Computer matters

Hi Prof. Computers have various ways that can copy what is on the screen. Some sites are copy protected but not most of them. On most Windows computers there is a piece of software called Snip & Sketch. It's fairly self explanatory if you open it up but feel free to ask. The alternative that has been around for decades is the PrtSc button on the top row of the keyboard. The button copies whatever is on the screen which you can then paste into anything that accepts pictures (including document editors). They let you trim off anything you don't need and save the image either directly as a picture or as part of a collection eg I save Coventry pictures into Powerpoint so that I can arrange them into street order and add notes. Some keyboards are slightly different and the PrtSc button doesn't work on its own and you have to press either Ctrl, Alt, or even Fn.

Thank you Helen, I never knew that or used before, but successfully saved it in Word for now. Great!

Me too Helen, thank you for the tip. I tend not to look up there - only for the delete key !

I just worked out that I got my first computer 44 years ago

Oh my word - pre 1980s - you were an early-bird!!! At that time I was virtually scared of computers, had no interest and couldn't see why I'd ever want one! It wasn't until about 1993 or '94, I think, that I was persuaded I ought to use one - and that was only an Atari ST for composing music! A year or two later my younger brother, who had been into computing from an early age, showed me how photographs could be manipulated on a colour screen, and that suddenly grabbed my attention, so with his guidance I built my own early Pentium PC with an early version of Windows 95. It might have been more advanced than the Atari, but at least the Atari was reliable and almost never crashed.... Windows 95 seemed to spend almost as much time showing me the fatal "blue screen of death" as it did running programmes! But then the early 3D game Doom came out, and all was forgiven. Then, in 1997, I bought my first digital camera - a Kodak 1 megapixel - yes, a whole ONE million pixels!!! Being second hand it came with no software, so I was told the only way to connect the camera to the computer was to get the internet and download the driver. NOOOOO..... not the ruddy internet!!!!! I'd heard people on TV banging on about the bloomin' World Wide Web and, again, I had no interest in going down that route whatsoever. But I had to, so to Dixons I went, to get one of their "Freeserve" CDs - the first people to make it free to have an internet connection, although obviously you still had to pay for your time online - during which time we couldn't use the 'phone. Remember those days? My brother had upgraded to 56kbits/sec, so I had his old 28kbits/sec modem! At the time we were all used to any webpage with photos taking a minute or two to load, and I could never have conceived back then that 25 years later we would have an internet speed over twelve thousand times faster!!! Of course, having the internet and building your own website are two very different things, but the rest, as they say, is history.... or should I say, Historic?!? And many lovely friends later, here we all are!

I was hooked from 11 when I saw a PET computer at a summer open day for the school I was going to that autumn. All it could do was work out what number you were thinking of by asking higher or lower questions. My first was an Acorn Atom with the full 12 k of ROM and 12 k of RAM! Really Dad bought it for himself but got out of giving me a birthday and Christmas present that year by wrapping it up but I never regretted it. I learned to program so that I could beat my brother at the games. He was 2 years older than me, so that was fair, right? The games were saved on a tape recorder and made the same noise as the early modems. Next was a Sinclair QL, which taught me (sort of) to spell. The text editor had an annoying beep if you got a word wrong. Far better than a red wiggly line. For a dyslexic it made a huge difference. It had little tape diskettes to save stuff. It had a spreadsheet and a graphics program. Years ahead of its time. I then got an Atari ST (520 I think, must have been the mid 80s), which was far superior to Microsoft machines for years to come. It seemed ages before Windows came along. It was a few years before I built my first Windows machine but I was working on them all the time at work by then, so it was an obvious move. I was late to cameras. I didn't get my first until about 2002. I got the internet earlier. I was very late to mobile phones and still hate the things but these days you can't get by without. While I could be called a geek, like you I'm attracted to computers because of what they can do. It just took a few years before my expectations were caught up by reality. Historic Coventry was an unexpected but much cherished haven

I think our first computer was about the same time as yours Helen. We started with a Tandy Model 1 in the late 1970's. I spent hours typing in basic programmes from a book and saving them on a tape. I actually did online shopping with the bug store in Castle Bromwich. They gave you a code book to place your order, which we sent via an acoustic coupler attached to the phone. Only trouble was no credit cards and no online payments so you had to have the cash. When the store changed hands they stopped doing it as they thought it wasn't the way to go ! But by then we were in Luxembourg so it did not matter. When I started work in 1963 at the EMEB I was involved with computers and what was the computer room, they needed a room, the programme boards were about 1 metre square. I had the IBM punch cards that were produced when they printed the bills and had to "pull" them when the invoices were paid etc. Loved that job!

Here's my small contribution towards computers. I am not at all technical as my daughter continually informs me. Had our first - an Apple Mac. As my husband insisted we had to have one, so we did. In short, he hardly went near it. Like he never wrote home to his mum. That was my job wasn't it. So I have since found out 'it' tells me what to do and here's me thinking it should be the other way around. Nothing has changed. Letters and bills are my forte and then I found I could print off family photos. I won't get started on that one ! BUT, I have since found out I really must invest in a new printer. My furry Leo is not content with sitting still anymore and has had enough. Ooooo nearly forgot. There is a second computer on the desk - an Acer, only two years old but damn me if that one is telling me what to do as well. I will hang around for a while and wait to see if one will actually talk to me in English and no fancy computer jargon. The Wifi did catch up with me in the end but I had to get connected and over a period of time United Nations came on the line, one by one, to explain what went where on the ...... modem, ah, that's the word I was looking for. Being on a landline was only half the battle as I hate mobiles so I guess you would have noticed that by now. It's a good job they don't hand out medals for cursing.

Hi all, The first computer in our home was a Acorn Electron. A year or so later, our Michael saved up & bought himself a Commadore 128. I remember enjoying the chess games on that.

I think the first games we had were frogger and tennis. Just green lines with dots pinging about !

We had a machine that played tennis style games before the computer.

My first contact with computer systems was in 1970 when I visited Derby College, now University. It was a mainframe computer, IBM if I recall, and the input was punch cards. It was housed in two large rooms and had less than the capability of a digital watch now. I visited another mainframe computer when I was with CEGB in about 1975, it was based in Bankside House and controlled a lot of the UK Grid, I never found out how much. I moved to Saudi Arabia in 1981 and was involved in SCECO the organization that controlled all the electricity generation and distribution in the Eastern Province. The mainframe computer in SCECO was time shared with all the workstations in the HQ building and when there was a lot of usage the individual workstation slowed down to a pace that you could have a cuppa before it responded, very frustrating! Somebody bought a Cray computer without official permission and the crates are probably still out there in the desert! For those that don't know, everything that is left in the desert can't be moved without permission of the owner, which is demonstrated by the bus we came across. All the land around it has been removed leaving the bus in the position it was left in. I didn't achieve my own computer until 1990, it's amazes me how rapidly things have developed over the recent years.

Out of the mouths of babes Robthu. I find just when I have mastered all I need (ha ha), whatever it was has further developed. My latest acquisition is a small speaker I can place anywhere in the house, and listen to all those great musical gems from way back. Wifi'd of course.

I'm feeling very limp in today's heat. I decided that a reread of J B Shelton's articles were in order but thought I'd let the computer do the work. So I highlighted all the text, right clicked and selected 'read aloud selection'. Now if I could persuade it to make my dinner, cut back the bushes and bring the bin in, I'm sorted.