You can start any program that’s installed on your computer by getting to the program’s icon on the All Programs menu and then clicking that icon. There are other ways to start programs as well. For example, if there’s an icon on the left side of the Start menu to start the program, just click that instead. If there’s an icon for the program in the Quick Launch toolbar, you can click that. If there’s a shortcut icon to the program on the desktop, you can click (or double-click) that icon to start the program.

Whether you need to single-click or double-click a desktop icon to open it is up to you.

Every time you start a program, an instance of that program opens in a program window. There’s no rule that says you can have only one program open at a time. And there’s no rule that says you can have only one copy of any given program open at a time. You can have as many programs as you can cram into your available memory (RAM) open all at the same time. And most programs will allow you to run multiple instances. The more memory your system has, the more stuff you can have open without any slowdown in performance.

When it comes to using programs, the terms start, run, launch, and open all mean the same thing to load a copy of the program into memory (RAM) so it’s visible on your screen. You can’t use a program until it’s open and visible. Any item you open on the desktop will show its own name somewhere near the top of the program window. You see its name in the Address bar near the top of the window. Most items that you open will also have a taskbar button. The name in the taskbar button matches the name of the item. For example, the taskbar button for the open Welcome Center also shows the words Welcome Center. You can click the Welcome Center taskbar button to make the open window appear and disappear. That’s a good thing to know, because sometimes you want to get something off the screen temporarily so you can see something else that’s on the screen. When you have multiple program windows open, they stack up on the desktop just like multiple sheets of paper on your real desktop stack up. When you have multiple sheets of paper in a pile, you can’t see what’s on every page. You can only see what’s on the top page, because all the other pages are covered by that page.

It works the same way with program windows. When you have multiple program windows open, you can only see the one that’s on the top of the stack. We call the program that’s on the top of the stack the active window.

The active window When two or more program windows are open on the desktop window, only one of them can be the active window. The active window has some unique characteristics: - The active window is always on the top of the stack. Any other open windows will be under the active window so they don’t cover any of its content. - The taskbar button for the active window has a pushed-in appearance, and the taskbar buttons for all the inactive windows have a pushed-out appearance. - Anything you do at the keyboard applies to the active window only. You cannot type in an inactive window.

Switching among open programs Whenever you have two or more programs open at the same time, you want to be able to easily switch among them. There are several ways to switch among open programs, as discussed in the sections to follow.

Pointing to a taskbar button shows a miniature version of the window that the button represents. Switching with taskbar buttons As mentioned, every open program has a button on the taskbar. When you have multiple open programs, you have multiple taskbar buttons. To bring any one particular program to the top of the stack, click its taskbar button. If you’re not sure which button is which, point to each button. You’ll see the name and a miniature copy of the program that the button represents.

Switching among multiple instances You can have multiple copies of the same program at the same time. For example, say you’re browsing the Web with Microsoft Internet Explorer. You’re about to click a link to go to another page, but you don’t want to lose your place in the current page. Rather than click the link, you can right-click it and choose Open In New Window. A second copy of Internet Explorer opens to show the new page. The original page remains open on the desktop so you can still see that page as well. Initially, each instance of the program will have its own taskbar button. But if you open many instances, and the taskbar buttons are becoming too small to see, the instances will collapse into a single taskbar button. That button will show a number indicating how many instances are currently open. To switch to a particular instance of that program, use any of the three techniques I just described. Optionally, you can click the single taskbar button that represents all the open instances of the program. The titles of all the documents (or Web pages in this case) that are open in that program will appear in a menu. To bring a particular instance to the top of the stack, just click its name in that menu. Here are some other handy things to know about a single taskbar button that represents multiple open instances of a program window. You can right-click the taskbar button that sports the number of open instances and then choose any of the following from the context menu that opens:

- Cascade: Stacks all the opens instances like sheets of paper, with just their title bars visible.

- Show Windows Stacked: Stacks open windows like horizontal bars, one atop the other, on the desktop, or like tiles if there are too many open windows to stack one atop the other.

- Show Windows Side by Side: Same as above, but each window spans the height of the desktop. Also as above, displays them as tiles if there are too many to show side by side.

- Minimize Group: Temporarily removes all open instances from the desktop. Use any option previously given to bring them back to the desktop.

- Close Group: Closes all the open instances in one click. The main point to keep in mind here is that program windows on the desktop stack up just like sheets of paper on a desk. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a single instance of multiple programs, multiple instances of a single program, or multiple instances of multiple programs they’re all just program windows.

