My PC

by Lee Alexander

Introduction

You may find this topic an interesting look into one man's psyche, or just plain boring. Now that you have been forewarned, let's take a look at a machine that takes over about a quarter of my waking hours -- and I am retired. Although I have no commitments to an employer to use the business world's (probably) most common tool, this does not let me off the hook entirely. My former employer expects me to access the Internet for pension and benefits statements, to vote my shares of common stock, and to download sundry forms for claims and benefits. Of course, Uncle Sam wants me to file my taxes online; and most banks would like you to not bother their tellers and do all your transactions and receive statements via filaments of glass.

Why do I have a PC?

To start with, it is an entertaining device. You can play games. It can hold searchable references such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. You can communicate quickly with family and friends. But most of all, you can access the world from your home. The development of the Internet makes it possible for you to reach all corners of the globe (corners of a sphere?).This resource is vaster than any previously known to man.

What started out at as a hobby or curiosity to some has become a ubiquitous appliance to many. Early models required extensive study of manuals, dedication to learning curves, and a resolve to make the blasted thing work. Today, computers can be found in preschools, with youngsters working on them before they can even form a full sentence.

On a personal note, I cannot imagine running a household, engaging in a hobby, or writing a letter without a computer. Spreadsheets assist me in balancing my checkbook, tracking investments, monitoring subscriptions, and a host of other mundane activities. Woodworking without a CAD program would be akin to going back to cave painting. Building a budget, maintaining a household inventory, and keeping tabs on health records are just some of the tasks facilitated by a home computer.

It is not my intent to convince you that you must have a home PC. Could I live without one? Sure, and without a microwave oven, TV, telephone, refrigerator, running water and indoor plumbing. Life would just not be as pleasurable.

My hardware

My present desktop PC is a middle-of-the-road Dell 4400 purchased in May of 2002. Basic specifications are: Pentium 4 CPU running at 1.7 GHz, floppy drive, and DVD-ROM, SB Live! soundcard, and built-in NIC card. Upgrades included: doubling the RAM to 512 MB, monitor from 17 inch to 19 inch Trinitron, adding a 24x/10x/40x CD burner, a small step up with Harmon-Kardon speakers and a subwoofer, telephony modem (over a Win modem), NVIDIA AGP video card with 64 MB, and doubling the hard drive capacity to 80 GB. The unit was a replacement for a top-of-the-line Gateway (purchased in 1996). At half the cost, the Dell has features not even hinted at in that time period.

Peripherals include a faithful Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 855C printer, an Epson flatbed scanner, a Canon digital camera, and a USB 1.1 CompactFlash card reader. I also sprang for a Belkin UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) since power interruptions are fairly common in our area.

My software

The deal with Dell included Windows XP Home Edition, Microsoft's Office SBE (Small Business Edition), 90 days of Norton Antivirus, Dell Jukebox for digital music, and Dell Picture Studio for digital photography.

Early days were spent winnowing data on the older machine and transferring relevant files to the new unit. I wanted to partition the hard drive, as I had done with my older machine, but found my older version of Partition Magic would not “play nice” with Windows XP and its NTFS file system. Procrastination proved costly in time. After two and a half months into its lifetime, Windows XP crashed and gave false hopes as to repairing itself. Reinstalling the operating system wiped out all my data and applications. Taken with its new features and speed, I had severely neglected backups.

Wasting no more time I ordered the latest version of Partition Magic and divided my hard drive into six partitions as follows: C:\, the almost mandated drive for the operating system; D:\, the home for Office and most applications; E:\, for data; F:\, for F otography; G:\, for backup; and H:\ for Internet downloads and miscellaneous. C and H. and are twice the size of the other drive partitions. The redundancy of files and folders on G: makes burning backups to CD-R and CD-RW simple.

Your way or …

Adopting policies and tweaks gleaned from computer magazines, TV shows and the like, I have taken some steps to enhance (I believe) the performance of my computer. An early step was to fix the size of the paging file, Virtual Memory (a.k.a. the swap file). By default, Windows OS's will adjust the size of the paging file according to its history. With a good amount of RAM, Virtual Memory will seldom be used, unless you're editing large files such as video or digital photos.

Nevertheless, due to a personal philosophy, I like to be in control and not have things done automatically for me, unless they truly save time and effort.

The procedure to fix Virtual Memory begins with the Start button and a right-click on My Computer. Choose Properties to get a dialog box of System Properties; under the Advanced tab | Performance click the Settings button. Now choose Performance Options | Advanced tab, go to the third category, Virtual Memory , and hit the change button. Select the drive (if you have more than one drive or partition) and the radio button Custom Size . In the Initial Size box, enter a value equal to 1.5 times your RAM; in the Max Size box enter the same value. You'll have to restart your computer to have this take effect.

Adding applications

Installing programs will often lead to a bloat of your Start menu. Many programmers are egotistical enough to think that if you have their program you must want it up and running at all times. If the Notification Area (a.k.a. Sys Tray) is taking over your Taskbar, it may be time to clean up your start menu. Go to Start | Run and enter msconfig to get the System Configuration Utility. There you can cull unwanted items from the Start menu.

Another OS utility can be found at Start | Run and enter services.msc. There are some services that run by default and are not needed for your computer's optimal performance. However, be aware that there are services that are critical and disabling them will cause your system to crash.

My Taskbar

I employ at the Quick Launch bar to reduce the number of icons on the Desktop. Shortcuts residing there are for Outlook, Win Explorer, Internet Explorer, and the free utilities WinWord, Clipomatic, Print Screen, and Extended Character Map.

I group similar buttons on the Taskbar. To do so, right-click the Taskbar and select Properties; there you will find radio button to do just that.

My Sys Tray contains the startup applications Norton Antivirus, the free Zone Alarm firewall, a LAN icon, a pop-up stopper, the minimized volume control, RapidRes (a free utility to quickly change the screen resolution and enable or disable a screen saver), and a voice recognition program, Dragon Naturally Speaking.

My most used feature of the Taskbar is to select two instances of Win Explorer, right-click in an empty area of the Taskbar, and select tile windows vertically from the pop-up menu. With this set up, it is easy to copy or move files and folders via a drag-and-drop operation.

Shortcut settings

I use Win Explorer, Windows' file manager, usually more than one time per session. By default, Win Explorer will open with the folder tree at My Documents. Most of the time I a wish to get to a file stored at E:\Finance. The folder contains files of spreadsheets for checking accounts, address books, inventory, investments, and more. To get there quickly, the shortcut in the Quick Launch bar has the following string of parameters in the target box: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe /e, /select, E:\Finance. The switch, /e, opens the window with two panes.

Briefly

This is a highly abbreviated glimpse of my use of a PC. Personalizing your computer can be a never ending task. Creating folders and message rules in your e-mail program allows for extensive control of the come and go of traffic. New hardware and software arrive on the scene almost daily. The temptation to put everything on the computer is great; however, the more stuff -- requires more housekeeping.

To maximize your enjoyment of this great tool, you must pay attention to some details. Periodically clean out deadwood, scan and defragment your hard drive, keep your antivirus definitions up-to-date, join a computer club and visit their web site regularly. And, lastly, explore. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you'll find.