Really, really basic computer tips

In the New York Times, David Pogue writes:

“(I’ll never forget watching a book editor at a publishing house painstakingly drag across a word in a word processor to select it. After 10 minutes of this, I couldn’t stand it. ‘Why don’t you just double-click the word?’ She had no clue you could do that!)”

I’ve known programmers who don’t know the double-click trick.

Ironically, I think this is because all the operating systems are so darn user-friendly now. They don’t really alert novice users to the fact that there are ways to make tasks even easier than the most obvious ways to perform them.

If you or someone you know could use some tips on tasks as simple as double-clicking to highlight a word, read Pogue’s list. Actually, read it anyway – there were a couple of things on there I didn’t know, and my computing goes back to DOS in the 80s.

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Posted in Technology on October 13, 2008