Class Summary 11-19-2015

Started off with a question about the difference between the Internet and WiFi. The Internet is what we get with our contract with Comcast (cable) or Centurylink (twisted pair phone service). They provide us with access to the Internet. To use it we have to have a modem that converts the signal from them to something our PC can recognize.

This is all we needed before laptops and wireless printers and smart TV’s. Now we need to be able to create a wireless network all those devices can use to talk to each other.



That network is established using a wireless router. That router establishes a WiFi network and all the devices can interconnect. This has nothing to do with the Internet. We can wirelessly connect a couple of computers to a single printer using our WiFi network.


The wireless router is used to create the network. Need to access the Internet? Then we plug the router into the modem and anyone on the WiFi network can have access. You can even connect a non-WiFi computer such as your old desktop to one of the Ethernet ports on the back of the router.

The new URL for the training blog is dickevanstraining.blogspot.com. You can access it direclty with that address or go to my site at rwevans.com and click th link on the left side of the home page.
If you are looking for a summary containing a specific topic use the “site:” function in your browser. Here is how it works. In the address bar type your request and then follow it with the word site, a colon, and then the site your would like the search limited to. Let’s say you want to find the class summaries that refer to ninite, enter the following in the search bar:

ninite site:dickevanstraining.blogspot.com and press the enter key.



Notice the results only found 34 results instead of the usual thousands of results and all the results are class summary pages.

I demonstrated a Roku by plugging it into one of the HDMI ports on the class TV. We talked about the deals available at Comcast and Centurylink and the fact that you could cut the cable and use an antenna on your TV to pick up a couple of dozen or more TV channels off the air. The Roku box gives access to many additional channels such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Pandora, and many current and old movies and TV channels like PBS and more.



Someone noticed that I had a Microsoft PDF printer on my list of printers. Yes I do and so does everyone with Windows 10. Prior to 10 most of us downloaded a third party PDF printers--there is one on Ninite.

This gives us the capability of “printing” to a file in the Adobe PDF format. We can then send that file to others and they can print it without having to own the program we used to create the document--like Word. We can also use it to avoid using paper by saving our “printouts” on our hard disk drives or USB flash drives instead. Paper is “old school”.

Then the question came up about changing or typing in a PDF. Cannot do that directly, but you can read and then edit a PDF in one of the newer versions of Word (2013 and 2016) and in the online free version at Microsoft Live.

I know there was a lot of other questions and answers, but this is all I can recall at this time. See you the week after Thanksgiving as the office will not be open on Thanksgiving.