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Windows Vista build 5435 demos

Using the web

The World Wide Web is a big place, but you can get to all of it with a web browser. All browsers work basically the same. They give you a way to find, view and interact with websites. Here are a few tips for using the web browser "Internet Explorer" to get around the web. Like other Windows programs, you can start Internet Explorer from the start menu. There are millions of websites across the web and each one has a unique address or URL. To visit a site, you type its address here in the address bar, most start with "www" which stands for World Wide Web, then you click this button. Notice how the website displays in the browser? This is the website's main page or home page, but most sites are made up of several pages. The other pages on any site are usually a click-away. See how the pointer changes to a hand over this word? That means it's a link to another web page. If you click it, you'll go to that page. To return to a page you've already looked at, you click the back button. When you start your web browser, the first page that you'll see is called your home page. If it's not what you want, you can change it. When you're on the page you want to use, you click here... and choose this option... then anytime you want to get back to your new home page, you click the home button. You can also create a list of your favorite sites, so you don't have to remember a bunch of addresses. When you find a page you want to come back to, you can save it as a favorite, like this. After you click add, it's in your favorites list. And to get back to it, you click here. To open and quickly move between several web pages at once, you can use tabbed browsing. You click here to add a new tab. Type the address for the page you want... then you can move back and forth just by clicking the tab you want. A web browser is the only tool you need to explore the web and get quick access to your favorite sites. Now you're ready to start exploring the internet! For more information about browsing the web, go to Help and Support on the start menu.

Using Windows Mail

Windows Mail is a program that comes with Windows and gives you everything you need to send, receive and manage e-mail. To get started, you'll first need an internet connection and an e-mail address. You can get both for most any internet service provider which is usually referred to as an ISP. After you've set up Windows Mail, you can open it from the start menu. The first thing you'll see is your inbox. The inbox is where all the e-mail messages that you receive are displayed. Before we look at the messages in your inbox, let's write and send an e-mail to some. To start a new message, you click "Create Mail". Any message you send needs an e-mail address for the person you're sending it to. If you want to send your message to more than one person, you separate each e-mail address with a comma, like this. Here in the subject line, let's add a brief description of the message. And then here in the message area, type what we want to say. If you want to, you can include files and pictures in your e-mail. To attach a document or picture to your message, you click the paperclip button and select the file or picture you want to add. How about this one? Notice how the name of the picture appears here? Once you've got everything you want in your message, you can go ahead and send it. If you want to make sure your message was sent, you can look here in your sent items folder. A copy of every message you send is saved here, just in case you need it later. Windows Mail automatically checks for and updates your inbox with new e-mail, but you can check for new messages yourself anytime by clicking this button. Looks like a new message has just arrived! See how it has the same subject line with the letters RE? That's how you can tell it's reply to another message. In this paperclip lets you know that there's a file or picture attached to the message. To open the message, you just double-click it. To reply to it, you'd click here. Instead, let's take a quick look at the other messages in your inbox and how you can organize them. You can click any column heading, from, subject or date to sort your messages by that category. To see messages organized alphabetically by who sent them, you click the "From" button. To see your messages organized in the order you receive them, you click "Date". Click "Date" again and they'll be sorted in oldest to newest. See how this arrow changed direction? Finally to get rid of a message you no longer need, click the message and then click "Delete". All of the messages you delete get moved to your deleted items folder. Messages in this folder are deleted permanently when you close Windows Mail. Whether you use Windows Mail or another e-mail program, use basically the same method to send, receive and organize your messages. For more information about using e-mail, see Help and Support on the start menu.

