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Welcome to today's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter.
Today is Tuesday, June 5, 2001
In this Issue:
Featured Computer Term: Active Window
Topic: Best Times for Web Surfing
Progressive Learning Series: Avoid Three-Color Printers
Featured Website: anywho.com
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Today's Featured Computer Term: Active Window
Multitasking is a feature of Windows that can make life tremendously easier for you. Part of multitasking is the concept of the Active Window.
When you open a program, such as AOL or a word processor, that program is "active." Anything you do with your mouse or keyboard will be aimed at that program. Now, let's say you open another program without closing the previous one. You now have two programs running and two open windows.
How do you know which one is active?
The window that looks bright, colorful, non-gray or non-dull is the one that's active. And it's usually the one that's on top, too. By default (unless you've changed this), the active window's title bar is blue.
The inactive window's title bar is gray and it's usually behind the active window. If the active window is big enough, it may totally cover the inactive window.
Both windows will usually have a button on the taskbar. The taskbar is the place to look for inactive windows.
So, next time you think you've lost the program you were working with, just look at the taskbar. You'll see buttons for every open window. Before opening that program again, click on its button on the taskbar - that will make it the active window.
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Today's Topic: Best Times for Web Surfing
The Internet (especially the World Wide Web) tends to run faster in the morning and very late evening, probably well after 10 or 11 PM. This is when fewer people are using the 'Net and there are fewer demands upon its resources. The highest activity times seem to be between approximately 5 and 10 PM.
High activity affects more than the speed of the Internet. It can, at times, make it impossible to access certain websites. If you try to view a website and receive an error message, it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with the website. There may just be too many people trying to view it and the website can't handle the activity.
As a result, Web surfing in the morning or late evening can be faster and more pleasant than surfing during higher demand times of the day.
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Progressive Learning Series: Avoid Three-Color Printers
You won't get top-quality color output from cheap, three-color printers. They combine cyan, magenta, and yellow inks (CMY) to create black (K) in color documents. Not surprisingly, the resulting black is often brownish, reddish, or greenish. Of course, you can always open it and swap in a black cartridge if you're just printing text-only documents, but this can become annoying if you have to do that on a regular basis.
For best results, get a printer that holds both color and black ink cartridges at the same time--in other words, a four-color (CMYK) or a six-color (also known as a photo ink) printer. They don't cost much more, and your blacks will be sharp and black.
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Today's Featured Website: anywho.com
Ever find a scrap of paper lying on your desk with phone number written on it and no name? Well, find out whom it belongs to with anywho.com.
Click on the Reverse Lookup tab, just type in the phone number and click Lookup. Anywho will give you the name and address of the number's owner, if it's listed.
http://www.anywho.com/ |
