Though you may have used a keyboard of some type or a traditional mouse attached to a desktop computer, a laptop pointing device, called a touchpad, may be new to you. Frankly, a laptop touchpad, which is essentially your laptop’s built-in mouse, takes a little getting used to.
Laptop mouses come in two types: the touchpad and the pointing stick. The touchpad, by far the most common type, is a flat area, located beneath your keyboard. A pointing stick is a small button located among your computer’s keys.
When you move your finger across the touchpad surface or place your finger on the pointing stick and move the stick slightly in any direction, a corresponding mouse pointer moves around your computer screen. With a touchpad, which is what you’re likely to have on your laptop, you perform clicking actions to open or select things on screen by using the right and left buttons on the bottom of the touchpad.
The left button on the touchpad is used for left-click actions and the right button for right-click actions. Left-clicking opens or selects items, while right-clicking opens a shortcut menu from which you can choose commands to perform actions.
Here are the main functions of a touchpad and how to control them:
Clicking: When people say “click,” they mean “press and release the left mouse button.” Clicking has a variety of uses. You can click while in a document to move the insertion point, a little line that indicates where your next action will take place.
For example, you might click in front of a word you already typed and then type another word to appear before it in a letter. Clicking is also used in various windows to select check boxes or radio buttons (also called option buttons) to turn features on or off, or to select objects such as a picture or table in your document. You can also double-click to open objects for editing or to quickly select whole words.
Right-clicking: If you click the right touchpad button, Windows displays a shortcut menu that is specific to the item you clicked. For example, if you right-click a picture, the menu that appears gives you options for working with the picture. If you right-click the Windows desktop, the menu that appears lets you choose commands that display a different view or change desktop properties.
Clicking and dragging: To click and drag, you press and continue to hold down the left mouse button and then move (drag) the mouse to another location. For example, you can press the left touchpad button (keeping it held down) and drag your finger on a touchpad up, down, right, or left to highlight contents of your document.
This highlighted text is selected, meaning that any action you perform, such as pressing the Delete key on your keyboard or clicking a button for Bold formatting, is performed on the selected text.
Scrolling: Many touchpads and wireless mouse models have a way to scroll through a document or Web site on your screen. Just roll the wheel on a mouse down to move through pages going forward or scroll up to move backward in your document. With a touchpad, there is often an area marked on the right or left where you can run your finger up or down to scroll through a document.
For a microphone to work on your computer, it must be plugged into the pink jack on your PC, unless it’s a USB microphone, which simply plugs into the USB port.
After plugging in the microphone, test the thing. Testing works differently depending on your version of Windows.
You don’t want to spend too much or too little on a PC microphone. Cheap microphones don’t work well, record poorly, and are annoying to hear for audio chat and online communications. Expensive microphones may require a mixer or pre-amp to work properly.
Good microphones can be found in any computer or office supply store.
A microphone headset provides both headphones and a microphone. It’s perfect for online communications and gaming.
You need to free up disk space on your computer’s hard drive to help it run effectively. When you free up disk space, you’re essentially cleaning unused files and fragments of data off of your hard. If you can’t free up enough disk space for your needs, you may even have to replace your hard drive with one that has more capacity.
When most people think about computers, they picture a personal computer, or PC. It’s designed for only one person to use at a time. Most of the computers you and your friends and family have are probably personal computers.
The term PC has different meanings in popular culture. On one hand, it means any computer designed for personal use. On the other hand, it is also sometimes used to refer specifically to a computer that runs Microsoft Windows, as in “Which is better: Macs or PCs?”
Desktops offer a lot of computing power and performance for the price, and they’re flexible because you can connect whatever monitor, keyboard, and mouse you want to it, as well as install additional storage drives, memory, and expansion cards.
