 Hi everybody, I'm Sam, and welcome to this edition of Sam's Tech Talk. I know we've had a bit of a winter break here, but I'm ready to dive back in for 2017, and I want to welcome everybody again. What we're going to talk about today is Windows 10, and that's the new operating system from Windows. So if you go out and you buy a new computer, that's the operating system that you get. So I've had lots of tutoring students on it and everything, so I thought I would put together a little show to tell you some of the new things about Windows 10. What I'm going to talk about today are some of the new terms and the symbols, some of the new features, where you find your settings, a little thing they have called the Action Center, a wonderful thing about system security, where you don't have to go out and buy extra virus protection if you don't have to because they have a wonderful built-in one, a neat little thing that I like called the Snipping Tool, looking at your task view and how that works, taking advantage of Cortana, which is a search feature that they have, the new web browser that they have with this computer, and why you should use the App Store and Apps instead of looking for programs, the different views that you have on your computer, how to use those, and a little bit about the Microsoft Store, which is where you go to get new apps for your computer. The first thing I wanted to tell you about this is that when you're using this new computer, it looks a little bit different. They're starting to go now where they go out and they use the same terminology and they use the same look of everything, whether it's on a tablet-style computer, or whether it's on your smartphone, all of those kinds of things. They're trying to make your desktop or your laptop computer look more like those. So you're getting familiar with looking for the same things on all of your different documents. Now, you know, we used to, when we wanted to open up something on our computer, we looked for the line that said programs. Now we look for the line that says all apps. That's where we go to find all the apps or programs that are all on our computer. So that's where you want to find those when you click that start there. Now instead of seeing the word start, you see over in the little left-hand corner, you see the little window symbol over there. So that takes you where you want to go to get to all of your different programs that are there. That was the same thing as hitting the start button that we all used to hit there to look at things. Now another thing about it is when you're looking at it, you'll notice that everything is starting to be in the tiles like we see on our smartphones and on our tablets. That way, these are the same things as having shortcuts. So instead of having all those shortcuts scattered all across your computer screen, you've got to go simply right here and you find all of your apps. And these will move around. You can move one around and group them together the way you want it to. I tend to be a little bit OCD about things. I'm obsessive-compulsive. When you look at mine, they're all grouped together the same on my smartphone, on my tablet and on my computer. So it's up to you. You can put it the way you want to. And they do all move around. You can make them different sizes. And that's just a matter of doing a left click and hitting resize, and it lets you see the way that you can resize them. And I don't recommend that anybody put it on small because they turn out to be a little square that is about a quarter inch square. It turns it tiny. And I don't think that too many of us, regardless of how young we are, want to look at something that tiny all day, because if you put it on small, you can fit four of them in the same place where I've got just one now. So it's just a matter of what you want it to look like. And then when we go from there, a lot of what we've got is when we're looking at these things, you don't go to the control panel anymore either. We always used to look for that control panel to figure out everything we were going to do. Now instead of looking for the control panel, you look for settings, which is the same thing you look for on your smartphone and on your tablet. So we're getting where everything kind of works the same way. And then I'm going to show you some other things. So I just want you to enjoy it as we explore it. Now, when you're looking at some of the new features that they have in Windows 10, is we used to go to websites that were owned by the different people, and we would go from there to do a download. Now your first line of defense for putting new apps or new programs on your computer needs to be the store on a Windows computer. They've got a little tile that sits out there that looks like a little shopping bag, and that's where you go to find those. You always need to look there first. You know, if there's one there, load it from there because it'll work better. And then if you don't find one there, then go to the individual maker of an app. So like Netflix, you're going to find a Netflix app in the app store, so you don't have to go to the Netflix website. You get more functionality when you actually put the app on there, rather than the website version. And they have another little thing out there that is called Cortana. That's kind of like the equivalent of Apple's Siri. And on some computers, depending on whether or not you have a microphone in your computer, when you have that there, you could hit the little thing that looks like an old-timey microphone, and you can talk to it. And it will actually go and do what you do. Like you need it to do an internet search, like you want to know the weather in Chicago. You just hit the little microphone, say, what is the current temperature in Chicago? It'll put it on your screen, and it will also tell you the same way that Siri does from Apple. And that's kinds of things. Or if you want to find like something on your computer, like a file, and you can only remember one word in that title that you gave it, but you don't remember where you saved it. If you type in that name on there, it'll look for it on your computer. It'll find it for you. So that's another one