I'm printing all of these suggestions, info etc. off right now. My ISP was having problems yesterday and I just now was able to get some of it to me. Thanks so much to all of you for this help. I'm sure I'll be asking questions as soon as we know what machines might be the purchase for me.

Love to all,
Billye

Rafi:

You said:

"shiney sue: a router is a device that sits in a gateway between at least networks. A gateway is just that point where any two networks meet. It is the job of the router to decide which way to send an information packet, based on the current state of the network.

Typically, in a home router setup, the router sits between your ISP (in other words, the internet) and a home network. This network may be just one computer or a number of them connected in a network. Routers can be wired or wireless. In order to use the internet on a notebook computer without being wired to a network, then you would use a wireless router. The wireless router is connected through an ethernet cable to your modem, and is connected to your notebook by use of a wireless adapter housed in the notebook."

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Rafi, do me a favor and translate these two paragraphs as if you were talking to a person who just learned how to use a computer.
For example, you said

"a router is a device that sits in a gateway between at least networks. A gateway is just that point where any two networks meet. It is the job of the router to decide which way to send an information packet, based on the current state of the network"

Now break down these two sentences and write them differently. I still don't understand "gateway is just that point where any two networks meet".
Put it as if you were talking to a completely stupid person (me). And I'm not stupid. But sometimes I just don't understand the computer speak. Like Information Packet, based on current state of network". Now, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!!! I don't...

Can you just simple it up for me. I won't be insulted. Believe me, I won't be insulted. Kind of like you are Tarzan and I'm Cheeta, and you are trying to teach me something.

Define, gateway, information packet, current state of the network.

I once asked my son 'what's a router"?. He started talking his computer speak and then he just gave up and said "mom, forget it, you won't understand". If he had said it in DUMB STUPID TERMINOLOGY, then I would have understood it.

Like for example, my 80 year old aunt said "I know what the internet is. It's a place where you go and speak to people in chatrooms and you talk about pornography". I said "are you out of your mind". That's not the internet!! But it's what she thought the internet was for. Then she asked me "Explain exactly what you do when you go on the computer and you go on the internet. And make it simple.

Now I could have said, "well, I sign on to AOL (this was 3 years ago by the way), I said "I sign onto AOL, I type in the url at the top of the page and I am instantly at the website of my choice" She would have looked at me like I was a martian. Instead I said "Well, I'm sitting in front of my computer, I press a button, I am looking at a screen, I type something in and I am at a website called American On Line. Then I type something in a certain place and immediately, I am looking at the place I want to be. And I can read whatever I am interested in. BY THE WAY, THIS CONVERSATION ACTUALLY HAPPENED. I was telling my aunt about a browser and she goes. What's a browser? And I said "Oh, imagine you are on a journey and you take a bus to your destination!!! The browser is what takes you the the website you want to go to" She said "OH, now I get it!!!"

It's all in the explanation. I wish I could understand the computer speak the same way as my son. That's never gonna happen.

Once I was having trouble getting to a website. My son (who was in California, sitting on his bed and HE WAS NOWHERE NEAR HIS COMPUTER), said to me: "mom, have you done any windows updates yet". and of course I said "No it does it automatically". and he said "No, let's get you updated".

Now of course I didn't know what he was talking about. Do you know that from his bed, he took me through like 30 steps (from the start menu, to the control panel, blah blah blah, he was able to view what I was watching on my screen, but he could do it in his mind (probably because he has aspergers), and he walked me through so many steps that I finally blurted out. "How on earth can you know what I'm doing, and you're not even in front of your computer"? He laughed and said "I can see it in my head". It's easy, I do it all the time. He lives on his computer.

Jeez. I would love to know computers like he does. He knows all about routers and wireless this, and external and internal modems.

Me?? I'm lucky I know how to use a dsl line.

lol
Melody
P.S. So Rafi,when you get a moment and you don't think I'm a dumbell, translate what you initally wrote, okay?? thanks,

We have DSL...hooked into our main desktop computer (it does not have
wifi)...It is A T & T .

We bought a router and it is hooked into modem for the DSL...and sends a
signal to the upstairs laptop with wifi. It is a little box with an antenna.

So both can go over the AT & T connection. The router comes with a software package to install on the laptop so it will recognize the signal. Now for us, this router interfered with IE 7.0. I don't know if all routers are the same, but for those with IE 7.0 you may have to check after loading it for error messages.
Our router installed a .dll file into its directory, and then when we upgraded IE that also installed the same file into Windows. So we had to rename the one in the router file. (my son figured this out for us). Our system crashed after we upgraded IE..it was one of those automatic upgrades.

I bet you no one knows what WI FI stands for?????

Wireless Fidelity.


Now I have absolutely no idea what this means..


lol, Melody

Melody and others,
I've posted in the "Computers and Technology" forum here a thead asking where the best place for learning basic computer "stuff" is. See: http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...ad.php?t=20718

I'd like to see an entire thread devoted to learning computer skills. Including the special languages used. I hate to use this forum asking questions about basic stuff that others will know. And believe me when I say I have questions. My husband spouts the stuff a lot but I think I have a gap in what goes into my brain from hearing it, rather than what I see and do. I seem to be able to learn readily by doing it myself, but not by listening and trying to learn. And then maybe it comes from 27 years of marriage.

Billye

And I'll never forget what my son said when he heard I was still using AOL dial up,(this conversation took place WAY before I got the Verizon DSL.

He said to me "You use AOL??, that's for dummies" I said 'what do you use?" and he starts spouting, "Well, I have a cable modem, I also purchased a specific router, and I use Mozilla, or firefox: or whatever the hell he was talking about. Then he started in on Secure Browsers, and Firewalls AND THAT DID IT FOR ME.

Guess what?? I learned about DSL, I learned aout Firewalls, and Security.

I LEARNED!!! I just have to learn it in baby steps.

Take for example the first time I got a computer in the workplace. It was an IBM desktop with a dot matrix printer and we used Multi-mate advantage software. The hard drive was a whopping 20 mgs. Can you believe this?

Now I didn't know a hardware from a software in those days. They sent me to computer school and I learned multimate. I believe it was one of the first original word processing softwares. I learned to mail merge, wrap around text, etc. etc.

So I was in the elevator speaking to two other secretaries and they were talking about using a keyboard and I piped in. What do you use the F10 key for? and they both answered "DEPENDS ON THE SOFTWARE YOU ARE USING?"

You never saw such a confused Melody getting off that elevator. Of course I had only learned about one word processing software (MultiMate) and the operating system was DOS.

So I'm going home saying to myself "There's more than one use for the F10 key"???? I'll never forget that if I live to be 100.

And look at me now!!! Almost 60 and learning about Wi-Fi.

Now how cool is that????

melody

I would like to know how to get those little pictures you have under your names, but I hate for anyone to know I don't know how.

I don't know how either. Mrs. D did mine. It's a picture of one of the pieces of jewelry I've done.

Billye

Billye, If you get stuck on ANYTHING i would urge to go to this PC forum, its all completely free, http://pressf1.pcworld.co.nz/forumdisplay.php?f=4
All you have to do is join, its a New Zealand computer forum with some very clever members that are very helpfull.

Brian

PM me your email, and I will contact you and you can send me a picture
you would like on here. I can do that for you easily, and it is fun for me.

You have to put it up however...I'll tell you how. Since you do art, you
can send me a picture of something that represents you, like Billye's jewelry.
I also did Yorkiemom's avatar, and some others.