 I'm Tammany Augustine, better known to most of you as Sam, and welcome to my first episode of Sam's Tech Talk. This is going to be a show that's going to teach you or hopefully let you see all the things that you might ever want to know about all of the devices that are out there for you to use in your home for your enjoyment and for the people in your household to enjoy as well. In our first episode today we're going to be talking about personal computers or PCs, which is what most people call them. And I'm going to try to let you know about all the basic different ones that are out there on the market today and let you know the difference between them. The important things that you need to know when you step into a place like Best Buy and you're just overwhelmed by everything that they've got there. And this is going to help you get a game plan so you don't get way more computer than you need or not getting enough. And so you don't get sucked in by some salesman that just wants to say, yay, I sold a lot of stuff today. The first thing that we want to talk about is the operating systems that are with all of the computers today. There are primarily four different operating systems. The first one that most people are familiar with is Windows and that's made by Microsoft. The current version of that is Windows 10 and you can still get some people what might buy Windows 8 when they go to the store in their computers. And at home you might have one that's a little bit older than that, but that's going to be fine because those are still going to work for a long time. When you get these operating systems they're relatively easy to operate now and you're going to like those pretty much because they kind of coordinate with what you've got at work in most places. So that's what people are familiar with. Then the next operating system is the Apple operating system and that comes with your Mac computers and it also comes in your iPads, your iPhones and those types of devices and even your iPod. The ones that come in your iPads, your iPods and your iPhones typically just have a number attached to them. The ones that come in your personal computer type devices or your desktop devices have a number and they also have a name attached to that. Their current operating system or the latest one is the operating system 10 and the current revision of that is called El Capitan. Some people may be running Yosemite which was the previous one and they may even have older ones. Macs tend to operate for a really long time on older operating systems and they work just fine. The third operating system that we've got out there that a lot of people are familiar with is the Chrome operating system and that is the operating system that is made by Google. It is used in a Chromebook and it's also accessible via the Google website where you can go out there log in with your personal ID and you're having all of the information that you have on your home device available to you anywhere that you might go. The last operating system that most people are familiar with is the Android operating system and that's the operating system that is in most of your smartphones that you have out there today and in some of the tablets that you can buy out there today. That's basically the information on all the operating systems out there. There are other ones but those tend to be for real computer geeks so we as the average user don't even mention them because it's way too tough to understand. Now when you're going to go buy a computer there are a couple of important things to consider with this. The first one is is the amount of storage or hard drive space that that computer has and the second thing is the amount of memory that that device has. When you're considering your hard drive space you want to think about how big is the operating system on your computer because that's something you can't change, how many apps or programs that you might want to be installing on that device and then the third thing is how many actual documents that being things like pictures, music, movies, anything you might type up that you need to save all those kinds of things. You need to consider that as well but that can be one thing that you can push off a little bit because there are all kinds of external storage devices for that and that's something we'll cover in a later episode. And the one thing to remember about your size of what we call your hard drive on your computer is is that right now when you go to the store and you look at one the biggest thing the most common things out there are gigabytes and terabytes and when you put it into perspective a gigabyte a single gigabyte is capable of storing 256 four-minute songs and that's the equivalent of 25 CDs and that's one gigabyte a terabyte which is a lot bigger is capable of store of storing 262,124 four-minute songs and that's approximately 26,200 CDs and most of us are never going to own that many CDs and then to put it into perspective there are 1,024 gigabytes and one terabyte so those are the two most common measurements of space on your hard drive today. Now the next thing we want to consider is the brains of your computer or the CPU. These are typically made by one of three companies you'll see a little thing on your computer that says the company ARM the company AMD or Intel these are the people who provide those and generally the manufacturer of your computer determines which ones they pair with which types of hard drive and memory so that you don't have to worry about going okay well which one's better than the other one that's typically a manufacturer preference. Higher processor speeds on these on the CPU most people aren't going to notice the difference in one or another when we do our everyday things that we do we don't notice that second that one might take over another when we're just doing general internet