What Can I Do With This Computer?

eMail is the carrot that led most home computer users to turn on the machine. The need to stay in touch with children who have gone off to college has moved many moms to the mouse. Some have gone well beyond eMail, others have no idea what else there might be. Following are a few examples of what else is available. I'll cover many of the following in more detail in later posts:.

Applications and Information on the Internet

• Web browsing. This one is as ubiquitous as eMail. If you didn't know a little about browsing the WWW you wouldn't be reading this.
• Web Search: When you don't know the name of a website (like WWW.Someplace.Com) how do you find what you're looking for? Search engines have indexed the web pages on literally hundreds of millions of web servers.
• Product Support: Computer hardware and software companies usually include support at their web site. There you can find such things as user guide documentation and software fixes and updates. Did you know that many other companies include support at their web sites too? For example, you can find user manuals for things like garage door openers, thermostats, microwave ovens, etc. etc. If you've lost or missplaced the manual to your device, you can find it on the web (but it helps to know how to look - see Web Search above).
• Entertainment Information and Ticketing: What movies/plays/musicals/circus acts/operas/ etc. are playing in theaters near you (or anyplace else in the world)? Get seat availability, pricing information, and/or buy tickets.
• Travel Information and Ticketing: Airlines, airline ticket wholesalers, hotels, motels, car rentals - information about them and tickets for them are available on the WWW.
• Communication: eMail is just one way to communicate over the Internet. Others include:
• Instant Messenger - unlike eMail, instant messenger applications are done in "real time" like the telephone except instead of talking, you are typing. If you've had a conversation with someone this way and you want to pass the information on to someone else, it is easy, after the fact, to copy the conversation into an eMail and send it on. This way a conversation you have had with (for example) a niece or nephew in the service in Iraq (yes, believe it or not armed services personnel do get access to computers) can be passed on to other members of your family.
• Web Cam - like a picture phone. You can see (and hear) your grandchild waving to you and saying "Hi Grandma"
• Research: enormous amounts of information are available on every topic under the sun. many research journals, magazines and newspapers are available in full text with archives going back years.
• Government Information and Assistance: Local, state and national government entities make information and frequently make forms available on the WWW.
• Shopping: Very much like shopping from a catalog, but the "catalog" is always up-to-date. Some clothing stores on the web will allow you to give them your measurements after which they will show you how a given article of clothing will look on someone with your dimensions. Try that with a catalog.
• Online Banking: This one is scary for many people. With some education and training, this is as safe as walking into the bank.
• Snapshot sharing: Pictures you have taken with your digital camera (or scanned from a paper photograph) can be uploaded and stored, at no cost, on the web for others to see/download/print/share. You can make them available to the world or only to the few that you select.
• Music Purchase and Download: Music "sharing" sites that allow you to download for free copies of copyrighted tunes are dangerous to use and are being shut down one-by-one by the courts for copyright infringement. However, there are sites like iTunes that allow you to legally purchase (iTunes offers them at 99 cents per tune) and download a wide variety of music to your PC. From there you can listen to them directly on your PC or "burn" them to a CD to listen to them in your car or wherever. Instead of buying a CD for $15 to get the two tunes you like, buy just the two tunes and save $13.
• Driving Directions and Maps: Get a map and turn-by-turn driving directions from any address to any address in the USA and beyond. "Fly" from one point on a map to another - see either the map or actual satellite pictures of the location you are "flying" over. Pictures are in simulated 3D and in some cases, like the Grand Canyon, are incredible photorealistic! (goggle Earth).
• University Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for example, is well along in the process of putting all of the course material used by its world renowned teaching staff up on the WWW, freely accessible by anyone. Incredible.
• etc. etc. etc: I've written the above list without even pausing to think. This list just barely scratches the surface.

Standalone Applications - No Need For Network Connections

• Word Processing is to stand alone applications what eMail is to network applications - its the starting point of computer use for the generation that grew up with typewriters.
• Home Budget and Tax preparation: Keep track of your budget and expenses, have the software prepare your income tax forms for submission on paper or over the Internet.
• Snapshot Storage and Slideshows: Upload the pictures from your camera to your computer. From there you can run slideshows, print copies, "doctor" the pictures to remove that old boyfriend from the great snapshot of your daughter.
• Home Video Edit and Archive: take your library of home videos - all those old vacations, birthday parties, weddings, etc, edit out the miscues, and transfer the results to a DVD where they will last longer than they will on VHS tape.
• Home Music Library Management: You probably have a library of CDs collected over the years. You can transfer them to your PC where you can either play them. and/or you can select individual songs that can be "burned" by your computer onto a CD. This creates your own personalized mix of tunes on a CD. That personalized "mix" CD can then be played in your car or other CD player.
• Games -some come for free when you buy your computer, hundreds more are available for free on the Internet (although it takes knowledge and experience to judge which of the free games are safe to download) and hundreds more are available for a fee both in stores and on the Internet.
• etc. etc. etc.: Hundreds of software titles are available. Click here for a link to one of many software catalogs.
  

More detail to follow in future posts.

Jim White