Go to My Computer

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Sure, you can devote your life to the pursuit of computer mastery, slogging through manuals, pestering friends and co-workers, spending nights swearing and surfing and waiting on hold. Or you can click on one of the pills at left and start computing like a veteran.

On the following pages, you'll find a selection of tips and tricks designed to help a typical home user gain a measure of power over each of the important areas of home computing — avoiding disasters, organizing your desktop, managing your hard drive and coping with the Internet. Each area begins with advice that, we suspect, will do the most good for the most folks. Then we deliver a selection of tips designed to improve that area of computing life in a more specific way. To encourage universal harmony, we've intermixed advice for PC and Macintosh users. And to keep more advanced users honest, or at least amused, we've included a few "Power Tips," many of them likely to make a newer user extremely nervous. If a tip scares you, don't try them: Adjust your dose.

To start down the path to PC mastery, use the pillbox above.