searches or doing general things on our computers. Most of the time the people who want those super fast processor speeds are those young people out there who are into gaming and doing things online where they're playing games with somebody who might be in another part of the world and that computer being too slow might be the difference of them winning that game or losing that game and they take this very very seriously so that's one thing they do there. Now the other thing that we want to talk about now is the different types of PCs that we have out there and I'm sure that just about everybody who's out there has had in times past or they've worked or they've been someplace where you have what they call the desktop computer that's the computer that you buy that has what they call the tower that sits to the side it's the big box and the reason they call it a tower is because it's tall and you have some of them where they lie flat and then you have an extra big monitor and then you have a keyboard and you have a mouse that goes with that and those are the things that people use with those so those are all part of that and that's generally the very first computer that most people that are over the age of 30 ever saw that's the first thing we ever knew now the most common thing that most people have is what they call a laptop computer and this is a portable unit that you have just that's just like your desktop but it is giving you the ability to take it with you when you need to so if you need to go someplace and you need to take your computer with you you can just grab any one of these devices and take it with you and the reason that it's got its name laptop is because a lot of us have when we sit down and we use them we tend to put them in our lap we open them up and we just type away and how they got their notebook name is because they are closed and they look like a book and you can open them up just like you would open up a notebook to do your work you have your monitor on one side and your keyboard and mouse on the other and then the final thing that we have for the most part are what they call tablet computers and those are the ones where you have the touch screens the ones where you actually physically use your finger or a little device like this that's called a stylus and with that stylus the end of it has a material that is the same as what you have on your fingertip because a lot of people their fingers are too fat to do what they want to do on these so that's how that works and then some people don't want to do the touch screen so they attach a keyboard to their device so you can either type on the screen or you can attach a keyboard to it either one works just fine and then the latest type of notebook computer they have is this one this is the one that they call the Microsoft Surface and what's unique about this one is is that you can use it like a laptop with this where the keyboard's attached and you have the screen and then you can take this detach the keyboard and just type directly on the screen so that's how that works so it's just your preference do you want to use a keyboard or do you want the keyboard to pop up on your screen it's just you and it's very simple to connect it it's just magnetic and it connects there these tend to be very lightweight devices your notebooks tend to be a bit heavier and there are several different brand names the ones that I have here you can typically tell the manufacturer or the brand name by the symbols that are out there you have the apple computers which are had that signature apple on almost every single device somewhere on it so you can see that and then with ones that are Microsoft you tend to just have the brand name on the outside and then on the inside when you open it up and use it is when you see the things that let you know that it's windows and then also the third type of your typical tablet device is the one that we call a chrome book and that's made for the Google I mean the chrome operating system system which is affiliated with in this one is the one that's affiliated with the chrome operating system from Google it's one of the simplest operating systems you're going to use very user-friendly and very economical now one thing to think about when you go out to buy a new computer oh and one thing I forgot to mention that when you have a smartphone you literally have a handheld computer that makes phone calls anything you can do on this tiny little screen is this virtually the same of what you do on any of the other devices the only thing about this one is it's not friendly to these older eyes so you have to be a pretty young person and want to sit and look at these little screens to do all of your work but it is capable of doing virtually anything you'll see on these other devices now when you go out to buy a new computer it's a matter of your personal preference do you want the windows operating system the chrome operating system the android operating system which is affiliated with most of the smartphones or do you want the let's see I mentioned that we have the windows we have the apple we have the chrome and then we have the android those are the most common ones it's just a matter of your personal preference depending on what you want to do really one's not any better than other where we come into now is price how much money do you want to spend on your personal computer you can spend as little as just under two hundred dollars two thousands of dollars my dream computer is almost six thousand dollars am I ever going to spend that kind of money no I would never in a million years spend that kind of money on a computer but I can have a computer that more than meets my needs for about four hundred dollars so it's a matter of do I spend four hundred dollars or do I spend six thousand dollars I think me I'm going to spend the four hundred or you