Your New Computer

Desktop Properties   Background—Wallpaper   Screensaver   Appearance   Effects

12/10/2005
Three years ago I wrote an article called "Your Computer". I was new to the Internet then, and new to writing web pages. I was not, however, the least bit unfamiliar with my own machine. I knew, pretty well, where everything was and how it worked. I'd built up a collection of programs over perhaps ten years. Apart from "going onto the web", nothing was new.

Well, in the last week I've learned a lot. I decided that I'd like a faster computer, and I went out and bought one. It cost about a third as much as the original.

I wanted the same setup, the same operating system, the same programs as I'd had all along. Setting up in the same way and copying everything from my old machine would be easy—I thought.

I have two CD drives—one read only and one read and write. They were working nicely, although I hadn't yet bothered to see which drive letter belonged to which. That didn't seem to matter. The operating system went in without a hitch.

The monitor I'd bought is rather special: flat, free-standing, lcd. It was showing 16 colours and a low resolution, so I dived for the CD that came with it and ran the install. Oh! Still 16 colours. Still 640x480. Oh dear. But all of the drivers that came with the motherboard would've been installed already, wouldn't they? Including the display drivers? No.

I grabbed the motherboard driver CD, found the display drivers and installed them. Ah, much better! To see the new settings, I right clicked on the desktop and chose Properties from the menu that appeared.

Desktop Properties

You can look through these and try things out without actually changing anything permanently. Changes will only be made if you click OK to close the box, or if you click Apply on any tab.

Background—Wallpaper

The first tab shows Background; in this context,"Background" and "Wallpaper" have the same meaning. That showed as (None)—meaning the restful plain green default background is being used. I may change that later, but right now I like it. You can choose a background wallpaper if you'd like to. Scroll down the list and click on any suggested pattern. Try also the drop-down list under Display; you can choose to Center, Tile or Stretch a chosen background. If you don't want to change anything, click the Cancel button and all will be as it was.

If you want original wallpaper, such as a photograph or a picture you've made yourself, most graphics programs have a "Set as Wallpaper" option. In Paint you'll find it on the File menu. Just remember that if you have a number of shortcuts on your desktop, some backgrounds can make it very hard to see the text below them.

If you want a plain background, but don't like the green, choose (None), then go to the Appearance tab.   top

Screensaver

The Screensaver tab also showed (None). I don't use screensavers; they seem to jump to life at all sorts of inconvenient times and they interfere with my dictation program. When I'm not using my computer, I turn it off—and unplug it as well—but that's just me. You can scroll through a list of offerred screensavers. Click one, then click the Preview button to the right. If you like what you see and want to use it, click Apply or OK. Otherwise just go on to the next tab.

Now is not the best time to go and download a free screensaver from a site a friend told you about. Wait until you know your way around. You can download a whole lot of trouble when you're just beginning.

Here's more detail about setting up screensavers.   top

Appearance

The Appearance tab is particularly useful if you find it hard to read some things on your screen. Here you can change the colours and fonts used for windows and dialogue boxes. You can also select from a list of schemes that includes some with extra large text and high contrast colours.

To change things individually, click on different parts of the illustration. The slot labelled "Item" will tell you the name of that part, and you can then try out different colours for it.

If you'd just like to change the colour of the desktop, click the illustration in the open area behind the boxes.

The only change I made in the Appearance tab was to click on the Title Bar of the Active Window in the illustration. I changed Color 2 to the same dark blue as Color. That's because I often make pictures of various windows and the graduated colour makes those pictures unnecessarily large. I wouldn't do it otherwise; the default title bars are much prettier!   top

Effects

The Effects tab looked fine. If you happen to want to change icons such as those for the Recycle Bin or My Computer, you can do so in this tab. First, though, you have to have some substitute icons available!

Questions or comments? I’d love to hear from you. My email address is here.

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Begun on June 19, 2005