The Welcome Center

In Windows Vista The Welcome Center is a program window that might, or might not, appear automatically when you first log in to Windows. It shows information about your computer and provides some links to a few Windows features and some online resources. Yours might look a little different. When you click an icon in the lower half of the window, the upper half changes to show you more information. Click the Show more... or See More... link message in the upper half of the window to see more information. To leave the “more information” page and return to where you were, click the Back button in the upper-left corner, or press the Backspace key on your keyboard. If you don’t want the Welcome Center to open automatically each time you log in, clear the checkmark next to Run at startup in the lower-left corner of the window. (Click the checkmark to clear the checkbox.) If you don’t see the Welcome Center, but want to, click the Start button, type wel, and then click Welcome Center on the Start menu. If you want it to open automatically each time you start your computer, click the empty checkbox next to Run at startup to select that option. You can maximize, minimize, restore, move, size, and close the Welcome Center window as you can any open window. See the sections on sizing, arranging, moving, and closing program windows earlier in this article for more information.

Quick Help for Getting Started

If you’re new to computers, the Windows Basics item in the Welcome Center provides a quick overview of basic skills and concepts. If you don’t see the Windows Basics icon, click Show all 14 items in the top half of the window. Then click the Windows Basics icon and click Open Windows Basics in the top half of the program window. Optionally, on most systems you can click the Start button and choose Help and Support. Click the box that shows Search Help, type basics, and press Enter. Then click Windows Basics: All Topics. Either way you should end up in a window. Each short chunk of blue text is a link that takes you to a help topic. Click any link to see that topic. You’ll need to use the scroll bar in many pages to scroll up and down through all the text. You can use the Back and Forward buttons, when enabled, to scroll through pages you’ve already visited. Using the help in this manner will give you some practice with skills you’ve learned in this article. And at the same time, it will help you reinforce what you already know, and teach you some new things you haven’t learned yet. To leave the Help window, just close it (click the Close [X] button in its upper-right corner). You’ll often see a little blue button with a white question mark in program windows. That’s the Help button. You can click it for information. You can also press the Help key (F1) on your keyboard at any time for help.

Logging Off, Shutting Down from Windows Vista Here’s a question a lot of people ask: “Should I shut down my computer if I won’t be using it for a while, or should I just leave it on?” Everybody has an opinion about this. So here’s mine: It doesn’t matter. Personally, about the only time I ever shut down my computers is when I need to, such as when installing certain types of hardware. Aside from that, all my computers are on, and online, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’ve built, worked the daylights out of, and then thrown away dozens of computers after they’ve served their purpose and better technology came along. Not a one ever broke down before it had served its purpose. So, I’d have to say that not one ever suffered from being left on too long, or shut down too often. Understand that turning off a PC isn’t quite the same as turning off a TV or radio. You don’t want to just hit the main power switch to shut down while you have things open on the desktop. You want to close everything first. Then click the Start button and do one of the following: - Click the right side of the Lock button and choose Shut Down from the menu that appears. - Click the Off button to the left of the lock button to power down the computer.

Don’t expect the computer to turn off immediately. It takes a few seconds for Windows to get everything closed up and ready to shut down. On most computers, you don’t have to do anything else. The computer will eventually shut itself down completely. Some older computers may show a message stating “It is now safe to shut down your computer.” If you see that message, you need to hold in the main power button on your computer for a few seconds to finish shutting down the system.

Stuff You Can Do with a Computer

There’s so much you can do with Windows Vista and your computer, I hardly know where to start. So I’ll just throw some ideas out there, and point you to the article where that topic is discussed. Of course, you can get much more detailed information about the contents of this book from the Table of Contents up front. And you can look things up in the Index at the back of the book. The terms and skills you’ve learned in this article should be enough to get you started on whichever topic looks most interesting. You will need an Internet connection for e-mail and the Web. But you should be able to do everything else using just Windows Vista. You don’t need to buy extra programs to do those things. So that about wraps it up for the main terminology and basic skills. Much of what you’ve learned in this article is the kind of stuff most people assume you already know. You may have to read the article a few times, and practice things, before it all sinks in. Use the Windows Basics help I mentioned for more information and for hands-on practice. Here’s a quick summary of the most important points covered in this article:

- The Windows desktop is where you’ll do all your work.

- You’ll use your mouse and keyboard to operate the computer.

- Most of your work will involve opening and using programs.

- You can start any program that’s installed on your computer from the All Programs menu.

- Each open program will appear in its own program window on the desktop. Program windows stack up like sheets of paper.

- Each open program window has a corresponding taskbar button. The taskbar buttons help you switch from one open program window to another.

- You can move and size program windows to see exactly what you need to see, when you need to see it. - When you’ve finished using your computer and want to shut it down, don’t go straight for the main power switch. Instead, click the Start button and then click the Shut Down button on the Start menu. That’s enough for now about the desktop and programs. These days, with just about everyone using their computers to access the Internet, security is a major issue.