CYBER NOTES by Dave Benore
WHY WOULD A PERSON WANT A PERSONAL COMPUTER?
They are fun! (They are exasperating!) They’re useful! (They’re toys.) They stretch your mind! (and try your soul!) They let you do things never before possible for you. They make you learn new stuff! They give you something to talk about with your friends! (They give you something to swear at when alone!) They can absorb a lot of your time –and give you a lot of enjoyment! Personal computers are all of these things, but learning to use them keeps you young! (or gives you more gray hair!) All of the above are true, but seriously, what really can they be used for?
Today most people use them to get on to the Internet, that great communicating network that spans the world, literally. Use one to keep in close touch with distant relatives and friends, at almost no cost. Daily contacts cost no more than monthly contacts. This is what email does for you. It is also what made the Internet so popular! Email is not hard to learn and is very effective. Many people are sending pictures of their kids to friends and relatives over the Internet, attached to an email.
Another frequent use of your home computer is to “search” the Internet for information. The amount of information that is out there is simply astounding! Yesterday I decided I wanted to know what year John Wayne died. It took me 1 minute to find out by using www.google.com as my search “engine”. I had a whole host of information to pick from regarding Wayne. By the way, google is simply the best search engine out there. If you haven’t tried it, do so. It is extremely fast and has the largest database of information of any of the search engines. (A search engine is just a program whose job it is to find documents that contain keywords that you supply. So search on “John Wayne biography” and any documents that contain those words will be offered to you to look at.)
Word processors are another popular use of computers. You can write a letter quickly, and change it as much as you want. It’s so easy. You can write recipes and save them on your computer. If you use a database program, you can say “show me all of my recipes that use soy sauce with pork”. Instantly, all your recipes that you entered into the database that satisfy your command will pop up. Neat, eh? Of course, you must first type them up and enter them into the program. Nothing comes free! Maybe there should be a recipe “club” where cooks can trade their recipes around on the Internet and nobody needs to type all that stuff in! Maybe such a club already exists! (I better check the Internet.)
Spreadsheets are another use for computers. Many people do not bother to learn how to use a spreadsheet because they don’t know what they can do for you. Spreadsheet programs allow you to “program” the computer in a simplified way to do math work, such as create a budget, or track your investments, or keep track of inventory, or plan for your retirement, or………. The uses go on and on. Learning how to use them is not as hard as one might think. I use them for a wide variety of purposes. The last one I used was a vacation expense planner I put together several years ago. I break it out every time I go on vacation to estimate the costs. The funny thing about spreadsheets is that the more you use them, the more uses for them you discover!
For those of you who have a computer, I suggest you learn to do at least one new thing every week. Over time, you’ll become an expert! For those who don’t have a computer, find a friend or two who uses them. Talk to them. A whole new world is waiting for you out there.
