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If Santa brings a computer, set it up with care

Friday | December 21, 2001 | 9:23 pm  

Edi­tors note: This is one of sev­eral columns that I wrote for the Colum­bia Mis­sourian. They were orig­i­nally called Your Dig­i­tal World

With the gift-​giving hol­i­day season is upon us, you may be won­der­ing what to do if you get a new computer?

Whether it’s Mac or PC there are some simple things you can do to make sure your new com­put­ing expe­ri­ence goes as smooth as possible.

Unpack­ing — Like real estate, it’s all about loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion. First clear off and clean a space near where you’d like to set up your new com­puter. Also clean the place where your new com­puter will be placed.

When unpack­ing your new dig­i­tal wonder be sure, absolutely sure, to keep all, I mean all, pack­ag­ing. Build­ing com­put­ers isn’t rocket sci­ence, (it’s com­puter sci­ence, actu­ally), but every so often you’ll learn before your war­ranty expires that your com­puter is a lemon. It may be on the first abortive attempt to boot up, or soon there­after, but you’ll be glad you kept all your orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing — yes, even the little plas­tic bags mice come wrapped in — when you need to send the com­puter back to the manufacturer.

Once you’ve got the mon­i­tor and com­puter out of the boxes and set up where they’ll be stay­ing, it’s time to move on.

Con­nec­tions — Cords. If you’re as anal-​retentive as I, you’ll soon be frus­trated by the mul­ti­tude of cords you have to deal with.

Before start­ing, con­sider making labels out of mask­ing tape by writ­ing the name of the device on the tape and attach­ing the label to the appro­pri­ate cord.

Be sure to put the label on both ends of the cord. It’ll help if you ever need to move your PC or need to free an outlet and would rather unplug the printer’s power source than the com­puter. (I learned this lesson from experience.)

In gen­eral, I find it’s best to get on the ground under­neath the desk or table where you’re plac­ing the PC and plug power cords for your mon­i­tor, com­puter and printer into the wall. Then have a friend stand over the table to grab the ends that go into the respec­tive devices as you thread them up behind the desk.

Once the power con­nec­tions are made, I like to start plug­ging in the periph­er­als, such as key­boards, mice, print­ers, modems, etc. from the bottom of the PC and up.

Then for the coup-​de-​gras get some pipe cleaner and bundle up cords going to sim­i­lar places, it’ll make for less mess. (Don’t buy those over­priced cord cosies. Pipe clean­ers work better than tape here because the clean­ers can be untwisted and re-​used.

Endgame – When every­thing is con­nected and the power up, it’s time to turn on the com­puter. Almost every com­puter comes with the soft­ware pre­loaded so you should be able to start work­ing, or surf­ing, right away. But you’re not fin­ished yet.

Fill out all the war­ranty cards that came with your new toy and reg­is­ter all the soft­ware that came with the com­puter, espe­cially if you can do it online. You’ll often get dis­counts on upgrades down the road. Keep the pack­ag­ing around for awhile, at least until the war­ranty is void.

If after turn­ing it on, you encounter dif­fi­culty, give the man­u­fac­turer a call — and don’t take no for an answer. I’d rec­om­mend not set­ting up your com­puter on a week­end or a hol­i­day just in case you do need some ini­tial tech support.

And if they give you the runaround, just e-mail yourdigiworld@yahoo.com.

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