I am back and here are some Windows 7 tips

I have returned to the ranks of the employed and will move into my third week back teaching at the absolutely terrific Cuyahoga Community College here in Cleveland Ohio. We have talked about Essential Computer Concepts and have started Windows 7. So I thought I would mention a couple of concepts that seemed important in each.

First the difference between computer memory and storage. I compare these concepts to the way human beings think. In our brains we have many areas. There is one area of the brain that permanently holds our experiences and memories. Even when we are not thinking about them they are in storage. So that area of your brain can be compared to a computers hard drive. It holds data in the computer even when you turn it off. So that is storage. As human beings when we want to think about an experience like our first day a job, we retrieve that experience from storage and think about it in an area of the brain lets call present memory. When you are done thinking the experience leaves present memory but still remains in the permanently stored area of the brain. The computer works the same way. When you run a program like Word it copies the program from the hard drive to the computers memory. You work on something. Then save that to the hard drive (permanent storage). Then when you close the program it disappears from memory but remains stored permanently on the hard drive. That is how memory and storage work both on human beings and computers.

Second a couple of my favorites Windows 7 features.

1. Run two programs at once. Let us say Paint and Wordpad. Grab the Paint window by the Title Bar (the area at the top of the window) and drag it to the upper right corner until you see an outline of the window snap to half of the screen. Release the mouse and do the same with the Wordpad windows. An easy way to line up two programs next to each other if need to see both at once. Called Windows Snap.
2. Open a couple more programs, maybe Calculator and Notepad. Now right click on the desktop, select Personalize, and choose an Aero theme. Now hold down the Windows key (the one with the Microsoft logo on it) and tap the tab key. If you keep tapping you should be able to flip through the open windows graphically. When you get to the one you want to work with release the windows key.  An Aero glass feature.

I will be doing at least a post a week.

Remember when communicating ideas in life and business always answer who, what, where, when, why before anything else. Its amazing to me how many people do not start with there essential points.

See ya soon.