I learned very little from these web videos, and that is not to say that I was incapable of learning from the videos, but what all the videos were teaching me were things I was already relatively well versed in.
I've been working on Mac for about 5 years now, give or take, and I've been working on PC for even longer. One of those devices (Mac) happens to be a relatively old PowerBook G4 Laptop and my desktop is an old Compaq computer that has literally been gutted and has had everything inside of it replaced.
With so many years of both Mac and PC usage under my belt, I should know a pretty penny about both systems by now even if my knowledge of them isn't exactly programmer level knowledge. Thankfully, I do.
Laptop Vs. Desktop:
With the advances in technology in my generation, the capabilities of a Laptop versus a Desktop are practically the same. The better the parts inside the computer, the more the computer is capable of. That being said, between a Laptop and a Desktop you're really paying for portability and the capability to mod the system.
My primary computer is a desktop. Desktops, between the parts inside and the case, can be quite heavy and not very economical to carry around with you. Depending on the brand of desktop they require a lot of different wires to hook up in order to run, as well as a monitor or some other form of display (like a television) in order to see what's on your screen. You also need some form of keyboard and mouse to hook up to the desktop for the ability to type and navigate.
On the flip side, Laptops are generally lightweight devices (although I'm pretty sure I could commit murder with my old PowerBook G4 here as it's heavy as all get out and made primarily out of metal) and easily portable. They have their keyboard, mouse and monitor completely built in. You need maybe at most one set of wires to keep it on (the power adaptor), or if your battery life is well suited enough for the job, absolutely no wires at all.
Modding a desktop is significantly easier than modding a laptop as you can crack that bad boy open from the side or the back and have easy access to the motherboard and such inside. Where as, with a laptop, you may have to practically take the whole thing apart in order to do anything with it.
My boyfriend (who is extremely well versed in both PC and Mac systems) had to take my PowerBook apart before in order to replace the CD drive as well as the power port and by the time he was finished he had taken out exactly 97 screws from the system of all sizes. 97 screws. That's a lot of screws.
5 Things That Work in all Applications:
- The File Menu - The tab in all applications that allows you to create new documents, save your documents and print from your documents. Depending on application or system, it may share a few other things, but those three are always present.
- Cut, Copy & Paste - The basics of computer program life. It's like air, water and food. You need them to live and they work the same way no matter what application you're in. The only difference being the key commands between OSs
- Undo & Redo - It helps make mistakes disappear (or re-appear, though why would you want them to re-appear).
- Preference Settings - The option in an application that allows you to customize settings within that application. For example, in Safari I can go under Preferences and change the appearance of my browser or tweak the extensions I have installed to it.
- Help Menu - Almost all applications have a Help Menu. It is specifically designed to help you if you're not sure how to do something. Unfortunately, not all help menus are created the same and some are just terrible in comparison to others. If I want to find out how to do something a little on the complicated side, I just Google it.
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