of the neat new features that they've got there. Cortana is one of the fun things that they did that I think people really will enjoy there. So when we're looking at those, those are some of the things that I always encourage people to just explore and see what happens there. And then another thing that we've got here, and I had Cortana there, and it was actually typing everything that I was saying as I was there. That tells you how much it listens. And now, like I said, you know, instead of having that control panel, you go to the thing that says Settings, and that will take you to do everything from connecting to a Wi-Fi network to all the other stuff there. There's just tons and tons of things to do from that. Now, when you're doing this now, they want you to look for everything the same way. The same way you look for it on your tablet is the same way you look for it on your phone is the same way you look for it on your computer. So now, you know how you have the Google Play Store for Google products? You have the Apple App Store for the Apple products. And now with Microsoft, you have just the store for where you go to add your apps and things with them. It's a pretty neat feature. That's your first line of defense on where you go to get everything. I always tell everybody, virtually everything you can get, or everything you want to do, you can find a free app for it. And I always encourage people, if you don't want to pay for it, wait a couple of weeks. Keep checking back. Someone will develop a free one. So that's all you need to do there. And then also, too, we have a thing called the Task View. And the Task View, it looks like a little comic strip bubble that goes over someone's head there. And when you click on that, it's the same way of sliding your finger down on your smartphone and you can see all the thing that your phone does. This just tells you, like if I had any emails, I would have a list of where my emails would be here. You also have a quick, easy location to get you to see what's connected to your Bluetooth and all those kinds of things. You've got all of that there. So it just tells you the different things there. It's just a first line. Instead of having to open up your email browser, you could just click there and you would see that email. So that's what we've got there. It's kind of like, you know, so it's looking the same way it looks on your phone and on your tablet. So you got those things there. Then instead of having that control panel where you always had to look through all those different folders and unless you did a lot of things with it, you were always like, oh, I don't remember which folder I looked at before. Now when we go to this and we go to settings, if you notice the symbol that they have for settings is that same little cog, like a little, a little, a clock, you know, a gear. Looks just like one of those. So same thing you look for on your smartphone or your tablet. And when you click that, they've made it very simple now. When you go to settings, they're all pretty self-explanatory. If you want to change something about your display or your notifications, you want to delete an app or something, you click on system, excuse me. You need to add a printer or you need to add anything else like speakers or any kind of Bluetooth feature. You go to devices because it's right there of how you do those. If you need to connect to a new network, you go right where it says network and internet. If you like for it to look a little bit different, you go to the personalization. Everything is just all kind of laid out very nicely and explains everything for you. If you want to change your password, you go to privacy. There's all those kinds of things there. It's just using common sense when you look at these things. Because like say I went to, we're going to look at network and internet. If I click on that one, you'll notice on your left side, you've got a choice for Wi-Fi. You've got a choice of making it a hotspot where you can, and a hotspot means that you have actually made your computer where other devices like say you have a smartphone, someone has a smartphone. You make it where they use the signal from your computer to connect to the internet or the network that's out there. Just let you find all the things there. So those are kind of neat to look at there. And like say you want to go with devices. You don't see your printer. You say click on add printer. And if you have a printer that's out there, chances are it's going to find it for you automatically. Makes things really, really easy to get them going and get those moving there. So you know what you're doing. And I always tell everybody, explore. You can't hurt anything. Just keep going out there, look, see what you find. If you're not sure what something is, click on it. See where it takes you. The worst that can happen is you need to click on the arrow back key to take you back where you started. Or if our else fails and you get somewhere you really can't get yourself out of it, power your system off, power it back on. Might take it a little bit longer to boot up that first time, but you're going to be fine. It'll take you out there where you can do things. Then like I said before, one of my favorite new things is a little thing that's called a snipping tool. And it is something that I enjoy. It makes it where you can actually make a graphic more easily. So it works on there. And I'll show you how that works in just a little bit there. Now, when I mentioned the Action Center to you guys before, I've got a little graphic here that lets you see it a little bit better. These were all emails that I had. So it's like when you have a smartphone and you can just click that little notification that you got and it takes you to it and opens it. That's exactly what this does. It works the same way as your smartphone. So it goes back to what I said before. They're trying to make everything look the same or similar across all of our platforms. Our tablet is similar to our desktop or our laptop and is similar to our smartphone. So all of them are working basically the same kind of way there. And one of the great things that they've got going now is, is they provide