advice for computer dummies, beginers

If you just go buy a computer and use it without “making it work your way”, you definitely fall into this category. So here are some advice for you. But you’re already reading my blog, so you’ll soon be fine using your computer.

1. Learn or ask the engineer to partition your hard drive for you. (Exploit the service now that he’s already there to help you. Don’t wait till later to learn the truth the hard way.) This simply works when your computer has a problem that you have to re-install the system or something. If you have more than one partitions, you can save your data on the non-system partition  and you won’t lose all your data.

2. Don’t upgrade your system. I know sometimes you need some new functionalities and stuff. But don’t easily upgrade your system. Your hardware capacity is consistent with your pre-installed system. Upgrading could be disastrous speed, usage experience. If you really need something new on your older systems, there should always be replacement softwares that are also free. Try to look for those. One thing good about IT world is that CS students have to have some homeowork problems and some people just enjoy the process of problem solving, so there are a lot of wonderful free softwares out there. If you can’t find them, just let me see what you need in a comment.

3. When the system is very slow, try to find some one/way to re-install your system instead of doing defragment. Disk defragment helps in some way, but when your system is barely responding, it doesn’t get you very far. And systems eventually become corrupted. So it comes back to the 1st advice, try to use partitions and it won’t be a problem if you need to re-install.

4. If something different happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean something went wrong. Don’t freak out. (Just a general moral.)