Macs For Dummies

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

A Formal Welcome to the 20th Century
Why a Book for Dummies?
How to Use This Book (Other Than as a Mousepad)

Macintosh conventions
Conventions in this book
Apple and obsolescence

Part I: For the Absolute Mac Virgin

Chapter 1: How to Turn On Your Mac (and What to Do Next)
Box Open. Now What?

Switching the Mac on
The startup slide show

Your First Moments Alone Together

The big turn-off
Moving the mouse
What's on the menu?
The Mac OS 8 difference
Shutting down
Moving things around on the desktop
Icons, windows, and Macintosh syntax
All systems are go
Double-clicking in theory and practice
Multiple windows
Using a list view
The easiest homework you've ever had
Pit stop

Top Ten Similarities between You and Your Mac
Chapter 1 1/2: High-Tech Made Easy
How a Mac Works

Storing things with floppy disks
Conceptualizing the hard disk
Understanding memory
Who's Meg?
Understanding RAM
Putting it all together
"I lost all my work!"

Top Ten Differences between Memory and a Hard Disk
Chapter 2: Doing Windows, Getting Floppy
Becoming Manipulative

Foldermania
Keyboard shortcuts
How to trash something

Fun with Floppies

How to insert a floppy disk
How to copy stuff onto a floppy disk
How to copy something to your hard drive
How to get a disk out again

Top Ten Window, Disk, and Trash Tips
Chapter 3: Actually Accomplishing Something
Obsolescence Therapy
Credit Card Workout #2: Buying Software

Where to get it
Your very first software

Desk Accessories

The Calculator
The Note Pad
Selecting text
The cornerstone of human endeavor: Copy and Paste
The Application menu

Control Panels
Top Ten Control Panel Explanations
Chapter 4: Word Processing 101
Your Very First Best-seller

Top three rules of word processing
The excitement begins
Editing for the linguistically blessed
Puff, the Magic Drag-&-Drop

Form and Format

The return of Return
Appealing characters
Formatting paragraphs

Working with Documents

Navigating the Save File (and Open File) box
Closing a file, with a sigh
How to find out what's

Getting It All Back Again

Crazy relationships: Parents and kids
Fetch: How to retrieve a document

Save Me Again!

Learning to be a quitter
The other most important computer rule

When What Was Found Is Now Lost
Top Ten Word Processing Tips
Chapter 5: A Quiet Talk about Printers, Printing, and Fonts
Credit Card Workout #3: A Printer Primer

Inkjets: StyleWriters, DeskWriters, and Epsons
Laser printers

How to Print

Plugging in a 'Writer
Plugging in a laser printer
The Chooser: where Mac meets printer
Background printing
After all that: how you actually print
Using the Tab key in dialog boxes
Canceling printing

A Guide to Jagged Printouts

Font format #1: bitmapped fonts
Font format #2: PostScript fonts
Font format #3: TrueType fonts

ID'ing a Font
A Veritable Font-u-copia

How to install a font
How to remove a font

Top Ten Free Fun Font Factoids

Part II: Increasing Your Coolness Quotient

Chapter 6: Faking Your Way Through the Top Ten Programs
ClarisWorks (Moved to New Address)
Drawing Programs (ClarisDraw, ClarisWorks, & Co.)

Paint versus draw
Drawing concepts
The power of Shift
Selecting and grouping multiple objects
Text FX

Painting Programs (Photoshop, ClarisWorks Again)

Marquee and Lasso
Pencil
Text
Spray Can
Eraser
Line
Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, and Arc
Hand Grabber
Magnifying Glass

Microsoft Word 5.1

Views
To change the margins
The unbearable lightness of interface
The Toolbar
The Ribbon: quick word formatting
The Ruler: quick paragraph formatting
Be careful on the strip
Moving text by dragging it
Checking your spelling
How to kill the Summary Information box
How to kill superfluous commands

Microsoft Word 6: Stuff in common with Word 5

Killing the "Choose a template" box
Where's the Font menu?
Killing the toolbars
Single-spaced or double?
Raw power: style sheets (Word 5, too)
How to kill superfluous commands

Quicken

The category concept
The register
Just another $10,000 day
Creating a new category
More typical examples
The category payoff
Reconciling for the non-accountant
If the statement has extra items

