Microsoft Security Essentials

The most important thing to set up on your computer is some sort of virus checking software.  You will probably have heard mention of computer viruses, but may not really understand them.  A computer virus can cause your computer to cease working correctly in just the same way as an ordinary virus stops your body working correctly. You use medicine to help your body recover and probably try to take something to stop you catching the virus in the first place.

In just the same way, we give our computers a piece of software which should protect them.  There are scores of anti-virus software packages, and most new computers are sold with one or other of the most popular.  However, at the end of the first year you will find that in order to continue this protection you have to subscribe.  Senior surfers such as myself never have enough money to subscribe and so I was delighted when I found out about Microsoft Security Essentials.  This is a free piece of software which never needs you to do anything after the initial set-up.

You Tube

I used to think You Tube was a strange thing with nothing of interest to me, but I have just found out how wrong I was.  You can find almost anything on You Tube, from Italian Lessons to brief explanations of your computer keyboard, and from Astronomy lectures to Plumbers across the world.  Many of these sites are not appropriate.  For example the first page of Plumbers I found were either in London or in America.  Some of them are not very well set up either, but many are excellent and it only requires you to do some filtering on the results to find just what you are looking for.  Filtering also requires you to practice learning how to specify what you do need. I typed Reliable plumbers Sheffield, Reliable plumbers Brighton, Reliable plumbers Cardiff and Reliable plumbers Dundee and got answers for all of them so do not despair if you live outside London.  I found numerous lectures on subjects from Computer Architecture through Physics/Biology/Chemistry to Astronomy and these were certainly a blast from the past.  We are all so used to seeing televised lectures where the speaker and his words are well organised, but when our children go to University their lectures are much less well arranged.  Lecturers will often digress from the topic or forget what they intended to say and on You Tube this is what you get. Nevertheless, you too can learn from these videos.  Have fun with You Tube.

Google

In conjunction with my Kindle I have recently been reading an e-book called Google Beyond Google which is extremely interesting showing me many of the additional services offered by the Google web site.  However I was just looking up one of these, an application called Picnik to find that Google were going to withdraw this later this year.  Now I know things move very quickly in the realm of computers but this seemed sad to me.  If you use Picnik, which I understand deals with photographs I will try to update you as the year progresses.  However, do not despair, the announcement may only mean that while still being available Picnik will no longer be upgraded.

Microsoft Office

I have just read an article which suggests you may be able to take out an annual subscription to Office which allows you to get upgrades without paying twice for the software. The license allows you to install Office on several computers and as I know a number of families with more than one computer this could save money as well as being convenient.