5 Reasons to Get a Google Account

If you don't already have one, you should get yourself a Google account.

Maybe you already use Yahoo or Microsoft's online services. Maybe you already have an email account through your internet provider. I'm not suggesting you convert over to using Google's email client (called Gmail) though I do recommend that service.

What I'm suggesting is to sign up for a Google account. There are many many services you can use through Google, many of which I'll cover in some detail in the future. But for now, you should start off by creating a Google account i you don't have one already.

Just head on over through this link and click "Create an account now" down in the lower right hand corner.

Need five good reasons?

5) It'll let you more easily comment on this blog.

4) It'll give you access to Google Reader.

3) It'll allow you to make an iGoogle homepage.

2) It'll let you create an online Google Calender.

1) It'll give you access to Google's Gmail.

If you don't know what all of these things are, don't worry, I'll get to that.

Know Your Hardware - The Monitor

Ok, for many of you, this might seem obvious, but for others it surprisingly may not be.

That display that you're looking at, the one with the pretty pictures, is your computer's "Monitor". I mostly want to point this out because when my kids started using a computer they kept wanting to refer tot he monitor as "The Computer". If asked to shut the computer off, they would turn off the monitor.

That box that's likely on the floor under your desk, table, whatever, that's your Computer.

Typically Monitors come in two flavors.



The older models that you'll be harder pressed to find are the CRTs. CRT stands for "Cathode Ray Tube". they take up large amounts of space, eat up electricity and produce a lot of heat. Generally speaking, if you're getting a new computer or looking to upgrade, you don't want one of these. The advantage is that like many older technologies, they tend to be cheaper than the alternative.

The other option is a flat panel.



These slick guys are the wave of the future (and current) times. They come in several varieties and sizes and many newer ones come in a 16x9 "widescreen" ratio. As the world moves to widescreen high definition so do standard display sizes. The drawbacks to these are their cost and the fact that they tend to be prone to "dead pixes". Dead Pixes are when a single pixes or dot on a screen stops working. The result is a permanent, generally very small spot that will only irritate you occasionally when you think you've mistakenly added a period to the line of a document.

There are of course other alternative monitoring systems. Many modern televisions double as computer monitors. They still fall into these two basic categories.

A "Gig"? That's like a band get together right?

I noticed in my last post I was throwing around terms like "2.5 gigs". I realize that what this means may not exactly be clear. A "Gig" is a "gigabyte", a way to measure space on your computer's hard drive.

You might also see it called a "hard disk". The hard disk is where the computer stores all of the data it's not currently using (and a bit that it is using but mostly not). Think of the Hard Drive as the file cabinet where you keep all of your papers. Better yet, think of it as your entire room, or even your whole house. Part of your house has some basic files and paperwork (emails and Word documents), part of it has the tools needed to play games perhaps, a basketball or a set of golf clubs, part of it stores utilities that help the house go, your plumbing or even just your yard rake.

The point is, the Hard Drive is where the computer stores information. This is different than Memory, the subject of a future post. Memory is what the computer is actively doing, the Hard Drive is more like a storage bin for things the computer might use.

Most basic modern computers include a hard drive with around 80 gigs or gigabytes of space. A higher end computer might go up to 120 or 150 gigs of space. Chances are if you have more than that amount of space you've specifically opted to either by adding Hard Drives or upgrading your initial purchase. Either way, you probably know about bytes and gigabytes.

Back to Gigabytes, a gigabyte is 1 billion bytes (more or less). There's an extra complicated step involving kilobytes not actually being 1000 bytes and such but for this explanation we'll neglect that small detail.

So, like I said, a gigabyte is 1 billion bytes. A Megabyte is 1 million bytes. a Kilobyte is 1000 bytes, a Terrabyte is 1 Trillion bytes, a Pita byte is 1 Quadrillion bytes.

