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Last time we learned about the hard drive and this Wednesday we’re talking RAM, as in Random Access Memory. It’s the thing you hear about when buying a computer or if you want to upgrade and the more of it you have, the faster your computer is.

The term ‘random access” in Random Access Memory comes from the fact that you can access any part of the memory at any time. At the time the term was coined, it was different from sequential memory which was being used such as tape, where you had to fast forward or rewind to get the part of the tape you needed. Now, most computer memory is non sequential so the term is kind of an antiquated one but it sticks.

There are three important things about RAM I want to tell you. First, RAM is the place that your programs and operating system and stuff hang out while you’re using them. Let’s say you open a program, the browser that you’re using for example. Your hard drive stores all the files necessary to use the program but your hard drive is not really that fast so RAM takes the stuff you’re using off your hard drive and holds it for you, making it a much faster process. People compare RAM to a desktop and the stuff on your hard drive as a file cabinet. You take the stuff out of the cabinet and put it on the desktop so you can use it. Bigger desktop, more stuff you can have on the go and the faster you’ll be able to work. It’s a good analogy but where I am in my life lately I’m more apt to think of the hard drive as my children’s’ toy box and the RAM as the playroom. There’s tons of stuff in the toy box and most of it never gets used. Whatever toys they’re playing with are on the floor and the bigger the floor, the more toys they can have out of the toy box where they can be easily and quickly accessed.

The second point I want to make about RAM is that it is temporary. Once you turn off or restart your computer, all the stuff that was in it is cleared out to make room for you to start over again. So that 30 page research paper you were working on but didn’t save is gone once your computer restarts, unless you save it on the hard drive. In these days when you probably leave your computer on for long periods of time, you should restart your computer every few days or if you notice your computer having problems. Just like when I go insane when I can’t walk around on the floor because of all the toys cluttered there, your computer just needs everything cleared out every now and then to make things work better.

The third thing I want you to know about RAM is that it is one of the best ways to speed up your computer. Now, if you have an old 286 and want to run Windows Vista, all the RAM in the world won’t help you but if you have a relatively new computer and would like to speed things up a bit, especially if using memory-intensive games like 3D video games or photo editing software, buying RAM is a fairly inexpensive way to do this. You have to make sure you have the right kind of RAM for your computer though (you didn’t think they’d make it easy and just have one kind of RAM did you?) so make sure of what you need before you buy. You can install it yourself if you dare, as you basically plug in RAM but beware that opening your case can void most warranties and you can screw up your computer if you’re not careful installing RAM. If you do want to try it, just google it or check out the many videos on youtube about installing RAM.

Now, I’m going to restart my computer right before I clear all these toys off the floor.

Whether it’s some documents you’re trying to back up to a disk, a bunch of MP3s you’re transferring to your MP3 player, or some pictures you want to send to a mail recipient, there are times you want to select, or highlight, multiple files. To make the task easier, don’t forget to take advantage of your Ctrl and Shift keys while highlighting.

In order to select consecutive items, just click on the first file you want to highlight then press and hold down your Shift key until you click on the last file you want to highlight. Now the whole group, whether it’s three files or three thousand, are selected.

If you’re highlighting nonconsecutive files just press and hold down on the Ctrl key while you select whatever files you want (don’t let go until you’re done).

And if you want to just select all files in a folder, go to Edit on the toolbar on top of the open folder and then click “Select All”.

I know I was going to continue with mail account settings this week but I’ve been hearing so much about a scam to get information from you that I wanted to bring it to your attention. There’s a phishing scam where you get an email alleging to be from the CRA (Canada Revenue Service) saying that you will receive a refund but that all your information wasn’t received so in order to get the refund (I’ve heard a variety of amounts you are promised) you need to provide information including your Social Insurance Number and date of birth or, in some cases, your credit card information. Don’t fall for it. On CBC Radio’s Radio Noon today a rep from the CRA said that they never send email. You’ll receive snail mail, not email from them (even then you have to be oh so careful). So if you get such an email, ignore it.

To edit in most Windows programs, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts, using the oft misunderstood but very helpful Ctrl button along with other keys:

• Ctrl+z undoes your last action (if the program has an undo function)
• Ctrl+y redoes your last action (if the program has a redo function)
• Ctrl+a selects all
• Ctrl+x cuts
• Ctrl+c  copies
• Ctrl+v pastes
• Ctrl+p prints a file
• Ctrl+s saves a file

If you’ve ever set up email software to retrieve your email, you’ll know that there are some weird sounding settings you have to give the software. For most you have to give the POP and SMTP settings while for some others you need to know your IMAP server settings. Maybe knowing what these acronyms stand for will make the whole email setup thing a little less overwhelming. We’ll start this week with POP.

POP stands for Post Office Protocol. When someone sends you a postcard in the mail, it doesn’t leave the mailbox and go straight to your door. It goes to a post office and someone sorts it and sends it onto your address, possibly even in a timely manner. Very simply put, this is what your Post Office Protocol server does. In tech-world, a protocol is a set of rules for communicating. A POP server uses Post Office Protocol like the person at your post office who gives you the package that was sent to you, but only after he makes sure you are who you are. It’s the rules for how your ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) mail server communicates with your email software.