a free virus protection for you. It's called Windows Defender. And yes, a lot of times when you buy your computer, you will see that somebody like Norton or McAfee has given you a free 90-day trial. You don't have to purchase those when you're done with that free 90 days. All you have to do is just delete that program out there, get it off of your computer, then go to the Windows Defender spot here, update the patterns on it one time, then you never have to touch it again. Anytime you're connected to the internet, Windows, if they have new protection out there, they're automatically loaded in the background. The only time you ever realize that Windows Defender is working is if you get a little message that pops up on the bottom left corner of your screen and it tells you that it blocks something. And my philosophy on this is, who better to provide you service for this system than the people who created this system? So, you know, I've been using it ever since they put it out there and it is great. I have had no bad results with it, where I can't say the same for some of the people I know that have had McAfee or Norton. Some of them have had problems where actually viruses got through that they weren't happy. So, now, and another thing that's kind of neat is they have a little thing called the task view. Like say you've got several programs open on your computer and you need to switch in between them. When you hit that task view, if we look at my screen here, I've got two things open. And I can go back and forth between those. If I want to go to my file explorer, I can click it and there it is. It makes it big on my screen. And then if I hit my task view, or if you just aren't sure exactly what you've got open on your computer, hit the task view and it'll show you everything that you've got going there. Works out really, really great if you're trying to put like a presentation together and you're dragging files into the presentation and pictures in there and everything. It makes it where you don't have to go looking for it. They're all just right there where you can get at them. So that's always fun to see that that way. And basically what the task view looks like, it looks like a little box with ears. If you look for that at the bottom, you'll figure it out where that is. It literally looks like a square or a box with little ears on the side of it. Or if you hover over that symbol, you'll see words come up that actually say task view. So that way you'll be able to see if there's anything else that's open out there on your computer and you can move between them. Like when I did this, put this presentation together, I had four things to open. I had my snipping tool, my actual presentation, the second presentation that I was working at on the same time and a web browser so I could move between all of those things. So it makes it real easy to go back and forth between all those things there. Another thing that they're changing a little bit, you'll notice that you have a different web browser or internet access. It kinda looks the same but it's a tiny bit different. They used to have internet explorer on all Microsoft computers. Now they're using Microsoft Edge and that looks like a blue E with a little wedge cut out on the backside of the loop on the E. Whereas with internet explorer, it looked like the E with a ring around it, like a ring from Saturn but it was just around that. It was a little gold ring. Remember, they both take it in the same internet. Nothing different. They basically just change the name of their web browser. And another thing that they do, you know how most of us, a lot of us are big fans of Google. So we use Google as our search box on our web browsers. And if you use Microsoft Edge, it wants you to use Bing instead of using Google. They both take and look for things the same. It's just a matter of which one you're more comfortable with. There is no wrong one to use, like I always say before. It's personal preference. So you just get familiar with it. This web browser is very similar to internet explorer. Just get used to using the new one. There's not a heck of a lot more that you have to learn about it. Now, and one thing I mentioned at the beginning was Cortana. When you have that thing there, it's down on the bottom. It says ask me in anything. It's great feature. It's like having a computer searcher, web browser, everything all rolled into one. It looks on your network. It looks on your device. And it looks out on the internet when you ask it a question. Because it sits up there and it says ask me anything. And it literally means anything like you would for a web search. Or if you know you created a file and you know at least one word in the title of that file but you just can't find that file on your computer. If you type it in the Cortana, Cortana will find it on your computer for you. So it's really kind of cool. It looks for the best match for what you typed in. Then it looks out on the internet. Then it looks in your folders on your computer. And that kind of thing. So those are the things that you've got going there. Cortana is a fun, fun feature to use. Now, you have the different views of how things look when you're going into your computer. And your view basically means what your desktop looks like. I don't like lots of shortcuts, so I keep mine nice and clean. But then if I touch that little window that's down in the bottom left corner, then I see all of the files, all my shortcuts to all of my programs, all of my files that are on there, my thing for settings, my power button, my file explorer, everything is right there. But then one other thing I can do is if I would rather this look more like a tablet, I can switch it to tablet mode and it makes my desktop look the way it would look if I were using it as a tablet. Like if anybody has any of those Android tablets. It's the same thing. Or the same way it looks on your smartphone. Those are your options on how that looks there. So it's just a matter of what you prefer to see, whether you'd like it to look like a desktop or if you want literally everything to look identical on what you're doing. That's one of the cool new things they have. They have it where you