Learning how to use the mouse

The mouse is like an extension of your hand. It lets you select and interact with anything on your screen and makes getting around Windows as easy as pointing and clicking. The mouse is designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand, with the index finger on the left button. When you move the mouse in different directions, the arrow on the screen follows the same movement. This arrow is called "the pointer" and it always follows the movement of the mouse. Keep in mind, you can lift the mouse and reposition it if you need to. Now let's see how to click. The left mouse button is used to click, but left-handed people can switch the mouse settings to reverse the buttons. By clicking the start button, you can open a document that needs some changes. When you quickly click two times or double-click the same word. Notice how the word becomes selected? This tells the computer that you want to do something with the selected text, like make it bold. What if you want to select more than just a single word? This entire paragraph for instance. At the top left of the paragraph, you click and hold down the left mouse button. And with the mouse button still pressed, drag down and to the right across the entire paragraph. After the paragraph is selected, you release the mouse button. See how the paragraph is now selected, like the word was earlier. After selecting the text, you're ready to do something with it. Let's try a few things now! First, let's change the color, since it's already selected, you just click this button and pick a color. Let's go with green. To move this paragraph to another location, you point the mouse over the selected paragraph. Click and hold down the left mouse button and then drag the paragraph. When it's where you want it, you release the mouse button. This is called dragging-and-dropping. Now that you're comfortable with these basics, let's try right-clicking! Right-clicking works on just about anything in Windows like text, pictures and icons. When you right-click, a menu like this one will display and lets you do a lot of different things like copying and printing. Remember, point and click. That's all you need to master the mouse and make everything on your computer a click-away. Give it a try! For more information about using a mouse, go to Help and Support on the start menu.

Windows basics

Getting around Windows isn't hard, but getting familiar with the basics will make it even easier. Windows has four main areas that help you quickly access and interact with your programs and folders. The start button, the taskbar, the desktop and the sidebar. Let's look at how you can use each one. The start button is the best place to begin. When you click it, the start menu is where you can access your programs, files and folders. Your computer comes with a few programs already installed which you can see here when you click "All Programs". We'll open WordPad first. WordPad is a word processing program that you can use to write a letter or a report. See how it displays here on your desktop? This is called a window. You can have several programs running at once and each one will display in its own window. So let's open another program! To hide a program while you work on something else, you click this button to minimize it. The program is still open and running, but it's out of your way and reduced to a button which is located here on the taskbar. Each program that you open is represented by its own button on the taskbar. To show a program again on the desktop, you click the taskbar button. And when you're done using a program, you click this X button to close the window. Notice how the program disappeared from both the desktop and the taskbar? Right now, except for the sidebar, your desktop is empty. So let's create a shortcut to the WordPad program. You just click and drag the program button icon from the start menu to the desktop, like this. See how Windows created a WordPad icon with an arrow next to it on the desktop? Now you can open the program right from the desktop. You just double-click the shortcut. You can create desktop shortcuts to any programs, folders or files that you want quick access to. Now that you know how to start programs, let's see how you get to the folders and files on your computer. Here in the start menu, you click "Documents". The documents folder provides quick access to your files. Like programs each folder also opens in its own window. A convenient place for programs that you want to view frequently like the clock, news or weather is here in the sidebar. Things you add to the sidebar are called gadgets. Let's add a gadget to the sidebar. You just right click and choose the one that you want, like this. Try checking out the different ones you can add! Remember, the start button is where you go to find anything in Windows, whether you're looking for programs or files. And the desktop, taskbar and sidebar provide quick and convenient access to the things you use most often. For more information about getting around Windows, see Help and Support on the start menu.

Finding and organizing your files

Your information is valuable which is why Windows Vista gives you everything you need to find and organize all of it. After you've created a file like a letter, you'll want to save it. You save files the same way in all Windows programs. On the file menu, you click "Save". Type a name for it... and then click "Save". Since we didn't choose a folder to save the file to, the file was saved in the documents folder, which you can quickly get to from the start menu. If you're ever not sure where you saved a file, try looking in your documents folder. And here's the one we just saved. But first, let's organize the documents folder to get a better idea of what's in it. If you think of your files in terms of when you worked on them, you can stack them by date, like this. To see only the ones you worked on, this week, you double-click the stack. Icons also give you a way to see more information about your files. So let's make these a little bigger! Here under view, you choose the size you want. See how the icon now shows a preview of the document? While documents is the main folder that you use to store your files, you can create new folders too. How about one for the document we created? To add a new folder, you click here and type a name for it. And to move a file to it, you click the file you want. Drag it over the folder and then drop it. For more information about finding and organizing files, see Help and Support on the start menu.

