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when you first start using your computer
you'll need to become familiar with its
operating system or OS most computers
use the Windows operating system and in
this video we're going to be focusing on
Windows 7 if you're using Windows XP or
Vista it may look a little bit different
but for the most part they work the same
the screen that you see when your
computer has finished starting up is
called the desktop and this includes the
desktop background and also the taskbar
at the bottom of the screen here you'll
find shortcuts to commonly-used programs
and also settings such as your internet
settings and the sound volume but the
most important part of the taskbar is on
the far left and this is called the
start button this opens up the Start
menu which is where you'll go to open a
program when you open a program it will
appear on the taskbar and this is really
useful if you have several different
programs open because you can easily
switch between them by just clicking now
if you're just starting out with
computers it's really important to know
the difference between a file and a
folder files can be documents pictures
songs movies and more folders are used
to organize all of the files on your
computer and they'll have an icon that
looks like an actual folder to open a
folder you can double click it the
window you see here is a specialized
program called windows explorer which
you can use to navigate to any folder on
your computer you can also open this by
clicking the windows explorer icon on
the taskbar
if you want to navigate to a different
folder you can select a different
location on the left side of the window
and once you find the file that you want
you can double click it and it will open
in the default program for that file
type in this case it opened in Windows
Photo Viewer if you want to delete a
file then you can select it and press
the Delete key when you do this it won't
permanently delete the file it will just
move it to the recycle bin so if you
change your mind you can still recover
the file but if you're sure that you
want to permanently delete it then
you'll need to empty the recycle bin
finally let's go back to the Start menu
if you're ever not sure where something
is on your computer there's a good
chance that you can find it in the Start
menu for example you can go to the
control panel to adjust any of the
settings for your computer you can view
windows help or if you're finished using
your computer you can shut it down if
you don't want to completely turn it off
you can just log off or put your
computer to sleep so these are just the
very basics of using windows and all of
these things will become second nature
to you as you get more practice
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