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.

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.

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.

Add/Remove Programs

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.

The advantage was, changing computers meant picking up your disk box and walking over to the other computer – insert disk and ‘Voila!’ you’re ready to rock and roll. Then came Windows and all the extra little bits and pieces that make up your computing environment.

Add to that the different hardware now available and the task of swapping over needs to be carefully planned. Will my old RAM (memory) fit in the new box? Should I take my video card or bite the bullet and pay for a new one? Should I simply take my old hard disk and transfer it over and if I do, do I make it the system drive in the new machine?

It all takes careful planning or at least some forethought.

So there I was, new machine built with basic software on it, ready (I thought) to move it into place and start the lengthy process of customizing it back to what I wanted. I went to the local computer swap meet and picked up a new 500GB hard disk for $80 to take all my data and figured to install it while the new PC was easy to get to.

One problem… no SATA power cable for it. I had made sure I had a SATA data cable (quite different from the older cables) but hadn’t checked closely enough to notice there wasn’t a spare SATA power cable in there. The computer power supply comes with multiple connectors but it isn’t specific to the other hardware. The current SATA drive was powered by an adapter on the older PATA connector – and there was only one.

It took a couple of days before my work took me past a computer shop and I could call in and get another one.

For me, the next install is the network drivers – that way I can copy down the rest of the software directly from the current computer.

I probably should do the network ones first but I abhor the default settings on my screen, and it takes little time to copy out the video drivers to a USB memory stick.

Before I run the network drivers and connect up, I make sure the Windows Firewall is turned on. This provides a very basic level of protection against invasion from outside your network. Click [Start] [Control Panel] [Windows Firewall] and turn it on.

Once the network drivers are installed I restart the computer so it will set itself up as part of my network. When I ran the Windows setup and it asks about network settings, I just accept default settings but I name my Workgroup differently than just ‘Workgroup.’ By matching the name of the Workgroup of the other computers on the network, the new computer will join the Workgroup as it starts up.

The next step is to ensure there are ‘shared’ drives or folders on the machine from which you need to copy programs and drivers. You can also share folders on the new machine and then ‘push’ the files across from the old machine. Or you can simply copy all you need out onto CDROM, DVD, or USB memory stick.

Once you have the drivers, install software for the programs you want to run and all your documents and user files on the new machine, you can basically turn off the old computer and move the new one to where you want it and just work on that.

Most computers these days are on the end of an ADSL connection to the internet. So, the first thing to install is the Antivirus software – I run with Symantec Antivirus, but there are good free programs out there, such as AVG, which will guard against nearly all attacks.

You also need to make sure you have Spyware protection, but that isn’t as important until you start browsing – there are viruses out there that will reach across an unprotected link to the internet and infect your machine.

Basic motherboard

Once I have the new machine set up with all my programs and information, I will clean my current computer and set it up with all the installation software and use it as a server for our network so we can store downloads there and backup our documents and data.

Then every so often, we write out files to a DVD in 4.5GB chunks and store them as extra backups.

The current task is to install the new hard disk in the new machine and get it formatted. Then I make sure the new machine runs on the network as it should and I can start copying the data over.

The first step in getting the new machine set up has already been done – I logged into the manufacturers’ sites and found Windows XP drivers for all the main bits of the computer. The place to start for this is on the Motherboard maker’s web page.

In the CMOS settings, entered by pressing [Delete] (or [Del]) on most machines, although sometimes it’s [F2] or [F1] you will find a motherboard ID or BIOS number. It may look something like RL86510A.86A.0089 on an Intel motherboard, which on checking on the site shows a D865PERL Main board. That will then lead to a variety of drivers to download.

The essential ones are normally onboard ones such as video, network and sound, but there may also be chipset drivers which will tell Windows how to ‘talk’ optimally to the hardware and can give a performance boost to the system

You’ll want to do your own research, but in this section of this series, I am going to explore the basics of the big three – Blogger, Wordpress, and LiveJournal – to help you make your decision.

LiveJournal is the most recent experiment of mine. I moved from Wordpress to LiveJournal purely out of a networking nature. That’s not to say there aren’t other aspects to the host.

Like Blogger and Wordpress, LiveJournal is easy to sign up for and get going. While there was some fuss a while back about LiveJournal pulling the option to have free blogs, users don’t have to worry about that now.

LiveJournal is the choice that you will want to go with if making friends and joining communities sounds exactly like what you want to do. Moving above and beyond the typical blog host, LiveJournal grants you the ability to compile a friend list (and you will get a ‘friends page’ which is like a feed reader for your LJ friends’ blog entries), create and join communities, and peruse other people’s friend lists and communities.

If you want choice for templates, then you might be shoved into the realm of overwhelmed by how much choice you’ll have with LJ. Paid accounts have more options, but the template options for the free accounts certainly aren’t anything to snub. The thing that may not work so well for some bloggers (and works in Blogger.com’s favour) is that you don’t have the ability to easy copy and past templates not on offer. Paying gives you more options, but again, I’m sticking with what’s available at the free level.

The big negative for LJ, I believe, is that all of these options, choices, and things you can do with your blog can get a bit confusing. If a simple blog to place your occasional thoughts is what you want, LJ might not be the best choice for you right now. Why go for all the bells and whistles if you don’t need them.

However, if you are open to easy click friend making, communities, and much more, then definitely check it out.

You’ll want to do your own research, but in this section of this series, I am going to explore the basics of the big three – Blogger, Wordpress, and LiveJournal – to help you make your decision.

I first started blogging with Wordpress when I started working for 451press. It was a bit intimidating to switch over to a new service, but I found the transition easy and positive.

One thing that is great about Wordpress is the easy to manage categories. If you’re typing away and see your post doesn’t fit in any of your current categories, then it’s as easy as typing in a new category and adding it to the list - all of which can be done without having to save the post or refresh the page. Categories are a wonderful thing for both you and your readers. If you’re looking for an older post or your readers want to read a specific category only, it’s as easy as clicking on that category name. Plus it’s easy to just go to a page and delete, rename, and otherwise manage your categories.

What sets Wordpress apart from some blogging hosts is that you can have pages, which is one of the things that put me off from using Blogger. Not only do you have your main blog, but you can have an about you page, a page for your business or online shopping, another page for your writing… The list goes on forever. The ability to create and manage pages makes your blog more like a website and less like just another blog.

However, there are its catches. There are a lot of options and things you can do with your blog, but it does take a while to get used to the navigation and exactly how things work. What I found to be the most frustrating is putting in separate categories for the blogroll. While mine looks like it should, it took me a long time to figure out how to make it that way, and I’m still not sure if I did it the way I’m supposed to.

I mentioned the templates as a positive feature above, but you should know that not all templates are created equal. Not all have color options, and not all have customizable header options. This isn’t the most horrible thing in the world by any means, but you might end up finding a template you love but not being able to customize your header.

What about going directly into the template code and doing it there? That brings on my final criticism of Wordpress.

One of my largest annoyances when it comes to Wordpress is that you have to pay to get access to your template. There is no easy tab to click on to edit the code. Yes, there is a space for you to move around your sidebar widgets, but that’s all the designing input you get when it comes to your template unless you pay the fee.