitions between clips. The possibilities are endless, and we know you’ll be thrilled by the professional results you can achieve with the combination of your own imagination and the Windows Me tools—among them Media Player and Movie Maker—which let you give free rein to your creativity.
Section 9 is about connecting to and communicating with coworkers and friends and using Windows Me as your window on the world at large: sending and receiving e-mail, perusing and taking part in newsgroup discussions, and using some of the tools that go along with working and playing in cyberspace, including sending and receiving instant messages and videoconferencing directly from your computer.
The final sections, 10 through 12, deal with more advanced topics: reorganizing and restructuring the Start menu; customizing your Desktop, your folder windows, your mouse, the toolbars, and even the way you enter information, so that everything on your computer looks and works exactly the way you want it to; improving your computer’s security; protecting your files and folders by specifying who is allowed to access them; adding and removing software or hardware components; updating your system and maintaining the drives; and diagnosing and taking care of problems. If you think these tasks sound complex, rest assured that they’re not—Windows Me makes them so easy that you’ll sail right through them.
A Few Assumptions
We had to make a few educated guesses about you, our audience, when we started writing this book. Perhaps your computer is solely for personal use—e-mail, surfing the Internet, playing games, and so on. Perhaps your work allows you to telecommute. Or maybe you run a small home-based business. Taking all these possibilities into account, we assumed that you’d either be using a stand-alone home computer or that you’d have two or more computers connected so that you could share files, a printer, and so on. We also assumed that you had an Internet connection.
Another assumption we made is that—initially, anyway—you’d use Windows Me just as it came, meaning that you’d view folder windows showing web content and that you’d use your little friend the mouse in the traditional way: that is, point and click to select an item, and then double-click to open it. If you’d prefer using the mouse as if you were working on a web page—pointing to an item to select it and then opening it with a single click—you can easily do so. You’ll find the necessary information in "Setting Your Click" on page 148. However, because our working style is somewhat traditional, and because Windows Me is set up to work in the traditional style, that’s what we’ve described in the procedures and graphics throughout this book.
A Final Word (or Two)
We had three goals in writing this book:
- Whatever you want to do, we want the book to help you get it done.
- We want the book to help you discover how to do things you didn’t know you wanted to do.
- And, finally, if we’ve achieved the first two goals, we’ll be well on the way to the third, which is for our book to help you enjoy using Windows Me. We think that’s the best gift we could give you to thank you for buying our book.
We hope you’ll have as much fun using Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition At a Glance as we’ve had writing it. The best way to learn is by doing, and that’s how we hope you’ll use this book.
Jump right in!
Last Updated: Friday, July 6, 2001 |