That's good enough for now. For the most part, people stick with Giga, Mega and Kilo. Anything smaller doesn't really matter, anything larger is for servers and specialized equipment.

Gigabytes really only come up for measuring hard drives as a whole or while installing large pieces of software or games.

Megabytes are really the most common form of measurement. Music files are generally 4-6 megabytes depending on the quality, digital camera photos tend to be about 1-2 megabytes unless you've got some sort of beefy SLR camera shooting in RAW format.

Kilobytes are pretty common too though with today's space and bandwidth their size is pretty negligible. Documents and emails run 50-100 kilobytes. For what it's worth though you could fit 10,000 100 kilobyte documents in 1 gigabyte. Even the most dedicated writer would have trouble filling an 80 gig drive with documents.

These measurements are generally abbreviated in a few standard ways. Gigs, Megs, Kilos (less common) are longer abbreviations. If you have a 5 meg download you're talking about 5 megabytes. Also you might see GB, MB, or KB floating around. Those stand for Gigabyte, Megabyte, and Kilobyte respectively.

Occasionally you'll see those without the "b" on the end but not often.

Empty Your Recycle Bin

Just a quick suggestion.

Empty your recycle bin!

I can't count the number of times I sit down at a person's PC and notice they have never or very infrequently emptied the recycle bin. This thing can account for some loss of Hard Drive space, and if it's never been emptied it can add up quickly.

So find that old Recycle Bin on your computer's desktop, right click it, and select "empty Recycle Bin". I recommend doing this AT LEAST once a week, preferably more. If you're feeling really ambitious you can turn it off completely and have all of your deleted files instantly fly into nothingness.

We all make mistakes sometimes though so I don't actually recommend doing this procedure.

If you're still feeling like a daredevil, right click the recycle bin and select "Properties". You'll get a menu like this.


Check the box there that says "Do not move files to the Recycle bin...". If you're limited on hard drive space you can also move the slider to shrink the available size of your recycle bin. Keep in mind this will cause some larger files to delete instead of being recycled. If your recycle bin has 5% of a 50 gig drive, anything over 2.5 gigs will automatically go straight to delete land. No easy recovery possible.

You can also select the check box to configure the drives independently. Maybe you never want to recycle files when deleting from your C drive but you have a 500 gigabyte D drive that you want to devote 50% of it's capacity to recycled files (why is beyond me but hey, whatever gets you going).

Now, let's say you've accidentally delete a file and it's gone to your recycle bin. This is your safety net, this is why the thing exists! Maybe in a fit of rage you went and deleted all of the poetry you wrote to your ex girlfriend but now you've decided you may want to reuse those clever bits for your next gal. Assuming you haven't emptied it, right click the recycle bin and select "Explore".

A windows should pop up showing all of the files in the recycle bin. Now, right click and select "Restore" on the files you want to keep.



They will return to their original location, unscathed. Note: If you've deleted an entire folder you'll need to restore the entire folder even if you simply want individual files.

On the off chance that you've deleted something critical you'll need to break out some more complex file recovery software (I have had good luck with R-Studio). that is however a more complex topic for another day.

Everyman Tech

Welcome to the Everyman Tech Blog. This is a tech related blog for people who are less than tech savvy. I plan to do my best to write posts in a manner that assume the reader doesn't nessesarily know what all of the elements are in the first place.

So what is a blog?

A blog is like a website that is easily updated by the author. It's sort of the evolution of the old style website that required the author to know bits of complicated code and programming languages in order to update static pages. A blog is dynamic and it keeps it's old content in an easily searchable archive.

You can subscribe to blogs and get updates to email or RSS (sort of an electronic newspaper and topic for a later post). Blogs are essentially the core of what is being called "Web 2.0" by, well, bloggers.

Blogs are often run by individuals or small groups of individuals. They are generally designed to be easily created and updated by anyone. They are generally created in a basic text style interface.

But this sint' a post about blogs, not yet, this is a post about a blog that is about Technology made Simple.