can meet somewhere in the middle maybe get one that's mid-range where it meets your needs and it also gives you some of those special little things that you would like to have on your computer when you go to a store the things that you want to think about is all of those things that I mentioned previously what do you plan to do with your computer the average person out there we check our email we surf the internet which means we go out to one of the search engines and we look for different things on the internet we check our bank balance maybe and we do a little bit of social media things like Facebook or Twitter or things like that and we might print out the occasional document and the average person can do that for about two hundred dollars you don't need to spend a lot of money because once we start spending more money we're looking at personal preferences there and that's just whatever it's important for you to spend the last thing to remember when you're doing this is is if you want to do those things you have to have internet access on your computer most people get their internet access at home either through their cable company their phone company through one of the dish companies or through some of the local providers out there like excel net it's just a personal preference what's available for you and how much money you want to spend but if you don't want to spend money to have it at home there are places where you can go and get what they call free wi-fi internet access places where you can do that are like the mead public library they have a network that anybody can just come in there and sit and do anything they want to do on their computers virtually all mcdonald's in the country have a free wi-fi network i know there was a time when my husband and i were traveling up north and we had a situation where he needed to get on to his computer and we were like oh heck what are we going to do and we were about two miles from a mcdonald's so we pulled into their parking lot and he was able to take his computer out and do what we needed to do and then we were able to keep on heading where we needed to go the third place around here that most people can get it that is notorious or famous for having internet access is starbucks virtually any starbucks in the country has free wi-fi access and then a lot of the local restaurants and some of the businesses like hospitals and those kind of things are having what they call guest networks where they either have the network out there and all you have to do is just access it on your device or you get a password from someone who works there and then anytime you come back there your your device will automatically connect to their network so if you're willing to go out a little bit you don't have to spend money for your internet access so it's just up to you do you want to have a monthly fee or do you want to do the other now the last thing to remember with this is that all of these computers that i've mentioned are pc's they have they do the same things for the most part you can do virtually the same thing on all of them you have to decide what you want to do how often you're going to do it and how much do you need to use this at all because these are going to determine how much you want to invest in it so that's the key things to remember there this is going to be a lot more simple for you as you study it a little bit and i am going to make this available this information available to you via the website in a blog entry so you can follow that each time we have an episode and you're more than welcome to contact us with any questions or with any other things that you would like to see covered on this show and then a third thing that i want to talk about is if you need help with any of the devices we've talked about we have a number of places that you can go to in the area to get that help we have personal tutoring if you're 55 or older you can come to the shabuagan senior center and i'm a tutor there and i'm there twice a week i have sessions on tuesdays and i have sessions on fridays tuesdays in the afternoon fridays in the morning these are personal sessions we talk about what you want to talk about you determine what we're going to talk about there or what you want to learn about and you just need to call the senior center to get that information to set up your appointment there the number at the senior center is 920 459 3290 and if you just call them they'll be happy to set up your appointment another place that you can go for help is the me public library we have open sessions twice a month during all months except for the summer months and that schedule is posted at the library but we also have private tutoring sessions available and to access those information there you contact kelly roadie and the number for the library is 920 459 3400 there's several tutors there and i happen to be one of those as well just ask for help you can always find somebody that can help you with your computer you don't need to be frustrated with it and anybody can learn how to operate a computer my oldest student was 94 and they had never used a computer before and now they love it so it's just a matter of just discovering it learning what you want to learn about it and finally i would like to thank you for tuning in to my first episode i know i stumbled a few times but i hope you'll be patient with me as i get better at this we're going to be in our next episode we're going to talk about those terms that you hear on computers and just make those make more sense for you then if you have any subjects you want me to cover or have any questions and don't think their question is going to be stupid because chances are if you thought of it someone else has too so don't hesitate just contact us here at the station with your ideas and finally thanks and i hope everyone can learn to use a pc