How To Be A Power User
From codeTank
Contents |
Welcome to Your Computer
Ah, computers. So you forked out a cool chunk of change, and now you can do all sorts of cool things, like surf the internet, play games, and look at porn. Well, believe it or not, computers are capable of a lot more. But before we jump into that, there are some basic things you need to understand.
Before you start programming, you need to become a POWER USER. A power user is someone who can get around on a computer comfortably. Power users are great at screwing around with random things, and figuring out how to get stuff to work. You know you're a power user when your friends start bugging you about trying to fix something on their computer. (And you've graduated when you screwed up their computer even more by accident, and maybe even fixed it afterwards :-P).
Qualities of the Power User
Power users have a couple basic qualities, and you'll need to start emulating these attitudes if you ever want to program.
- Courage - A power user isn't afraid to try something new. The average user might freeze when an error box pops up, afraid to make things worse. The power user blazes past pesky error windows, and attempts to click on every little thing until things work. This takes courage.
- Authority - A power user knows that the computer is a computer. Likewise, being an inanimate object, it must be bossed around and bitch-slapped every now and then to keep it in check. The computer never intimidates the power user. The power user might not know exactly what they're doing, but they know that they are in charge and doing it.
- Curiousity - When not messing up computers, a power user usually feels compelled to try new things, and see what happens. If things get screwed up, a power user feels confident they can usually fix it, and it isn't the end of the world. The power user will always try to figure things out before asking more experienced computer nerds for help.
These attitudes are essential to learning how to program. If you don't feel comfortable doing random things, and trying stuff out just for the hell of it, then programming will always remain a mystery to you. Programming computers requires you to get your hands dirty. It's just that simple.
Basic Skills of the Power User
Power users have mastered computer basics. These skills are second nature to the power user, and will not be covered by this tutorial:
- File Management - A power user knows how to use Windows Explorer, create folders, organize a directory structure, copy/move/rename/delete files, create shortcuts, and backup files.
- Download Stuff - A power user can browse the internet, and download things for later use. Bonus points if you can use P2P sharing programs to download music and porn (nothing illegal of course!).
- Configure Popular Programs - A power user knows how to get around in the normal programs, like Notepad, Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player, MS Paint, and Internet Explorer. A power user can manage the options in these programs, and customize them to their liking.
- Use Control Panel - A power user might not know what every little button in the Control Panel does, but they are comfortable with poking around, and changing system settings. Bonus points if you can mess around with Device Manager without totally screwing up your system.
Advanced Skills of the Power User
There are a few advanced skills a power user should know. These skills are absolutely required to become a programmer, and will be briefly described for the remainder of this tutorial.
How to Configure Windows Explorer
One thing that drives me insane is when a smart person uses the default settings in Windows Explorer to hide file extensions of known file types. Always show all file type extensions. Period. This is for both ease of use, and security reasons.
If you don't know, a file extension is usually three characters at the end of a filename. The extension tells Windows what type of information is stored inside the file. For example, if your filename is called Castle.bmp, then the extension is what appears after the last period - in this example, it is BMP. BMP stands for "Bitmap", and is an image format. Other common extensions include TXT (Text), DOC (Document), PNG (Image), JPG or JPEG (Another image format), GIF (Another image format), MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3; Music), AVI (Usually video), HTML (Webpage), EXE (Executable), etc.
To show all file extensions, open up windows explorer (hold Windows Key + E), go to Tools -> Folder Options. Go to the View tab. Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". While you're at it, uncheck "Hide protected operating system files", and select "Show hidden files and folders".
There! Now when you look at your files, they will show the extension at the end. Any time you double-click a file, what happens depends on the extension. So you can easily change the behavior of a file by renaming it with a new extension.
For example, save some drawing in MS Paint to Test.bmp. Then rename the file to Test.txt. Double click it, and it will probably open up in Notepad. It might take a while to load, or freeze your computer. If it does open without freezing, then you can see the binary data that comprises of a BMP file. Try changing something in it and saving it. Now rename it back to Test.bmp and try to open it with MS Paint :-). You don't want to normally do this - it almost always screws up the file permanently. But it is interesting to play with.
How to Unzip/Unrar an Archive
If you don't already have it, get WinRAR. WinRAR will allow you to compress and decompress files.
Using WinRAR, you can compress entire folders, or collection of files, into one file. This is great for backing up data, or sending it to someone else. If you have 100000 images, would you rather e-mail each one as an individual file, or compress them all into one big file, and just send the big file? One big file is better than 100000 small files. Also, it'll take up less space compressed, because of the compression algorithms used to shrink the files down.
You'll probably normally see ZIP files. Another compression format is RAR, which was invented by the guys who made WinRAR. RAR tends to be better than ZIP, so power users usually use RAR when compressing files. However, most average users can only open ZIP, so if you are giving something out for everyone else to download, usually ZIP is a better idea. All recent Windows machines support ZIP files natively, without having to download WinRAR or WinZip.
When you install WinRAR, make sure you enable Shell Integration in the options. This makes it easy to right-click files and folders, and RAR them up. To decompress, right click the RAR or ZIP file, and select "Extract to whatever...". Become comfortable using WinRAR.
Use FireFox
Lastly, a power user uses Firefox. Firefox is an alternative to using Internet Explorer (IE) while browsing the internet. It is more secure, generally faster, and renders webpages more correctly than Internet Explorer.
Plus, all the cool kids hate Microsoft. And you want to be cool, right?
Don't delete Internet Explorer - chances are you'll need it for random sites that don't conform to standards every once in a while. But for your everyday browsing needs, a true power user always opts for programs that are coded correctly, follow the standards, and are open source. Or pirated. Just kidding ;-).
Conclusion
Congratulations! You are now a POWER USER!
The only way to learn about computers is to sit down and play with them. As a power user, you now have the confidence and attitude ready to learn more advanced operations.
You are ready to start programming.
Continue to How Do You Program? - or go back to the list of tutorials.
