Another popular blog service, WordPress, claims that you can use it to start a blog in seconds, and that isn’t much of an exaggeration. First you’re asked to choose a username, give your e-mail address, and agree to the WordPress terms of service. Then you pick a blog subdomain (as in mysampleblog.wordpress.com), blog title, language for your blog (English is the default), and whether it should be listed publicly. You will receive a confirmation message immediately by e-mail; click on the activation link in the message and WordPress will give you a password. Log in with your username and the password and your blog is ready for your first post. There is a personal profile you can fill out, but the information is optional. WordPress supports post tags and allows reader comments with different levels of moderation (for example, you can ask to approve comments with two or more links in them, or comments that contain specific filter words), and offers RSS and Atom site feeds. The free version of WordPress offers 58 predefined color/layout themes for your use. Publishing a post automatically pings Pingomatic, which in turn pings seventeen blog search and directory services, including Weblogs.com and Technorati. The WordPress people are adamant that you cannot use your WordPress blog for advertising or commercial promotion, although they may “occasionally” display “unobtrusive” text ads on your blog pages.

Vox, from SixApart, the creators of Moveable Type, is essentially the free version of TypePad, a very respected and full-featured paid blogging host. Vox’s registration requires a little more personal information than I like to give; they need your e-mail address, a password, and a member name, which is fine, but they also ask for your birthdate (month, day, and year — they say they need it for legal reasons). Vox’s word verification box is quote difficult to read (I actually got the characters wrong the first time), and they also require that you agree to their terms of service. Their confirmation e-mail message was immediate, but the Vox site itself operates rather slowly under a dial-up Internet connection — much more slowly than either Blogger or WordPress. Once you’ve created your account, you can type in as much biographical informaton as you want (everything except your birthdate is optional) and start posting to your blog immediately. Vox supports post tags, comments and comment moderation, and Atom site feeds. For your blog’s design, you have four layout choices and fourteen categories of themes — and some of the categories have as many as fifty-four theme choices. Vox integrates with the Flickr and Photobucket photo hosting and sharing services and also allows you to post from a cell phone. If you have many photographs you want to add to your Vox blog, SixApart offers a free Windows XP program that will upload them for you. To help support the service, Vox places Google ads on each page of your blog.

Blog.ca is a free blog service based in Canada that has sister sites based in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other countries throughout the world. You don’t need to be a resident of Canada to get a free blog at Blog.ca. To register, you need to choose a login name and a password and give your e-mail address; you also need to type the characters in a very difficult to read word verification box and agree to their terms of service. Their e-mail confirmation message was immediate. To start a blog, you need to provide your first name, last name, birthdate (month, day, and year again), gender, country, and city. For the design of your blog you can choose from nineteen base designs. Blog.ca supports post tags, moderated comments, blog co-authors, and RSS site feeds. You can post to your blog from the Blog.ca web site, your cell phone, your Internet-capable PDA, or by e-mail. Every time you post, Blog.ca will ping Technorati, Weblogs.com, Blo.gs, IceRocket, Newsgator, and Feedburner.

Xanga boasts a “quick one-step registration” that asks for your username, e-mail address, password, birthdate (month, day, and year), word validation code, and agreement to the Xanga terms of service. They have a very long personal profile questionnaire, including questions about your religion, heroes, work industry, and hobbies, but all the questions except birthdate are optional. Then you choose a name for your site (they generate your site’s URL subdomain themselves), choose a font, and pick your blog’s “quick template” from eight choices. Xanga’s blogs support tags, comments, and limited photo uploading. Xanga generates your blog’s page title from your name and the words “Xanga Site” (such as “Mark’s Xanga Site”), and they display ads on the blog pages. They also want you to enter the e-mail addresses of your friends so that they can be invited to join Xanga.

MySpace is more an online community than a blogging service, but they do offer free blogs to their members. To become a member you need to choose a password and fill out a word verification box, and they also require your e-mail address, first name, last name, country, postal code, birthdate (month, day, and year), gender, and language. (You can hide your birthday from public view if you want.) MySpace encourages you to upload a photo for your profile and urges you to invite your friends to join by typing their e-mail addresses into a form. The blog itself is very customizable with a built-in RSS feed. MySpace puts sponsored links (ads) on each blog page.