can look at everything there. Now, the next thing I wanna show you is the snipping tool. The snipping tool is a great, great thing. Let's say you see a recipe on a website and you wanna do that but you don't want all of the ads. If you choose the snipping tool, it pops up in a little corner and it says new. Then say I only want one little corner of my screen here. Whatever I highlight and make solid, it takes a picture of it and will literally save it on my computer. That way if I'm going out there and I wanna see more about this or use it like to save a recipe or say I wanted to save that corner to put into a presentation, it literally takes a picture of it. And if I wanna keep it, all I do is click on file and save as and name it. And it's there for me to look at. But the one thing to remember about the snipping tool is that no matter what you use it to save with it, it saves it as a picture file. So even like you're saving a recipe, it's not saving like a Word document or a PDF of that. It is saving a JPEG, a picture of that. Looks the same, it just saves it as a picture file. So that's one thing you have to get used to looking for there. Now, I always tell everybody, if you're looking for anything on the computer, you get a new one. You wanna find out how to do things. Don't be afraid to just click around and figure it out. You can't hurt things. We can't just hit a few keystroke snot wrong like we used to be able to do years ago where you got that proverbial blue screen of death and you had to call somebody in to fix your computer because there was no way you could fix it yourself. If you truly get yourself in a situation where you don't think you can get out of it, hit that power button to the whole thing, powers off. Then power it back on and everything should be fine. Just remember that the first time you turn it back on there, it is gonna be a little slow to take you back to the beginning. But once it gets you there, everything's back up to speed and it's working just fine. Now, like I talked about with the App Store, don't hesitate to go in there and find things. It literally looks like a shopping bag with the window symbol on it. And any of you that have smartphones, you know that you have to go to that Google Play Store. You have to go to the Apple App Store to find anything you want. If you want apps, you go to the apps tile, I mean the apps tab that's there, if you know the name of an app you're looking for, like say I'm looking for Netflix, I type up in the search box where it is and it's gonna come up in the list there. And if I click on it, it'll take me to the information on Netflix. It'll tell me that the average rating on it is a four star rating that over 10,000 people have loaded that. And it tells you that I have it installed. If I didn't have it installed here, it would actually have the install here instead of launch. So like say here, I know I don't have this app on here. If you wanna see what something is, click the picture. It takes you to where it is. And now I said it says installed, it doesn't say installed, it says get. And then when you click on that, you'll see that it starts working and it starts finding it. And then it tells you that it's starting to download it. And you'll just start seeing it, do what it's gonna do. And then when it's finished it, it'll tell you to say open it so you can actually start opening it. You'll notice the switch to downloading. So it lets you know how much it is and that kind of thing there. So you've got everything there. And then once it's finished with that aspect, it tells you launch it. So then all you've gotta do is open it. And then when you do that, you click on your window there and you can find it alphabetically in your list or you can say recently added and you'll see that it's there. So it's very simple to do the things that you need to do here. But then say I added this and I wanted to add it to my desktop there where the other ones are. I would right click on it and pin to start. And that puts it in with all of your other ones. And if I wanna move it to another spot, I can move it to another spot. It's all up to you. But then say I didn't like it, I right click again and I say uninstall and I can get rid of it. Very simple, just like it is with your smartphones. So one thing I want to tell everybody with this in closing on this issue about Windows 10, don't hesitate to just explore, touch things, find where they go. It's the only way you'll get familiar with anything. It's like going to a new city, the way you find out where things are is to go to the different places, explore the streets, explore the files, click that mouse everywhere, see everything that you can do. And then another thing, even last my other episode that I shared recently, if you have computer problems, there is always a place to go to get help. And there are tons of places that are inexpensive or free. The Mead Public Library is available for free computer help. You can either have private sessions by appointments or you can come on the second and third Tuesday of the month at one o'clock to the third floor of the loft and we have an open session up there. First come, first serve, bring your device with you and those of us that help up there will help you find that. Or if you can't do it that day, see one of the librarians on the second floor and they can set up a private tutoring session for you. Or if you are eligible for the Senior Center in Chicago and meaning you're 55 or older, you go there, you call them, set up a private appointment there. We have, I have tutoring sessions there on Tuesday afternoons at one, two and three and on Wednesday mornings at nine, 10 and 11 o'clock. If you're a member, they're $3. If you're not, they are $5. I encourage everybody, if you want help, go to some place and get the help that you need. There are plenty of us out there, more than willing to help you out there. And if there's something you'd like to see me cover on this show, send us an email or give us a call at the station and they'll communicate it with me and I'll see if I can put together an episode for you. And again, I wanna say goodbye and thanks for joining me on this episode of SAMS Tech Talk.