The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Starting Computing Tom Coleman tomc@melbpc.org.au

When you start computing; when you first confront the reality of having to adjust your thinking and your expectations and make it all work, it is a brain washing and confusing experience. You are surrounded by all kinds of information. Until you have a year or two of experience under your belt it all seems pretty important. You can waste a lot of time and effort trying to get on top of something like Web Page Design when all you really use your computer for is your genealogy interest.
 
Deciding what is important for you when you are starting out takes years of experience.
 
There are any number of tasks you can perform with a computer. There is no way that you could master even a small fraction of them. You are only going to master the things you use. No one learns anything in an abstract way. If it is not part of your computing activity then don't even bother with it.

That said, there is still a need to learn the basics of how the computer is organized and the conventions and routines used in building a computer, setting it up and making it work. This is like driving a car. It does not matter that you have no idea of the energy output of a litre of petrol. You do need to know how the car behaves when you turn the steering wheel. You need to be able to get it into gear and know how to operate the windscreen wipers. You also need to know the road rules. You need to apply a little common sense too. Don't go driving at night if you don't know where the headlight switch is. Later you will need to know how to jump-start a car with a flat battery and what to do in the event of a catastrophic brake failure. But that is for later. Concentrate on the things that will get you up and running first. The fundamentals.

Fundamentals

Let's take a look at some of these fundamentals of computing. One of the mysteries of computing is To where do the files disappear? An understanding of how the computer organizes its files is fundamental to looking for a file, organizing your files and generally getting a handle on what is going on.

Files (ie. data, information, programs and so on) are all stored with individual names. The way they are stored physically has no relationship to the way they are displayed to you. The graphical display in My Computer or Windows Explorer is a logical display and is very nice and intellectually satisfying, but that's all. It is a mistake to try to equate what you see with how the file is physically stored.

We will take a quick look at the physical storage, so that we can then forget it and get on with that which is much more significant.

You computer's hard disk is the equivalent of the kitchen pantry. It's a storeroom. No one prepares food in the pantry. That's where you put things until you want to use them. Then you take them out and put them on the workbench. The computing equivalent is memory - RAM in other words. The more RAM you have, the bigger the workbench. The computer reads the file on the hard disk and stores a copy of it in memory. The original stays on the hard disk. Once the file is in memory the Central Processing Unit can get to it. That's the CPU; best known by its given name, Pentium, Duron, Athlon etc. Most of this happens automatically and you don't have to do much. It's a bit like the distributor in your car, you just hit the starter and it happens. The CPU is the Mixmaster, the food processor. Once you have finished preparing the food you put it back in the pantry. So when you have finished with your file you write it back to the hard disk. This will usually overwrite the original file on the hard disk. This kind of activity is going on all the time in the background as Windows does its thing.

But, how is the data actually stored on the hard disk? It is the same as a tape recording, only instead of going along, it goes around. That's almost true. Go and read up on sectors, clusters and defragmentation if you are curious. Look up lost clusters and cross linked files and File Allocation Table too. It will make your housekeeping more meaningful. It will not mean much when you are just starting out so you can put it off until later, when you have a need to know.

The important thing when you are starting out is to get a grasp of the logical way that files are organized. It is like this. The people who set up the first computers assumed that people would want to store files by subject. Personal letters would be stored in one place and the accounting files in another. Programs would go in a place named after the program and so on. Seems pretty logical. The trouble is they did a terrible job of telling people, that is how they did it. They were computer programmers and were down the garden with the fairies. Not everyone thinks like a programmer, but no one told the programmers.

In Windows, these places to put files are called Folders. Prior to that they were called Directories. The two words mean the same thing. So you put the accounting information files in a folder called Accounts. Stunningly simple.
 
However, you may not like the name Accounts. You may prefer to call it Moneybox or Scams or DeathandTaxes. You can call it anything you like. If you cannot think of a name then the computer will suggest one - typically "New Folder". The next one will be New Folder 1 and the next New Folder 2. The problem here being that you have no idea of what is in New Folder 17. It is best to give the folders a meaningful name.
 
Here is a warning. Once you have given a folder a name, don't change it. You see, Windows writes little notes to itself about how to do things and where to find files and so on. If you change the name of a file or save somewhere else then Windows may lose track of it. The file is perfectly ok but Windows has lost it. You will have to go looking for it yourself. That is not too hard, providing you know the name of the file. Once again meaningful names act as a memory jogger. Some folk with tidy minds do things like giving their files a name corresponding to the date. If they cannot remember the date or made a mistake typing in the date then they suffer greatly. So too, do the people who name files or folders No1, No2 or ABC.