Windows Live Spaces: is another online community like MySpace. You can sign up using an existing Hotmail, Windows Messenger, or Passport account, or you can register a new account by choosing an ID and password and providing your e-mail address, answer to a security question, first name, last name, gender, birth year, country, state, and ZIP code. You will also have to fill out a word verification box and agree to their terms of service. Unfortunately, Windows Live Spaces is a very slow site, especially under a dial-up connection, and the sign-up page never loaded completely, which meant I could never complete the process, even though I tried reloading the page several times. Also, Windows Live Spaces doesn’t seem to work at all if you’re using Mozilla Firefox as your web browser.

One of my most recent computers (a Compaq Presario from Hewlett-Packard) came with a 160-gigabyte hard drive. At a capacity of approximately 160,000,000,000 characters, this drive is over eight hundred thousand times larger than the drive in my first computer. The advantage of so much capacity is that you can store thousands and thousands of files for immediate access. The downside is that after you have stored thousands and thousands of files it becomes difficult to keep track of them all.

So how do you find a certain photograph from your vacation in 2005? Or how about the MP3 file you know you downloaded six months ago but never got a chance to load into your IPod? Fortunately, if you remember even a little information about those files (like the rough dates when the photographs were taken, or that the MP3 file was one of Shakira’s recent releases), Windows can find them for you. Here’s how to search using Windows XP. (If you’re using Windows Vista, the instructions are slightly different and you might want to take a look at Microsoft’s help page about searching.)

Click on the Windows XP Start menu and select the “Search” option. On my computer the “Search” option is in the right-hand column of the Start menu, next to a magnifying glass icon. Or here’s a shortcut for computers with enhanced Windows keyboards (like my favorite, the Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard): hold down the “Start” button and press the “F” key. (The “Start” button is usually two keys to the left of the spacebar and has the Windows logo printed on the key.)

Either way, you’ll see a window with the title “Search Results” and the question “What do you want to search for?” in the left-hand column. The picture below shows what this window looks like under my copy of Windows XP:

Your next choice depends on the type of file you’re searching for. Obviously, if you’re looking for a photograph, music, or video file, choose the first option. If you’re looking for documents — the kind of file you would create with Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet program — choose the second option. And if the file you’re looking for doesn’t fall into either of those categories, or if you’re not sure what category it falls into, use the third option.

The first option is pretty much self-explanatory. Click on “Pictures, music, or video”, fill out the form that appears in the left panel of the search window, and click on the “Search” button. First Windows will search the most common “digital media” folders on your hard drive (in other words, the folders where photographs, music, and video are usually stored), and then it will search the rest of the drive. Any results, such as filenames or thumbnail photographs, will display in the panel on the right. As an example, my picture search for chihuahua puppy returned the results below and I was able to select the photograph I was looking for. If your first search results are unsatisfactory, you can further refine the search using the other options in the left panel. Once you find the file you want, right-click on it, double-click it, drag it — do whatever you would normally do with the file in Windows Explorer.

Searching for documents is also straightforward but the search window offers slightly different options that allow you to search by date as well as by filename. The search becomes more useful if you click on “Use advanced search options” at the bottom of the left panel because the advance options let you search by date, filename, a word or phrase inside the document, or file size.

The most comprehensive search is “All files and folders”, because it doesn’t limit itself to any specific type of media. This means you can search for any file, no matter what kind of file it is.

There are a few important considerations to keep in mind while searching your hard drive:

• Searching can be as broad or precise as you need it to be. If you want to find one of your digital camera images, but all you can remember about it is that its filename started with “M”, ask Windows to search for a picture with M in the filename. If you need to find a letter you wrote and you can’t remember the filename, but you can remember that you used the phrase “eminent domain” in the letter, ask Windows to do a documents search, select the advanced options, and type eminent domain in the “A word or phrase in the document” box.
• If all else fails, use the “All files and folders” search and type in anything you can remember about the file to narrow down the results.
• You can type more than one fragment of a filename in the “All or part of the file name” box. For example, if you remember that the filename starts with an “F”, has the word “small” in it, and has an extension of “GIF”, type f small .gif in the filename box (put a space between each fragment and a period in front of the “gif” file extension) and click the “Search” button.

If you are using a version of Windows prior to Windows XP (such as Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows 95, or Windows NT), your search window will look different but will be the rough equivalent of the “All files and folders” search described above. Earlier versions of Windows still have powerful search features, but they aren’t as automatic as Windows XP’s. For example, instead of asking an earlier version of Windows to search for pictures, music, video, or documents, ask it to search by filename or file extension. Again, type in as much as you can remember about the file’s name, text it might contain, its date and size, and what type of file it is (text file, image, Microsoft Word document, etc.). Then select the location to search (which can be the entire hard drive) and click on the “Find Now” button. For a more detailed tutorial on searching for files using earlier versions of Windows, see “How to Locate Files in Windows NT/95/98″ at the website of the California State University at Northridge.