First, your email program goes to the POP server, makes a connection, then provides the username and password you’ve typed in. If the username and password are correct, your software ask “any mail for someone@somewhere.com”? And the server uses POP to first let your email client know there is email, then how many email there are, and what size they are. It then retrieves your emails so you can read them and, depending on the settings you’ve given it, deletes them from the server or keeps them on the server.

So, the POP server setting your email software asks for when you first set it up, is just the address your email software can use to start these communications. It’s, again very simply put, the address of the post office where you’ll pick up your mail. Your Internet Service Provider (the people you pay every month for your Internet) should provide you with the email address, password, and POP settings you need but if you’ve lost the POP settings and need them, you can usually Google your ISP’s name and POP settings to find what you need to know.

Okay, so I’ll be honest. I should call this one free for most. I’m telling you about a great dictionary and thesaurus that will reside in your system tray (that place in the lower right corner of your screen with all the icons in it) and can be accessed in one click or integrates with program like Microsoft Word. It’s called WordWeb and there is a pro version and a free version. The free version is available to you as long as you satisfy their licensing conditions. And they are a bit different from most licensing conditions. WordWeb is free to you as long as you take no more than two commercial flights per year. Any more than that and they ask you to use the free version as a 30 day trial which you should uninstall in 30 days and pony up the money for the Pro version.I have been using WordWeb for many years and many different versions and I love it. It is one of the most convenient programs I’ve ever used. Like I said, it is integrated with MS Word and can be used with many common programs. If you highlight a word in most programs and right-click on it while holding down the Ctrl button, it will give you the definition, synonyms, antoyms and a bunch of other stuff for that word. Couldn’t be easier. So check this one out, even if you’re a frequent flyer and it’s only free for 30 days.

I have to admit, I am a sarcastic person by nature although I do try to control it. Case in point is that I have never used Let Me Google That For You, no matter how many opportunities to do so. Maybe you won’t be as reserved. If someone asks a question that should be pretty easy to google, you can go to Let Me Google That For You, type in the search they should have done themselves, then send them the link for the results. They will actually get to see an invisible typer type the search, and the site will also show text that says “Was That So Hard?”  Check it out in action.

When I worked on a help desk and people would call in, they would sometimes have to bring their computers in for service. They would inevitably ask, “so do I have to just bring in the hard drive?” They, like many people referred to their computer as the hard drive. They meant the tower, that’s the tower part which holds all the computer stuff, as opposed to the peripherals of a computer like a mouse, keyboard, monitor, and printer. The hard drive actually resides inside your computer’s tower and it’s where all your files, folders and your operating system hang out.

The hard drive looks a bit like a record player (if you remember them). There’s a little arm and even a platter that goes around and around. The data for your computer is on that platter (or platters). How it gets there involves magnets and alloys and stuff you really don’t need to concern yourself with but if you want to know more check out this article at How Stuff Works.

What you need to know about your hard drive is that it is one type of memory in your computer. There’s another type of memory in your computer called RAM or Random Access Memory and we’ll discuss that one next week. The hard drive is usually measured in hundreds of gigabytes these days and the more gigabytes the more files and stuff you can put on your computer. The hard drive will hold all your data until you delete it or until it fails. You should remember that hard drives can fail and that’s why keeping copies of your important data, like pictures and important documents to name just a couple of things, is vital. Back up those things to other media like a recordable DVD, a recordable CD-ROM, a flash drive or an external hard drive. And if you ever have to bring your computer in for repair, you can ask if it’s just the tower that you need to bring in because you know it’s not called the hard drive.

The right-click can help you do lots of things (or left-click if you’re a leftie). One of the most underused is probably the Send To option. If you right-click on any file (click the right button of your mouse instead of the usual left) you can scroll down to Send To and send that file to any number of places including other drives, your documents folder or a mail recipient. Send to mail recipient is great for sending photos. Just select the photos you want to send, right-click on them then choose Send To–>Mail recipient. Your default email program will pop up and you can add the text, subject, and addresses of the recipients. Even better, Windows will ask you if you want to resize the photos which makes pictures taken at high resolution and the best settings much easier to send. So the Send To is pretty helpful on its own but you can improve it. You can add things to your Send To section but that’s a tip for another day.

Any time you sign up for something on the Internet, be it a coupon, a software download, or an account to read a newspaper online, you are asked for your email address. And every time you type that address increases your chances for spam. So create a free email account to use for new sign ups. There are lots of free email account providers out there. My favourite is Gmail but there’s Hotmail and Yahoo mail to name just two more. If you use Gmail you can also set up that account to be accessed by your email software (such as Outlook Express or Windows Mail). Note that many things you sign up for will send extra information to the email address you provide in order to confirm your new account so you should be able to access that email account somehow. By doing this simple thing you can reduce spam and keep your main email account for the things you want to use it for.