Having meaningful names for folders is half of the battle. Putting the appropriate file in the appropriate folder is the other part. During the Second World War the Germans experimented with submarine communication using VLF. They had problems with some of the components burning out, as VLF is a power guzzler. After the war when the Allies were going through the captured files they discovered that all the burn out and short circuit reports were stored under lightning strike and so no one ever realized that there was a problem as there were no reports. Mind you, their experimental transmitters had fierce lightning conductors.
 
Folders can and frequently do have other folders in them. They can have both files and folders in the one folder. Frequently you will find folders-within folders-within folders ad nauseam.

Time to do a little jargon busting. This, / is a forward slash or a fore slash. It leans forward in the direction that you read. This, \ is a back slash. It leans backwards against the direction you read. DO NOT CONFUSE THEM. Fore slashes are used to give commands more meaning and to qualify their actions. You can forget about them for now, if you are just starting out.

Back slashes are used to separate folders when you are writing a folder's place (or address if you like). For example;

   C:\windows\command\scandisk.exe

Although the file naming convention is not case sensitive there are still a few rules about files names that are absolutes. For example you cannot have two files with the same name in the same folder. Some filenames are not allowed because they mean something special to the Operating System. Others are just ill advised. For example you can get away with calling a file Con but you will get into all kinds of trouble trying to refer to it because the computer uses Con to refer to the console (the keyboard and monitor). There are a few of these traps for young players. Welcome on board. 

File names have two parts. First there is the file name. Once upon a time you were restricted to not more than eight characters for a file name. These days your can have as much as you like. The second part of the filename is called the extension and is only three characters long. In many respects the extension is more significant than the file name. For example the only files that carry instructions to the computer are those with an extension of COM, EXE or BAT. All other files carry information. So far as you are concerned EXE and COM files are the same. The BAT file is a batch file and is one that can be written by the user, providing you know what to write. Again that is not for beginners but is a direction your curiosity might take you later. 

Many file extensions tell you and the computer about the kind of file. A "DLL" file is a Dynamic Link Library file. It contains information about and often controls the interaction between certain files. Some files record where other files are to be found. This is why Windows sometimes loses track of things if you change names of folders or move files around. WAV files are Wave files and store sounds, music or voice or hoot or quack or ping. There are many different file types, most of which you never interact with. They are set up by programs when you install them and you never knowingly have anything to do with them. There are few files that you can edit, tweak or fiddle with but that is for later when you have a need. For now just acknowledge that they exist and ignore them. 

Different programs use slightly different ways of displaying the files and folders. Microsoft Word is not as graphical as Windows Explorer, which is different again to My Computer, and Quicken shows things in a different way to Adobe Premiere. They are all showing you the same Drive:\Folder\File\ structure, but in different ways. The result is that some programs files are easier to sort than others. Once you can get a handle on the underlying structure the whole lot becomes simple. 

Another thing that confuses all users, novice and guru alike. Different programmers give the same thing different names. Worse still, they do not use the intuitive names for some functions. For example in most word processing programs you can arrange to have your page described in Inches or Centimetres or as columns and rows. If you want to change from one type of measurement to another you just go to HELP and look it up don't you? The problem is you don't know what they called it. Look it up under Inches, Imperial, Centimetre, metric, page size, page layout and on and on and on. You can't find it because it is in "Units of Measure", which is about the last place you would think of looking. In fact I found it accidentally when looking up something else. Nevertheless it pays to learn how to use the Help that comes with most programs. That's where you are going to be able to solve most of your problems. 

You are going to be driven by your need to know. Most of it is written in the help files. Learn to use them. The other way to get help and insight is to talk to people.  

One last thing. If you allow the postman to deliver Melb PC to you once a month and use it as your ISP then you are robbing yourself. The meetings, the Special Interest Groups, the Training and the dial help is one huge resource that you are entitled to use as part of your membership. Don't get the idea that those meetings are gatherings of whizzbang gurus. They are not. There are always a couple of gurus there but most attendees are like you. They are there because they are drowning. Talk to them. They are fellow travellers. They are interested. You must be interested too or would not have read this far. 

Reprinted from the February 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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