Remember, computers should help you work smarter, not harder. The next time you misplace a digital file, don’t waste your time searching; let Windows Search find it for you.

Your computer is also a tempting raw resource for people who hijack other people’s machines. If you don’t block their access, criminals can use your computer and Internet connection to send spam, propagate viruses, and attack other computers’ vulnerabilities — all the while masking the real source of the activity and keeping themselves from being detected and prosecuted. Computers with broadband Internet connections are especially attractive to hijackers, but even computers with dial-up connections can be compromised.

Fortunately, there are ways to protect your computer and keep it secure from the many viruses, worms, and other attacks that are a daily occurrence on the Internet. Computer security is as important to everyday life as locking the door when you leave the house, and the process of protecting your computer is just as easy.

1. Turn On a Firewall
   A firewall is like a sentry who guards the connection between your computer and the Internet, making sure that all the good things get through and all the bad things stay out. Firewalls are vitally important for any computer connected to the Internet or a network, especially if the connection is “always on” (such as broadband). If you are not already using one, download and install one of the free comprehensive firewall packages. I use and recommend the Comodo Personal Firewall, but Sunbelt also has a good firewall that is free for personal use. After you have installed a new firewall, you will be prompted to create a rule every time a program on your computer tries to access the Internet. This can seem like a nuisance at first, but after a short time the firewall will adapt to your habits and the prompts will stop.

2. Protect Against Viruses
   Antivirus protection is another must for any Internet-connected computer. I use Avast!, but another good alternative is AVG Antivirus from Avira. Both of these systems are free, provide continuous protection, and will update themselves regularly as new viruses are discovered.

3. Update Your System

   To make sure that your operating system doesn’t have any security holes, you should update it regularly. Windows computers generally have a “Windows Update” option on their Start menus; if it isn’t there, you can always go to Microsoft’s Windows Update web site. Updating Windows can take quite a while, especially if you access the Internet through a dial-up connection, so don’t do it at the beginning of the business day, but having an updated copy of Windows offers a lot of protection.

   Many experts recommend updating all your computers to the most recent version of Windows XP or Windows Vista because those versions are the most secure. I disagree with that advice because Windows XP and Windows Vista require more powerful hardware than the previous versions of Windows did, and installing new versions on old machines would slow them down to a crawl. You will still have adequate protection on older machines if you install firewall, antivirus, and antispyware software.

4. Update Your Programs
   Windows isn’t the only program that can have security holes; sometimes web browsers, e-mail clients, word processors, and other application software can have them too. If the manufacturers allow it, update the software you use regularly to include all recent security fixes. Some programs have a menu option to update themselves automatically over the Internet; others require you to visit the manufacturers’ web sites, download “patches”, and then execute the patches to modify the programs on your own computer. Some programs, like the Mozilla Firefox web browser, will update themselves as necessary without any intervention from you (unless you choose to turn that feature off).

5. Protect Against Spyware
   Spyware is software that gets installed on your computer (sometimes surreptitiously as part of some other package you have downloaded) that periodically “reports home” to its manufacturer with information about your computer or your browsing habits. Not only does spyware violate the privacy and security of your computer, it can slow down your system as it collects data and transmits it over the Internet. Fortunately there are many tools to detect and disable spyware, including Microsoft’s Windows Defender, AdAware from Lavasoft, and Spybot Search & Destroy. The Yahoo! Toolbar also includes a feature called AntiSpy that will search for and remove spyware, and the Mozilla Firefox web browser includes spyware protection features.

6. Make Regular Backups
   It doesn’t matter how expensive or well-equipped your computer is, it is only as important as the data it contains. One of the main reasons to keep your computer secure is to preserve the privacy and safety of that data, so it makes sense that one step to better Windows security is to make regular backups of all your important data and store those backups in a safe place.

   As long as you make backups, it really doesn’t matter how you make them. If your computer has a CD burner, then burning back-up CD’s is an excellent choice. CD’s hold 600 to 700 megabytes of data at a time and are very easy to store. If your computer has a DVD burner, then burning DVD’s is even better; DVD’s look almost identical to CD’s but can hold about seven times as much information. Use whatever CD or DVD-burning software you normally use, burn any data from your hard drive that you would absolutely hate to lose in a catastrophe, and place the backup CD’s and DVD’s in a safe place.

