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Using the Windows Vista Control Panel
The inner workings of Windows Vista reveal themselves inside the mysterious Control Panel. Choose Start --> Control Panel to plug away at the innards.
Knowing What's New with Windows Vista
If you didn't get suckered into buying Vista Home Basic Edition and your video card packs some oomph, Vista's Aero Glass interface rates as a significant improvement over Windows XP's boxy, now-antiquated look.
Introducing Eight Versions of Windows Vista
Windows Vista appears in eight different versions. Fortunately, most people only need to concern themselves with four, and you can probably winnow the list down to two or three pretty quickly.
Identifying the Main Components of the Windows XP Control Panel
The inner workings of Windows XP reveal themselves inside the mysterious (and somewhat haughtily named) Control Panel. Choose Start --> Control Panel to plug away at the innards (see Figure 1).
Fixing a Frozen Mac
A colorful spinning beach ball is an unwelcome sight on your Apple, at least when that ball never seems to leave the screen. A beach ball that just keeps spinning is a sign that a cranky Mac has turned into a frozen Mac or that at least one of the programs on the machine is throwing a high-tech temper tantrum. The following sections help you deal with a frozen Mac.
Figuring Out Windows Files and Folders
A file is a fundamental chunk of stuff. Like most fundamental chunks of stuff (say, protons or congressional districts), any attempt at a definitive definition gets in the way of understanding the thing itself. Suffice it to say that a Word document is a file. An Excel workbook is a file. That photograph your cousin e-mailed you the other day is a file. Every track on Nine Inch Nails' latest CD is a file, but so is every track on every audio CD ever made.
Fiddling with Your Mac's Dashboard Widgets
Apart from prowling the virtual corridors of cyberspace or interacting with Apple's iLife programs, most of your face time on a Mac will find you engaged with some full-blown (and often pricey) software application — even if you take advantage of a relatively narrow set of features.
Deciding whether You Need Windows Vista
If you have a PC with Windows XP installed, and it works well enough for what you want to do, leave it alone. Keep your Windows XP machine updated with the latest security patches, as soon as they're tested and found to be reliable. But don't throw it in the trash heap yet.
Dealing with Startup Problems in Your Mac
What if you can't even get the computer to start? (That is a very unusual circumstance.) You probably have no power because the plug came loose (blame it on the dog or cat), the switch on the power strip is off, your battery ran out of juice, or a blackout has occurred in your neighborhood.
Covering Common Mac Problems
Your computer won't have to visit the emergency room or undergo major surgery, but a little first aid is probably in order here and there. The solutions to several Mac problems are offered in the following sections.
Finding Common Ground: Macs and Windows
For all their differences, Mac and Windows are more alike than you may initially grasp. Sometimes, it's only a matter of semantics. Here are some commonalities:
Archiving Outlook Folders
In some cases, Outlook puts email messages, tasks, and appointments older than six months into the Archive folder — a special folder for items that Outlook thinks are stale or not worth keeping. Outlook calls sending these items to the Archive folder autoarchiving. Items that Outlook archives aren't lost forever, though. You can visit them by opening the Archive folder and its subfolders on the Folders List. Outlook creates the Archive folder and its subfolders automatically the first time that you archive items.
Animating Parts of a PowerPoint Slide
When it comes to animating a PowerPoint presentation, you can choose between animation schemes, the prebuilt special effects made by the Microsoft elves, or customized animations that you build on your own. Only fans of animation and people with a lot of time on their hands go the second route. (An animation is movement on the slide. For example, you can animate bulleted lists on slides so that the bullet points appear on-screen one at a time when you click the mouse, rather than all at one time.)
Adding Users in Windows XP
Windows XP assumes that, sooner or later, more than one person will want to work on your PC. All sorts of problems crop up when several people share a PC.
Free Software: Image-Editing with GIMP
GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, has all the major features of Adobe Photoshop but is available for free under the GNU General Public License. With the GIMP, you can create or open images and manipulate them by cutting, pasting, enlarging, shrinking, flipping, cropping, and much more. You can adjust the color balance, saturation, brightness, and so on to make your colors more vibrant and an image more appealing. The GIMP offers many filters for a multitude of effects. You can layer your images with the GIMP to compose new and extraordinary creations. The GIMP also has a drawing and painting program, plus you can create animations with each frame as a new layer and export them as animations. And that's just the beginning!
Filtering Junk E-Mail in Outlook 2003
In 2003, a dubious milestone in the history of e-mail was achieved — more junk e-mail messages were sent over the Internet than legitimate ones. It's now safe to assume that if you get e-mail, you get junk e-mail, also known as spam. Outlook 2003 includes a filtering system that looks over all your incoming mail and automatically moves anything that looks like junk e-mail to a special folder. You can delete everything that gets moved to your Junk E-Mail folder now and again — after checking to make sure Outlook didn't mistakenly move real e-mail to your Junk E-Mail folder.
Fabricating Those Fabulous Formulas in Excel
Formulas are the real workhorses of the Excel worksheet. If you set up a formula properly, it computes the right answer when you enter it into a cell. From then on, it keeps itself up-to-date, recalculating the results whenever you change any of the values that the formula uses.
Creating a Signature for Your Outlook Email
Many people like to add a signature to the end of every message that they send. A signature is usually a small piece of text that identifies you to everyone reading your message and tells something that you want everyone to know. Many people include their name, the name of their business, their motto, a little sales slogan, or some squib of personal information.
Creating a New Document Based on a Template in Microsoft Word
To create a document based on a template other than Normal.dot, you must choose File --> New. The New Document task pane displays. From the Templates section of the New Document task pane, click the On My Computer link to bring up the Templates dialog box, shown in Figure 1. From this dialog box, you pick the template on which you want to base the new document, and then click OK to create the document.
Creating Your Own Templates in Microsoft Word
Word comes with a collection of templates that let you create a wide variety of document types, but sooner or later you'll almost certainly want to create your own templates. Grab a beverage, have a seat, and prepare to explore everything you need to know about creating and using your own templates.

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