Excel

Starting up
Formatting numbers and text
Spreading the sheet
Creating automatically calculating cells
Fill right, feel right
From here to infinity
Making a chart

FileMaker Pro

Step 1: Starting a file
Step 2: Data entry
Step 3: Designing a layout
Finding
Sorting
Other steps

Now Up-to-Date

Getting a date
Entering an appointment: Method A
Entering an appointment: Method B
Revising your life
Deleting your life
Changing your viewpoint
How to make those cool banners
Birthdays, anniversaries, and other disasters
Getting your life on paper
Other things Up-to-Date can do

Netscape Navigator

Getting to the Web

Top Ten Programs Not in the Top Ten
Chapter 7: A Whole Big Chapter on ClarisWorks
Launching ClarisWorks

Your first database
Data entry time
Forming the form letter
The graphics zone: Designing a letterhead
The return of Copy and Paste

Other Cool Stuff ClarisWorks Does

A little paint
A little slide show
Other assistants

Chapter 8: System Folder: Trash Barge of the Macintosh
Battle of the Systems
System-Folder Trash-O-Rama

In your Apple Menu Items folder
In your Control Panels folder
In your Extensions folder
In your Fonts folder
In your Launcher Items folder
In your Preferences folder
In the Speakable Items folder
Loose in the System Folder

Chapter 9: OS 8 and Why It's Great
Meet Mr. Window
Looks Are Everything
What's on the Menus

Stay-open menus
Control-key menus

Handy Desktop Featurettes
Do More, Wait Less
The Cost of Mac OS 8
Chapter 10: Screamingly Important Things Nobody Tells You
It Doesn't Need to Be Repaired.
Don't Buy Version 1.0 of Anything.
You Can Leave Windows Open.
Press Option to Fax.
A ".sit" File Has to Be Expanded.
Any New Program Must Be Installed.
Do the Shift-Key Trick before Installing.
"Read Me First" = "Ignore Me First."
Most Stuff You Buy You'll Never Use Again.
Don't Worry about Viruses.
Every Piece of Equipment Needs Software in Your System Folder.
Error Messages Are Useless.
Click the Label instead of the Button.
The Control Strip Is Faster.

Part III: Toward a New, Nerdier You

Chapter 11: Faking Your Way onto America Online and the Internet
First, the Modem

What speed to get
Where you can stick it

America Online

How to get it
How to connect to it
Exploring by icon
Navigating by keyword
A few of your favorite things
How to find your way back to the good stuff
The e-mail connection
Towing the party line
Talking behind their backs
How to find -- and get -- free software

The Internet (Yikes)

Two ways to get onto the Confusion Superhighway
The Internet via America Online
Via an ISP
What there is to do on the Internet
E-mail
Newsgroups
Mailing lists
FTP (software to download)

When You Can't Open Your Downloaded Goodies

Expand-o-matic
After it's expanded

The World Wide Web

Getting to the Web via America Online
Getting to the Web via an ISP
Where to go, what to do on the Web
Ways to search for a particular topic
Fun or useful Web places

Top Ten Best / Worst Aspects of the Net
Chapter 12: Putting the Mouse to the Metal
The Efficiency Nut's Guide to the Option Key

Closing all windows at once
Windows and folders: tunnel vision
The silence of the Trash
Multitasking methods
Making an instant document copy
Funny little hidden Option key stunts

Buried Treasures

The amazing "secret about box"
Make an alias of a file
Creating the L.L. Mac catalog
Have it your way -- at Icon King
Taking a picture of the screen
Just say no

Colorizing and Other Acts of Vandalism

Color-coding your icons
Blue language
Views and window preferences
U R A recording studio
How to adjust your Mac's speaker volume

Utilities with No Monthly Bill

Compression programs
Screen savers
Anti-virus software

Top Ten Free or Almost-Free Utility Programs
Chapter 14: More Stuff to Buy and Plug In
Scanners

O Say Can U OCR?

Modems

Fax modems

CD-ROM
Speakers
Music and MIDI
A Camcorder
SyQuests & Zip Disks & Jaz, Oh My!
Digitizing Tablets
Digital Cameras
Networks
Plugging the Stuff In
Top Ten Non-Costly Mac Add-Ons
Chapter 15: The Mac Sings, Shows Movies, and Prepares Mixed Drinks
It Speaks!

