Welcome to Shaun Luttin's public notebook. It contains rough, practical notes. The guiding idea is that, despite what marketing tells us, there are no experts at anything. Sharing our half-baked ideas helps everyone. We're all just muddling thru. Find out more about our work at bigfont.ca.

Getting Started with Windows

Tags: 2014-116DL

Homework

  • Use your @outlook.com account (not your @gmail.com one) to login to your Windows computer.
  • Avoid installing new software to your computer, unless it’s absolutely necessary.
  • Log in to OneDrive once.
  • Re-activate your Norton Anti-Virus.
  • Keep a list of high-level tasks that you’d like to accomplish with your computer. E.g.
    • Keep track of my clients’ contact information.
    • Send and receive client emails.
    • Create and print invoices.
    • Create and print estimates.
    • Etc.

Notes and Theory

Maintain one account for LIFE and another for WORK.

  • LIFE –> @gmail.com
  • WORK –> @outlook.com

Avoid installing software on your computer unless you REALLY need it. Otherwise you can end up with a lot garbage and/or unnecessary complexity on your computer. The more you install, the more you must maintain, and maintenance takes a lot of work.

Uninstall software that you don’t want anymore.

  • Go to the start screen.
  • Start typing “Control”
  • Search results will start appearing on the right.
  • Open Control Panel from the search results.
  • Then click on Uninstall a Program.
  • Your list of installed programs will appear.
  • Find the program that you want to remove.
  • Uninstall it.
  • If it isn’t there, you’ll need to do a more technical removal.

Get started with The Cloud.

  • Open Internet Explorer
    • you can use another browser,
    • but Internet Explorer will log you in automatically b/c it’s a Windows product.
  • Go to OneDrive
    • you can do this through search, or
    • through the address bar.
  • Sign In
    • this will happen automatically if your using Internet Explorer on a Windows Computer.
    • Otherwise, you will need to enter your username and password
  • View available services.
    • In the top left corner,
    • click the downward pointing arrow to view available services.
  • Focus, for now, on using these:
    • Outlook. This is your work-related email account.
    • People. These are your work-related contacts.
    • Calendar.
    • Word. These are your work-related documents.
    • OneDrive. This is your work-related cloud storage of documents, images, spreadsheets, etc.
    • Excel. This is a work-related spreadsheet.

Refresh your computer when it is running slowly. This will take about 45-minutes. You can do it once every three months or so.