Printing

While some printers have more options than others, all do basically the same thing, they copy to paper what you see on your screen! Let's take a look at how you print documents and the settings you can use to get the best results. First, you should make sure that your printer is connected to your computer and turned on. For most printers, Windows will automatically install software known as a driver when you connect the printer to your computer. Let's print a document now. You do it basically the same way in all Windows programs. The print command is always on the file menu. So to print a document, you click the file menu and then click "Print". But before we print, let's look at some of our options! If your document has several pages, you can choose exactly which pages you want to print. Say you want to print only the first five pages. Here next to pages, you would type 1 dash 5. If you wanted to print just the second and fourth pages, you would type 2 comma 4, like this. You can also print more than one copy at a time. Under copies, you type how many you want to print or you can click these small arrows to select a number. OK, let's go ahead and print. When your document is printing, this symbol will display here at the bottom of your screen. Another thing you might want to do is change how your document is positioned on the paper. In most programs, you can change the positioning, which is called the orientation by clicking "Page Setup" on the file menu. You have two orientation options: Portrait and Landscape. Portrait makes your document appear vertically on the page, like this. Landscape makes it display horizontally, like this. Let's go with landscape. Notice that you can change how wide you want the margins to be and other settings too? To confirm the new settings, you click OK. This document is ready to print, but let's preview what it will look like before we print. To see a preview, you click "Print Preview" on the file menu. Print preview shows exactly how the pages will print. If you like what you see, you can print from here! Those are the basics of printing. Now you know how to print from any Windows program and how to change a few settings to make your printouts look the way you want them to look! For more information about printing, go to Help and Support on the start menu.

Working with programs

To get the most out of your software programs, you should know how to find, start, install and remove them from your computer. The programs that came with Windows are listed here on the start menu, under all programs. The accessories folder contains many useful programs. To start a program, you click the one that you want to use. See how it opens in its own window? You can also start a program by double-clicking a file that uses that program, like this document opens WordPad - a word processing program that comes with Windows. The start menu makes it easy to find the programs you've used most recently. They're all right here for quick access! You can have more than one program running at once. See how all of them are shown here on the taskbar? To switch to any program that's running, you click its taskbar button, like this. And to hide a program or minimize it, you click here. It will stay minimized on the taskbar until you need it again. To close a program, you click the X here at the top of its window. Notice how its icon is removed from the taskbar? The programs we've used so far came installed on Windows, but you can install other programs too. Most programs you get will come on a CD or DVD or can be downloaded from the internet. If it's on a CD or DVD, you put the disk in the drive and follow the instructions that appear on your screen. After you install a program, it will show up here in the all programs list that we saw earlier. And if you want to remove a program, you can uninstall it. In the control panel, you would click "Remove a Program", then find the program you want to uninstall, click "Remove" and follow the instructions. Notice it no longer displays in the list? And those are the basics for working with the software programs on your computer! For more information about using programs, go to Help and Support on the start menu.

The other section "Security Basics" was skipped because of the narrator's recording was played two audio clips simultaneously.

Understanding the parts of your computer

If you're not familiar with computers, you're probably curious about the basic parts and how they work together. The parts of a typical computer are the tower, monitor, keyboard mouse and speakers. Let's take a look at each one and how they fit together to help you get your work done. The tower is the main part, it's the brains of the computer, because it stores and sends information between all of the other parts. Most towers have a CD or DVD drive, so you can install software programs, listen to music and watch movies. Windows will automatically play most CD or DVD disks when you put one in the drive. The tower is an essential part of your computer, but it's of little value without the others. Your monitor looks like a TV and it lets you see all of the programs, pictures and documents on your computer. Monitors come in different sizes, but they all do the same thing. Your keyboard and mouse make it possible to work with what you see on your monitor. And with the mouse, you can click, select and move what you see on your screen. You use the keyboard to type information into your computer. If you have a printer, you can make a paper copy of what displays on your monitor, like this picture for instance. Finally, to hear sounds from your computer, you need speakers. Let you hear everything from e-mail arriving in your e-mail program, to music on your favorite CD, all the parts of your computer work together to help you get the most out of Windows. For more information about using your computer, go to Help and Support on the start menu.