Making it talk
Pick your voice

It Sings!
It Takes Orders!

What you need to make it listen
What you can say to the Mac

It Plays Movies!

Making movies

Chapter 16: The PowerBook Survival Guide

PowerBook Care and Feeding

Sleep is good. We like sleep.
Battery positives and negatives

Trackpad Proficiency Drill

One warranty that's worth extending

Have Laptop, Might Travel

X-ray machines and you
Desperate for a fix
Insta-Printer
The one real jack

Top Ten Tips for Maximizing Battery Power

Part IV: Becoming Your Own Guru

Chapter 17: When Bad Things Happen to Good Machines
Introduction to Computer Hell

Shooting your own troubles
A mild example
About the cookbook

The Mac Freezes or Crashes

Escaping a System freeze right now
Escaping repeated System freezes

Error Messages

"Application not found"
"A Type 1 error has occurred" (or Type 2, or Type 3...)
"Sorry, a System error has occurred"
"Not enough memory to open ClarisWorks"
"You are running low on memory"
"Application has unexpectedly quit"
"The disk is full"
"Can't empty trash" or "Can't be deleted"
"An error occurred while writing to the disk"
Numbered error messages

Out of Memory

First resort: Quit programs
Second resort: Make the Mac give back
Third resort: Defragment your RAM
Fourth resort: Get RAM Doubler
Fifth resort: Use virtual memory
Last resort: Buy more

Startup Problems

No ding, no picture
Ding, no picture
Picture, no ding
Four musical notes (or crash sound)
A question mark blinks on the screen
Some crazy program launches itself every time you start up

Printing Problems

"Printer could not be opened" or "Printer could not be found"
StyleWriter (or other inkjet): Blank pages come out
A million copies keep pouring out
Nothing comes out of the printer
That stupid startup page

Finder Foul-ups

The Find command doesn't find a file
You can't rename a file
You can't rename or eject a disk
All your icons show up blank
It's January 1, 1904
You drag a file into a window, and the file disappears

Floppy-Disk Flukes

"File could not be copied"
Mac keeps asking for a disk you've ejected
You can't get a floppy disk out
"This disk is unreadable. Do you want to initialize it?"
Your floppy disks don't hold the amount that they're supposed to

Everything's Slow
Hardware Headaches

Mouse or trackball is jerky or sticky
Double-clicking doesn't work
Cursor freezes on the screen
Nothing appears when you type
Your monitor shimmers
There's a thin horizontal line all the way across your color monitor

The Problem-Solving Cookbook

Rebuilding the Desktop file
Zapping the PRAM
The amazing "Force Quit" keystroke
The Restart switch
Solving an extension conflict
Solving SCSI nightmares
What's SCSI?
The rules of SCSI
Giving more memory to a program
Performing a "clean system reinstall"
Step one: Install the fresh software
Step two: Restore your personal belongings
Defragmenting your hard drive

Chapter 18: Beyond Point-and-Click: Where to Go from Here
A New Leash on Life: Upgrading

The Upgrade Paradox

Where to Turn in Times of Trouble
Save Changes Before Closing?
Top Ten Topics Not Covered in This Book
Appendix A: How to Buy (and Set Up) a Macintosh
The Only Three Specs That Matter (Besides the Price)
Macintosh as a Second Language

The newspaper-ad test
Cache and carry
Final exam

The Product Line

Black-and-white one-piece
Color one-piece
The LC series
Mac II series
The Quadra series
PowerBooks
Power Macintosh

Buying a Monitor

Black-and-white or color
How big is your view?
A bit about color bits

Where to Buy Your Mac

The Apple school discount
Mail order
Computer stores
Send in the clones
Used Macs
Credit cards

I Took Off the Shrink Wrap! Now What?

Ergo...ergonomics
Getting plugged
Switching the Mac on

Top Ten Things That You Get Free with Your Mac
Magazines
Appendix B: The Resource Resource
User Groups
Products Mentioned in This Book
Appendix C: The Technobabble Translation Guide

Index