Contrary to popular belief, computers are living things too. You heard me. Computers are alive, they are living things with souls and intelligence. So as a computer’s owner, you have to keep your computer happy and clean, just like you would a baby or an animal. My job is to teach you how  to keep your computer happy and get the most out of your computing experience.

“So Justin, what happens if you don’t keep your computer happy and clean?,” is what you’re probably saying. And knowing the general public of America at least, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably “How about I give it a bath?!”

[b][u]DO NOT GIVE YOUR COMPUTER A BATH.[/b][/u]

This is NOT the way to clean your computer! Putting a computer in water is like putting a bunny rabbit in water: You’re going to kill it. Hell, you might even kill yourself too.

The following is a guide to help you keep your cute little baby computer clean, healthy, and happy, so that the little bugger doesn’t give you any problems. I’ll tell you what to do, what not to do, what to definitely not do, what programs to use, programs not to use, and so forth. So don’t even think about clicking that little X in the top right corner of your screen: your computer might hate you forever for it.

Let’s start with your Desktop. Go look at it. It’s pretty cluttered isn’t it? Shortcuts to Programs? Links to webpages? Bad anime? Pictures with stale humor? All check huh?

Well guess what, your computer doesn’t like all that. Its like putting really bad clothes on a kid. Sure, they probably won’t object, but if they’ve got common sense they’ll know they look like they just crawled out of the shitter.

“So where do I put all of my shortcuts and links and files if not on the desktop!?”

Generally, you want to put all your crap where it belongs. Shortcuts go in the Start Menu. You can start your programs from there easily. Links go in your bookmarks in your browser, which we’ll get into later. All your files can be organized neatly anywhere you want on your hard drive.

All in all, you should have at most 4 icons on your desktop: My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, and the Recycle Bin. Those aren’t even necessary if you’re running Windows XP, as you can access all of those from the Start Menu, with the exception of the Recycle Bin.

After completing this and staring at your nice wallpaper for a while, you should move on to your internet stuff, which we’ll cover in the next part in this series.