The Internet may be 'just' a form of communication, but one of the most exciting points of this form of commmunication is that it provides two way communication. This has its good and bad points. Digging through our E-Mail each day and discarding what is so widely known as 'Spam' is certainly one of the negative points. There are certainly far more positive things about this communication medium- E-mail, realtime voice and text communication, and the ability to download information.

      The term download is used for a variety of things, but mainly it means that there is a computer somewhere else and you get that computer to send your computer some information. (If your computer was sending something to another computer it would be called an 'upload.')

      So what to download? Thre is a tremendous amount of information out there. I could barely even start to describe it all. There are entire books available, articles, computer programs, stock reports, weather reports, sound files, movies to view, games, and much more!

      1) Reply to E-Mail solicitation with great caution! Remember that a message that sounds like it is coming from a professional may very well have been sent from an office that is nothing more than a cardboard box and a laptop computer. The first hint that a letter is suspicious is when it begins by telling you that it is 100% legal. As Shakespear said, "Me thinks that thou dost protest too much." My advice is to never reply to an unsolicited message of any type. it just propogates the problem.

      2) Never open any attachment that is sent to you via E-Mail unless you specifically requested that it be sent to you and you expected its arrival, and even then, be suspicious. Any attachment to an E-Mail message must be thought of as suspicious, and personally, I delete ALL attachments unless I personally know the sender (I get news releases from certain groups on a regular basis) or have requested the attachment.

      3) You should always run an active antivirus program. Active means that it is on all the time and you should have it set to automatically update itself (most do that by default). In this way, if you receive a virus the anti-virus program has a chance to stop it before it spreads. There are many programs to choose from- sme are good and some are not so good. I no longer recommend using either Norton Antivirus or MacAfee. Try AVG from Grisoft. There is a free version that works quite well and the paid version is superior to either of the two mentioned previously. Whatever you use, be sure that is set to receive updates online, and manually check it regularly as well. The update file is a list of viruses that the program uses to recognize attacks.

      Viruses can be attached to files ending in 'EXE', 'COM', 'ZIP,' 'SCR,' 'BAT,' and now even 'JPG,' and others. These are executable files- files that you can 'run' on your computer. If infected, when you run them they spread their virus until the damage is fatal to your data. In some cases it will access information on your computer and send it to another location, and then send itself to everyone in your address book. A dependable antivirus program will virtually eliminate this problem.

      Don't be paranoid about surfing the net! Just run an antivirus program, be sure it is running and is updated on a regular basis, and (in a New York accent) 'forget about it '(other that the reminders I have posted here). More information can be found about viruses at the websites of the various companies that sell these programs. After downloading hundreds of programs I have yet to download a virus over the Internet! They all arrive in E-Mail or through your unprotected or out-of-date browser.

      (For the purpose of this article, we will assume that you have a single hard drive and it is called 'C'. It will be represented as 'C:\' in this article. If your hard drive is a letter other than 'C' you will need to act accordingly from this point on.)

      1) First you need to have access to your hard drive. I like using "My Computer" for this *1. The easiest way to open "My Computer" is from the desktop icon with the same name. The other way is to hold down the 'Windows' key on your keyboard and hit the 'E' key.

The 'Windows' Key/E combination is an easy way to access "My Computer"

If you don't have a shortcut (icon) for "My Computer" on the desktop, go to step 4.
If you DO have a shortcut (icon) for "My Computer" on the desktop, go to step 7.

      4) Another easy way to access "My Computer" is to place a shortcut for it on your desktop. A shortcut is an icon that 'represents' the program- it is not the executable program itself. While you have "My Computer" open, find the folder called "C" on the left side of Explorer. It may have a name next to it like "Windows (C:)".[NOTE: Itf it isn't showing, it is located in "My Computer" Click on the little '+' next to "My Computer" and the "C" will be displayed.} Click on the little '+' next to C: drive. A list of other folders now scroll down, nested in the "C" drive. Still looking at the laft pane of the "My Computer" window, find a folder called "Windows". Click on this folder and in the right window you will see a long list of 'stuff' in alphabetical order. You are looking for "Explorer.exe".

      5) When you find the program 'Explorer.exe' click on it using the RIGHT mouse button. A menu will appear. From that menu select "Send To." A list of locations will appear. You want "Desktop [create shortcut]." Click on it. You will see that the shortcut called "Shortcut to Explorer.exe" has been created on the desktop. Now, whenever you want to access "My Computer" you can use that shortcut.

      6) The icon is named "Shortcut to Explorer.exe" but you can call it anything you want! To change the name of it just LEFT click on the name of the icon to highlight it, wait about a second and then left click on it again. Now hit the left arrow on your keyboard and the cursor will move to the beginning of the cursor's name. Now you can type aything you like there. Keep it short- 'My Computer' would be great..

Go to Step 10, or continue on for more practice:

      7) Since you already have a shorcut for "My Computer" on the desktop, let's try another. A shortcut is an icon that 'represents' the program- it is not the executable program itself. With "My Computer" still open, find the folder called "C" on the left side of "My Computer". It may have a name next to it like "Windows (C:)".[NOTE: Itf it isn't showing, it is located in the folder area called "My Computer" (how redundant!). Click on the little '+' next to "My Computer" and the "C" will be displayed.} Click on the little '+' next to C: drive. A list of other folders now scroll down, nested in the "C" drive. Still looking at the laft pane of the "My Computer" window, find a folder called "Windows". Click on this folder and in the right window you will see a long list of 'stuff' in alphabetical order- a LOT of stuff! . You are looking for "NOTEPAD.EXE".

      8) When you find the program 'NOTEPAD.EXE' click on it using the RIGHT mouse button. A menu will appear. From that menu select "Send To." A list of locations will appear. You want "Desktop [create shortcut]." Click on it. You will see that the shortcut called "Shortcut to NOTEPAD.EXE" has been created on the desktop. Now you have easy access to a quick way to jot down and save a note. Whenever you want to access "NOTEPAD.EXE" you can use that shortcut instead of looking for it through all sorts of other methods.

      9) The icon is named "Shortcut to NOTEPAD.EXE" but you can call it anything you want! To change the name of it just LEFT click on the name of the icon to highlight it, wait about a second and then left click on it again. You can now just type any name you like which will be the new name for this shortcut. OR- after the seciond selection click you just made above in this step, if you hit the left arrow key on your keyboard, the cursor will move to the beginning of the cursor's name without changing it. Now you can modify what is there ayt way you like there. Most of the time I like to just get rid of the words "Shortcut to" and remove the ".EXE" part.

      10) From now on, when you need access to your hard drive to check for files or do a little housekeeping, use "My Computer". We will be using it extensively through these lessons, so you will be accustomed to using "My Computer" before we are done. Also feel free to go to the Explorer lesson (Lesson 106] for more information on using "My Computer".

*1 - IMPORTANT NOTE: In past versions of Windows, "My Computer" was known as Windows Explorer. "Explorer" is now the desktop interface, and the file access system is now called "My Computer." For clarity, I will refer to it as "My Computer" from now on. Don't get confused, but this is different from "Internet Explorer." Don't complain to me- write Bill Gates!