The Computer Club Newsletter

March 2003

By Ron Uncapher

The Tellico Village Computer Users Club continues to be the best source of computer information in the Village. Last month, Victor de Groote, with assistance from club president, Howard Jones, gave an excellent presentation on how to build a computer. It must have been good, because no one left until the end. The April 1^st meeting promises to be just as informative. Doug Christman will tell us how to create music CDs from tapes and records. He has generated 500 CDs from his own music collection. Doug will discuss hardware and software aspects of the analog to digital sound conversion process and will demonstrate connection of a sound source (e.g., cassette recorder) to the PC, appropriate software settings for copying audio to the PC and then to a CD. Don’t miss it! The time is 7:00 PM, April 1, 2003 at the Yacht Club. We will again try to give a demonstration on refilling inkjet printer cartridges. As usual, dues paying TVCUC members will be eligible for door prizes.

After email, the most used computer application is probably your word processor. Microsoft Works comes preinstalled on many new computers, or you may have Microsoft Word, the world’s most popular word processor. These programs are both very powerful and feature filled applications. MS Works has a subset of the features found in Word. The menu bars and tool bars of both programs are very similar. In fact, once you become familiar with one word processing application, any other will be very easy to use because of the similarity in features.

The toolbar will show icons of your most used features. Resting the mouse pointer over the feature button for a moment will cause an explanation of the button to pop up. The toolbar and many more features are also available using the drop-down menus. For example, under FILE, you will see a PAGE SETUP selection. Clicking on it brings up a window where you can set top, bottom and side margins as well as the size of your paper, and whether you want to print your document in "portrait" or "landscape" format. The "landscape" selection lets you print the page "widthwise".

The EDIT menu, also available by right clicking your mouse over the page, has the usual CUT, COPY, and PASTE functions. The INSERT menu is very versatile. Some of the most useful selections are BREAK, FOOTNOTE, and PICTURE. BREAK gives you the option of starting a new page or a new column. PICTURE lets you put a graphic of some kind in your document. If you click on CLIPART, a window will open that gives you a selection of simple graphics. You can choose from many categories, Holidays, Government, Science, etc. If you open FROM A FILE, you can browse your directories and find a picture, or artwork and insert it in your document. Once in the document, you can adjust the size to suit or relocate it on the page. This feature is very useful when making posters or composing newsletters.

The FORMAT menu is, perhaps, the most used feature. From this menu you will change the font style and size, paragraph features, such as alignment (left, right, center, or justify) and amount of indent. The format features can also be accessed by a right click of the mouse button. Generally, when you change a format item, the change will start at the point of the cursor. To change previously typed text, highlight the portion of the text that you want to be affected, then click on the FORMAT, button and the selection. For example, if I wanted to change the type size of this paragraph, I would highlight beginning at "The" to the end of the paragraph, then change the size number using the menu or the font size selector on the toolbar.

There are too many features in a word processor to cover in this short article. I would suggest that you open yours and experiment so that when you want to do something new, you will have the experience to do it. Remember, if all else fails, go to HELP.

Here is a tip from Dick Joyner. If you are going to dispose of your computer, either at a garage sale, or as donation to a charity or whatever, you will want to make sure that your personal and sensitive data is completely wiped off of your hard drive. Dick went to ZDNet on the Web and found Eraser 5.3. It is an awesome little program. It has four primary selections to purge files. One protocol overwrites 35 times. Another purges unused space on the drive that may have data that was deleted using normal Windows Delete commands. Remember, deleting a file leaves it on your hard drive until it is over written by another file.

Finally, have you updated your anti virus program lately? There are a lot of new viruses floating around. Computer virus infections have become very common. You must update your anti virus program weekly to insure you are protected against the newest strains.

There are some new features on the TVCUC Website, www.tvcuc.org. A year’s worth of Computer Club Connection articles are now available. Also, make use of the Forum. There is a lot of help out there if you only ask for it.