Pick the Right Size
Most modern mice are bigger than the earlier models and are designed to fit comfortably in the adult hand. If you have small hands, however, or if you are buying a mouse for a child, smaller-sized mice are available. If you are looking for a smaller mouse, you might also want to consider notebook mice, since they are intended to be used in cramped spaces and tend to be smaller than desktop mice.

Choose a Contour
Most modern mouse designs are symmetrical, meaning that each half of the mouse is a mirror image of the other half. Older mouse designs tended to be asymmetrical — curved to one side, usually to the left so the thumb rests on the inside of the curve and the little finger rests on the outside of the curve. With both mouse designs, the bottom end of the mouse is usually wider than the top end, giving the mouse more stability in the hand. Which mouse shape you choose depends on what feels better in your hand, but recent studies have suggested that modern symmetrical mice are more comfortable and less fatiguing than asymmetrical mice.

Ball or Optical?

The first mice worked on the simple but ingenious principle of a rubber ball that turned plastic rollers. Unfortunately, these rollers collect lint, hair, and oil, and dirty rollers make it very difficult to move the mouse with accuracy. Newer optical mice solve this problem by replacing the ball and rollers with electronic sensors. Since they have no moving parts, optical mice don’t get dirty, and their increased precision makes optical mice an excellent choice.

Wired or Wireless?
A wired mouse has a flexible cord that plugs into the computer; it draws its power from the computer itself and needs no batteries. A wireless mouse has no cords and transmits its information to a small receiver that plugs into the computer; wireless mice usually need two AA batteries for power. Mice with cords are sometimes easier to use because you don’t have to worry about pointing the mouse at the receiver (some mice are very picky about this), and you don’t have the extra hassle of keeping your mouse in batteries. Also, some of the newer wired mice have very thin, flexible cords (sometimes they’re even retractable) that help you keep the desktop neat. I still prefer my wireless mice because that’s one fewer cord to get twisted and tangled around the computer.

How Many Buttons?
The first mice had one button, and then for years the industry standard was two buttons, but today all the major mouse manufacturers offer both two and three-button designs. Microsoft Windows has built-in support for the left and right mouse buttons, but if your mouse has a middle button, it can usually be configured to perform a specific action, such as move to the next window, exit the current program, press the Alt key, and so on. A middle button can be a great benefit if you remember to use it (I have never gotten into the habit of using a middle button). One of my current mice has two additional “thumb buttons” that I do use frequently. The thumb buttons are along the left edge of the mouse; they’re both configurable, but by default one of them acts like the Back button on a web browser, and the other activates an on-screen magnifier that has proven to be very useful.

Mouse Wheel
The mouse wheel on my two Microsoft optical mice was a great surprise for me, because I didn’t expect it to be useful and yet I end up using it all the time. It is very easy and very convenient to scroll a document or a web page up and down smoothly using the mouse wheel, without having to move the mouse or use the keyboard at all. This is the single feature I miss the most when I use other mice.

Mouse Pad
Most modern mice can operate without problem even on smooth desks and table tops, but any mouse will benefit from the use of a mouse pad. Mouse pads provide friction for ball mice and a consistent surface for optical mice, leading to more precise results. Many mice come with their own mouse pad, but if you don’t have one, you can buy one from a local computer or office supply store. (Staples.com sells a no-frills mouse pad in your choice of five colors for $3.28.) It’s important to keep mouse pads clean, even if you use an optical mouse. Periodically wipe the surface of the mouse pad with alcohol to remove dust and debris.

Take It For A Test Drive
Researching your options online will give you an idea of what’s available, but before you buy a mouse, go to your local computer center and try out the display models. Do not skip this step! It doesn’t matter how many features are packed into your new mouse; if it doesn’t feel good in your hand, it’s not the mouse for you. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with your mouse — make sure the fit is perfect.

