Windows 7 All-in-One for Dummies

p15 A special kind of program called a driver makes specific pieces of hardware
work with the operating system. For example, your computer�s printer has a driver,
your monitor has a driver, your mouse has a driver

p15 And then you have wizards. Windows comes with lots of �em. Wizards guide you
through complex procedures, moving one step at a time. Typically, wizards have
three directional buttons on each screen: Back, Next (or Finish), and Cancel.
Wizards remember what you�ve chosen as you move from step to step, making it easy
to experiment a bit, change your mind, back up, and try a different setting,
without getting all the check boxes confused.

p16 If a bad guy (and they�re almost always guys) manages to take over your
computer without your knowledge, turning it into a zombie that spews spam by remote
control, you�re in a botnet.
The most successful botnets employ rootkits � programs that run �underneath�
Windows, evading detection because normal programs, such as your antivirus program
or Microsoft Security Essentials, can�t see them. Rootkits rate as the wave of the
future because they�re hard to find and hard to remove and the person controlling a
rootkit-based botnet can charge ungodly amounts of money to people who want to use
the services of the botnet to distribute spam, collect data, ping the living
daylights out of a Web site, or distribute even more malware.

p18 Corollary: Don�t buy a computer online unless you know for a fact that your
fingers will like the keyboard, your wrist will tolerate the mouse, and your eyes
will fall in love with the monitor.

p22 A special-purpose computer called a graphics processor (or GPU), stuck on your
video card, creates everything that�s shown on your computer�s screen. The GPU has
to juggle all the pixels and all the colors, so if you�re a gaming fan, the speed
of the GPU�s chip (and, to a lesser extent, the speed of the monitor) can make the
difference between a zapped alien and a lost energy shield. If you want to
experience Windows 7 in all its glory, particularly the see-through Aero glass
interface, you need a fast GPU with at least 128MB (and preferably 512MB) of its
own memory.

p23 Solid state drive (adica SSD): This item gets cheaper and cheaper. You probably
won�t see solid state drives gain much market share during the reign of Windows 7,
but they�re undeniably out there on the horizon and may someday supplant the old
whirling dervish drive. Solid state drives feature low power consumption and give
off less heat. They have no moving parts, so they don�t wear out, like hard drives.

p26 Despre HDMI - Some video cards and many TVs also support the small HDMI
connector, which transmits both audio and video over one cable. If you hope to hook
up your new TV to your PC, consider getting a video card with an HDMI slot.

p43 Although the 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows 7 look and act the same on
the surface, down in the bowels of Windows, they work quite differently. Which
should you get? The question no doubt seems a bit esoteric, but there are good
reasons why, oh, five or six years from now, every new PC will be using 64-bit
versions of Windows.
Although lots of technical mumbo jumbo is involved, the simple fact is that
programs are getting too big and Windows as we know it is running out of room.
Although Windows can fake it by shuffling data on and off your hard drive, doing so
slows your computer significantly.
The 32-bit flavor of Windows � the flavor that all of us were using a few years ago
and most of us use now � has a limit on the amount of memory that Windows can use.
Give or take a nip here and a tuck there, 32-bit Windows machines can see, at most,
3.4 or 3.5 gigabytes (GB) of memory. You can stick 4GB of memory into your
computer, but in the 32-bit world, anything beyond 3.5GB is simply out of reach. It
just sits there, unused.
The 64-bit flavor of Windows 7 opens up your computer�s memory, so Windows can see
and use more than 4GB � much more, in fact.
There�s one more good reason for running a 64-bit flavor of Windows 7: security.
Microsoft enforced some strict security constraints on drivers that are used to
support hardware in 64-bit machines � constraints that just couldn�t be enforced in
the older, more lax (and more compatible!) 32-bit environment.

p130 Creating a password reset disk

If you put a password on your own account (or somebody else does it for you), you
must create a password reset disk. To do so, follow these steps:
1. Make sure you have a USB drive handy (or another type of removable media, such
as an SD card). The password reset disk routine writes a tiny text file on the
drive.
2. Choose Start-> Control Panel. Click the User Accounts and Family Safety link and
then click the User Accounts link. Windows 7 shows you the User Accounts dialog
box.
3. On the left, click the link that says Create a Password Reset Disk. This step
launches the Forgotten Password Wizard, which creates a �password reset disk.� This
nifty little program creates a file that you can use to unlock your password and
get into your account, even if your precocious seven-year-old daughter changes it
to MXYPLFTFFT.
4. At the final step of the wizard, click Finish. Store that USB drive someplace
safe. If you ever forget your password � or if someone changes it for you � you can
use the drive to log on to your account.

p133