Simple Stuff You Really Need to Know

Booting Up
Do you know why turning on your computer is called "booting up"? It's because this lump of metal, plastic, circuits and chips you've come to depend on is nothing until you turn on the power. Surprise! Once the motherboard is powered up it initialises its own firmware, including the chip set and other odds and sods. Eventually everything fires up and voilà—"Houston, we have lift-off." In human terms, it's equivalent to lifting yourself by your bootstraps.

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts
Cut – Highlight the needed text, Hold down the Control Button and hit the X key;
Copy – Highlight the needed text, Hold down the Control Button and hit the C key;
Paste – Highlight the needed text, Hold down the Control Button and hit the V key;
Select everything on a page – Hold down the Control Button and hit the A key.

Use the Find and Search Utilities to Locate Lost Files
Have you ever saved a file and then wondered where it went when you went to retrieve it? A useful utility called "Search" (older Windows operating systems call it "Find") can help.

• Click "Start" and look for "Search" or "Find".
• If you have "Find" click it. If you have "Search", select it, then, under the heading, "What do you want to search for?" select the most appropriate listing. In both cases a search box opens.
• Enter the name of the file—or as much of it as you can remember—in the search box.
• Select the drive(s) you want to search in by selecting them in the 'Look in' drop down box.
• Click the "Search" button and all files and folders matching the search criteria appear on the right side of the Search Window along with each file's path.
• Depending on the number of files you have stored on your hard drive, this could take some time.
• If you can remember part of the file name you can use an asterisk as a wild card to substitute for the missing characters.

Save Your Work Early and Often
When you are creating or modifying a file make sure to save your work often. How often is up to you. Some people save every few lines of work, some might save every fifteen or twenty minutes, some put their trust in the patron saint of computers and never save their work at all. Ouch! To paraphrase a chessboard quip, "Save your work early and often"—it can ward off a great deal of frustration.
There are two ways to save your work: Go to the file menu and click on "Save", or from the keyboard hold down the Control key and press "C".
Some modern software has its own built in safeguard. Open Office, for instance, has a recovery function that is able to retrieve most documents if the program crashes or the computer powers down.

Back Up Your Documents
It's obvious but some people don't do it. I was in Penrith's Computer Discounts  last year when a sorrowing woman brought the remains of her dead computer into the store. The hard drive had crashed. "Can you save the files on the hard drive?" she asked. "I'll try," said Hai, "but I don't know much we can save." "But you must!" said the woman. "All our business files are on it."
You guessed it—she had never backed up her files.
The problem with computers is that they sometimes crash, and if you haven't backed-up your files, then everything is gone. Kaput!
I copy all my documents to a DVD about once every month and, since I also saved my old PC as a back-up unit when I bought my laptop, I also copy them there.
If you don't want to do that there are a number of free on-line facilities that allow you to store your documents off site. I haven't tried it personally, so there's no recommendation, but 4-Shared is one such site that looks OK.