Inkjet Printers

• Inkjet printers work by spraying tiny droplets of ink through the printhead onto the page. (This means that inkjet print is always going to be slightly fuzzier than laser print because the ink has a chance to seep into the paper.)
• Inkjet come in two types. Thermal inkjet printers, from manufacturers like Canon and Lexmark, heat the ink until it turns to bubbles that are forced through the printhead. (Hence the name of Canon’s BubbleJet line.) Epson’s piezo inkjet printers use the vibrations of an electrified piezo crystal to force ink onto the page. In practice, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two techniques on the printed page.
• Inkjet printers are frequently quite inexpensive, especially when you take advantage of sales, rebates, and special offers. When you buy a low-cost inkjet printer, though, make sure it comes with both color and black print cartridges, or you’ll find yourself having to pay an additional $40 to $80 before you can print anything. Sometimes you get lucky — I once bought a Lexmark Z515 for $29 at Wal-Mart, and that included both print cartridges!
• Inkjet cartridges are expensive and produce documents with a very high cost-per-page. Unfortunately, trying to lower that cost-per-page by refilling your used cartridges or buying third-party refills yields mixed results because cartridges deteriorate quickly upon refilling. Sadly, it sometimes costs less to buy an entirely new printer with print cartridges included than it does to buy new cartridges for the printer you already have.
• Even with their high cost-per-page, inkjet printers are still best for light to medium-duty color printing because color laser printing is even more expensive. There are several categories of color inkjet printers depending on the type of color printing you want to do. Basic inkjet printers are good for printing documents with black and color on the same page (such as letters or reports with color photographs or charts). Photo inkjet printers are designed for printing photographs using special ink on coated paper; they come in snapshot and full-page sizes. Multifunction inkjet printers combine color printing with a color copier, and sometimes a fax machine and a telephone. And some companies even make portable inkjet printers that are small enough to carry around with you as you travel.

Laser Printers:

• Laser printers work by charging a drum with static electricity and then using a laser to reverse the electrical charge wherever you want print to appear on the page. Toner sticks to the reverse charges on the drum, so when the printer passes the paper over the drum, the toner is transfered and heat-fused into place. This is why laser print is slightly sharper than inkjet print — the toner is actually fused onto the paper, not absorbed into it.
• Instead of a laser, some printers use an array of light emitting diodes (LED’s) to reverse the charge on the drum. Even though no laser is involved, these printers are still generally referred to as laser printers.
• Laser printers are expensive, and sometimes they don’t come with toner, which makes them even more expensive. Occasionally you can find them at a good price on sale or with a rebate, such as the excellent HP LaserJet 1020 that I bought at Staples recently for $100 (toner cartridge included!). Most laser printers are very sturdy pieces of equipment, though, so your investment should last a long time.
• Although toner cartridges are expensive, they usually last from 1,500 to 6,000 pages (depending on manufacturer and printer model), which means that their cost-per-page is almost always less than that of inkjet printers. The downside, of course, is that buying a toner cartridge requires a bigger outlay of money at one time (usually between $70 and $100).
• Color laser printers are still expensive, and so are their toner cartridges — especially when you consider that a color laser printer needs between four and seven toner cartridges to print in color. Fortunately, you only need to replace each color toner cartridge as it runs out, unlike inkjet printers where you usually have to replace all the colors at the same time, even if only one color is empty. Still, color laser printing is not yet at the point where it can challenge color inkjets for the home market.

So which printer is right for you? Keep these points in mind:

• If spending only a little money at a time is important to you, buy an inkjet printer. Your cost-per-page will be high, but you will only have to pay $50 to $100 for the printer and then $30 to $40 at a time as printer cartridges run out. If you are willing to deal with the hassles of refill kits, you can reduce those costs a little more.
• If low cost-per-page is important to you, buy a laser printer. Your initial expenditures will be more (several hundred for the printer, and another $70 to $100 each time the toner cartridge runs out), but your cost-per-page will be low — sometimes as low as two or three cents per page.
• If you want to print in color, buy a color inkjet printer — either a basic model or a photo printer, depending on your needs. The printer probably won’t cost much, but your print-outs will, especially if you’re printing photographs with photo ink on special coated photo paper. Still, the investment will be a lot less than the hundreds (possibly thousands) that it would take to buy and maintain a color laser printer.
• If you want to print in high volume (over 200 pages a month), buy a laser printer. Inkjet printers just aren’t made for high volume printing, and their ink cartridges don’t hold a lot of ink, which means that an inkjet printer will probably run out of ink in the middle of a large print run. Laser printer toner cartridges will last for thousands of pages.

Whichever type of printer you decide to buy, be sure to visit your local computer center first to see the models they have on display. You’ll want to know how they are constucted, what their ink or toner cartridges look like, how big a paper tray they have, what the paper paths are like, and so on. You’ll want to know as much as possible before you buy, because with any luck you’ll be using the printer you choose for a long time.