Quick Tutorials

Computers and the Internet have changed drastically in the last 20 years or so.

Up until Microsoft introduced Windows, not a lot of people had home computers, and computers used by businesses were not that commonplace except for the larger companies that had the big IBM’s and the like.

I recall when I purchased my first computer in about 1993, it had Windows For Workgroups installed on it, and it was a lot different from the modern computer and current versions of Windows. It also cost me about three times what a much more powerful machine costs today.

The Internet and email were just getting started good, and were not even very popular or very much used by most people. I recall telling one of my golfing buddies, who was a very successful business man, about my encounters with the internet, and he assured me that it was just a fad and would never amount anything worth while.

When I first got the computer, I was so uneducated on using a computer that I didn’t even know how to turn the dang thing on and off correctly. Every night, I would push the on-off switch and turn it off, and next day when I pushed the same switch to turn it back on, it would rudely inform me that it was having to run scandisk because I failed to shut Windows down properly. I thought to myself, you stupid machine, how else to turn you off and on except with the on-off switch?

Well, as time passed I began to learn a few things about how to use a computer, including how to turn it off and on, and also about how to use Windows and a lot of its features. I didn’t really use it all that much though, more just a toy than anything else.

I upgraded to Windows 95, and found it to be much improved over the
older version. A couple of years later, I purchased a new Pentium computer with
Windows 98. At the same time, I really started to get serious about using the computer, as well as email and the Internet. I found out I could do my banking online, I
could find and order products over the Internet, I could search for information over the Internet, and from that point on I was hooked.

I started to think about actually learning how to build my own web site, just to see if I could. I purchased some books approximately 4 inches thick and began to study HTML, and after several weeks of trying to figure out what looked like Greek to me, I managed to create a really bad looking web page. Boy, was I proud of myself!

I thought there must be an easier way to learn computer skills, and started purchasing those hot new “eBooks” that everyone was selling like hotcakes. Some of them were pure junk, but a few were worth the price, and made learning somewhat easier.

I kept thinking, though, that there must be a better and easier way to
learn some of those highly technical skills that I wanted to learn. I needed
someone that knew the skills already to give me some “one on one” training, and I
needed it to be visual, something I could see, and not just reading out of a book or eBook.

And then I discovered how to tutorials, where someone with knowledge of the subject actually sat down at a computer and recorded screen shots showing exactly what steps they used to accomplish a specific task, and I could sit at my computer and watch them do it. Now we’re on to something. This is a better way of learning!

I began to buy video tutorials and after several years of learning from them, I think that I have become fairly accomplished in many computer and Internet skills that would never have been possible if I had tried to do it reading dull boring 4 inch thick books.

I now can easily create web sites using HTML, or with Wordpress or Joomla. I have created several ecommerce sites, several blogs, and all because of video training versus written word training.

A person can purchase video tutorials on a wide variety of subjects. When I bought my how-to tutorials, it was a matter of paying for them, downloading them, and storing them on my hard drive. In a lot of instances I would be finished with the tutorial in a few days or weeks, and never really need it after that. In some instances though I would go back and watch the video again every few months.

A person can still buy video tutorials, download them, and store them on their hard drive, if they wish, or they can simply “rent”video tutorials, use them for a set period of time, and not actually own them. It is usually at a much lower price to “rent” video tutorials than if they purchased them. The choice is entirely up to the customer.

There are many, many video tutorials available on the Internet, covering a very
wide variety of subjects, and I recommend them highly for anyone wanting to learn new or specialized computer and Internet skills.

To see a short sample of a video tutorial, check out the video below.

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