It’s a Brave New World!

Thinking about a new computer? Stores are filled with low priced towers and laptops. Why, because consumers have voted with their wallets. Tablets and smart phones are replacing conventional computers at a tremendous pace. Reports from NPD Online Research state that sales of new computers are down 11% from a year ago. Another report stated that tablets and smart phones made up 40% of all technology purchases in 2012. But some of us still enjoy sitting down at a desk with our work spread out in front of us and tapping out a column on a big old standard keyboard. For us a brand new tower or laptop with Windows 8 on it still suits us just fine. What impacts have tablets and smart phones had on new PCs?

For starters, Windows 8 no longer has support for playing DVD movies. (We can still use the DVD for reading and writing data.) Microsoft considered that tablets, smart phones and Internet TVs don’t even have DVD players as users increasingly stream movies directly from the web. Since MS pays license fees for each DVD movie playing computer, this was eliminated from Windows 8. Not to worry, many computer manufactures add DVD movie players to their products so the capability is still there. Just type DVD in the search field of the Windows 8 PC and look for any program that has DVD in it. If we have one of the truly bargain basement computers without a DVD movie player, download a free DVD player such as VLC from www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html.

Another impact on traditional computers directly linked to tablets and smart phones is the use of tiles (Martha, they used to be icons.) on the Start Screen. Tiles work like the icons on our older computers but now they preview changes to the programs they link to. For example: the mail tile will update regularly to notify us that new mail has arrived or a news tile will constantly display the latest headlines. We can modify the position and size of the tiles to meet our needs. Some tiles are rectangular while others are smaller and square. By using the right mouse button and clicking on a tile, we have the choice of using larger or smaller tiles and we can pin it to or remove it from the Start Screen if desired. To rearrange the position of the tiles simply grab one with the mouse and move it to a new position. Want a new tile on the desktop for our favorite website? Open the website and click on the site icon beside the web address. Now click on Pin to Start and a new tile appears on the Start Screen. The start screen may seem a bit awkward at first, but for folks that use the computer for basic functions every day it makes for easy access to those programs, I mean apps we use frequently.

Windows 8 also comes with a built-in SkyDrive app. With it, we can view and browse the files we’ve saved to SkyDrive.com. By installing the free SkyDrive desktop app we can also automatically sync  files across our computers.

It’s a brave new world.

Here’s an interesting idea sent in by a loyal reader. They keep a copy of Grumbles From the Keyboard in the bathroom. Each morning when they begin their constitutional, they pick up the book and read another chapter. It’s quiet time, and they can concentrate on the subject matter without interruption. Get your copy today.

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer: Courtland Nederveld: 9781467985895: Books ISBN: 1467985899 ISBN-13: 9781467985895

And don’t forget, after absorbing all that knowledge, you’ll be hungry. Find out what a computer geek likes to eat from my cookbook, Epicuria: An Adventure that Really Cooks!

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks!: Court Nederveld: 9781456561734: Books ISBN: 1456561731 ISBN-13: 9781456561734