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By: Mr JM
Facebook is one of those internet things that, with twenty-twenty hindsight, seems an obvious candidate for popularity. But when it first started, a lot of us looked at the security issues and figured the jeopardy of putting so much personal information out there for the world to see might kill it off.

A lot of us also wish we’d had the good sense to invest in Facebook.

Do you play Scrabble? Around the world a lot of people enjoy the game. On Facebook there are something of the order of fifty thousand users who like Scrabble and most of them preferred the version on Facebook called Scrabulous.

Mattel, the company that produces the real-world version of Scrabble, decided that Scrabulous was somehow interfering with their profits. Nobody is quite sure how this might be so – many of the Scrabulous users already own a physical game of Scrabble and virtually all those they play against they would never otherwise get to see over a physical board.

But Mattel decided to take Facebook to a court in India to force them to remove the Scrabulous game from the site. Why India? Obviously they figured they could get a better chance of success in India. Even so, the Indian court reserved a decision – translates as ‘decided not to make a decision’ but Mattel went ahead and served Facebook with a take-down order anyway.

Facebook, without so much as a ‘by your leave’ or word of explanation, removed Scrabulous. Fifty thousand fans are left with no games, no stats and no recourse.

Yet again a Corporation says ‘eff you’ to those who provide their profits.

By: Mr JM
One way to make sense of your Desktop once you have all your programs stored is to group things. I tend to put similar things near each other and I will create a new folder on the Desktop to store shortcuts to specific documents, XL spreadsheets, Powerpoints etc.

If you look at the Desktop image above, my multimedia stuff is in the bottom left corner, Utility programs middle bottom, downloaders and internet browsers middle left and so on. For me, this makes sense. I keep files with any size well away from my Profile, in folders like C:\Downloads and I reset My Documents to point somewhere other than C:\Documents and Settings\username\Documents.
to do this, create the folder in [My Computer]
click [Start] then right-click on [My Documents] and choose [Properties]
either [Browse] to the folder you’ve created (such as C:\Docs) or type it into the Target line

Also have a look in programs that copy things to your computer – most will have a setting that lets you pick where you’d like to have the files placed. Programs that might need this include graphic, music, browsers, your scanner software and others. Some will want to save into you’re my Documents folder so if you’ve performed the above changeover of that folder, you can save Profile bloat.

If there are programs in the [Start] menu that you wish to have on your Desktop for ease of access, click [Start] [All Programs] then right click on the program and choose [Send to] then click on [Desktop] to have a shortcut created for running the program.

Once you’ve got things how you want them, you’re done. Then you can look at cleaning up or reinstalling your old computer (if it isn’t dead) for other purposes.

By: Mr JM
There is a final step to using your new computer – getting it all set as you like it. I have seen people who fill their screen with icons. To me it looks chaotic and impossible to use, yet only rarely has my offer to ‘tidy up’ things been accepted. There’s probably a field of psychology to be explored in how people like to use their computers and why they do things the way they do.

Personally I don’t like a lot on my Desktop – I tend to store things in other locations away from my profile and if I need them regularly I place a shortcut to them on the Desktop instead. Your Desktop is found in C:\Documents and Settings\username along with other things in your profile.

Microsoft and other software vendors like to store things in various folders under C:\Documents and Settings\ that are personal to a user. Firefox and Internet Explorer store Bookmarks and Favorites there. Outlook places your PST file (where your downloaded email is kept) there as well

The problem with this, and why I don’t like to store things on my desktop, is a number of those folders get added into your loaded Profile. Put too much in there and you can slow your computer down noticeably. In fact, one way to help restore your computer to the power and speed it had when new if to clean up your Profile. Microsoft even have an applet (a little application) to do a basic job of it for you.

Check out [Start] [All Programs] [Accessories] [System Tools] [Disk Cleanup] – just run it as is, without changing the settings, and see just how much junk even Microsoft thinks it has put on your computer.

By: Mr JM
I’m ready to go, computers connect to the LAN (Local Area Network) and I have my 500GB drive in and formatted. I select my Installs folder – whenever I get software I copy it into the Installs folder and run the setup from there, my My Documents folder and my Downloads folder and start the copy.

It’s been a while since I checked the sizes of my folders – it turns out I am copying over 100GB’s across the network – even at 100 m/bit network speed, that’s going to take time – I go to bed.

There’s more to do however. All I have installed so far is Windows, Office 2007, and Antivirus. I need to set up the programs I use on a regular basis. There’s Nero so I can burn and copy CD’s and DVD’s. I have downloaded Firefox 3 and that will mean some of my prior add-ons will not work. For example, Real Player 11 used to let me download YouTube, Google and other videos – if you’re interested in a video, better to download it and watch it at leisure than to download it onsite every time you want to watch it.

We all have our own uses for computers – unless your current computer dies on you and you need to set up from scratch, it’s a good idea to make a list of all the programs you have installed and make sure you have them available for the new computer.

Often this means getting a new version downloaded and can lead to pleasant (and sometimes not) surprises in what is new.

To get a list for what is actually installed, check in [Start] [Control Panel] [Add/Remove Programs] Note if your Control Panel starts in Category view, there’s a menu item called [Add or Remove Programs] listed.

By: Mr JM
One of the gotcha’s with computers, or I guess with any task really, is finding out part way through a job that you don’t have all the parts.

When I first started with computers, my first machine was an IBM XT, 8086 chip, two five and a quarter inch floppy drives, (making me the envy of those with only one – there was a phrase used in the early days, the Floppy Shuffle, brought about because the computer would want your program disk to actually do anything but you’d have to take it out and insert your data disk for it to have anything to do things on) (more…)