I want to learn Windows - what is Windows?

Frequently people say they want to learn Windows and I wonder what they mean.  I see that someone reached my blog searching for what Excel means. Unfortunately they would not have found the answer here. So I will try devoting a few posts is to explain some basics.

First, I’ll use a small comparison that I gave to a niece of mine.  Let’s take electricity. As a user, you don’t learn electricity; you learn how to use gadgets or machines that run on electricity, even though the uses that you put to electricity are innumerable. Thus you use electricity to cool (fans, ACs) or to heat (geysers, room heaters), to light up the room (bulbs, tube lights) to increase shelf life (refrigeration) or to cook (electric stoves, microwaves) – the list is endless but I have given these examples to show how very varied the uses can be.  But basically electricity is only a source of energy and the same use can be got from other sources as well – thus you can cook with coal, heat up a room with wood and get hot water from solar energy. And you find  stoves that run on electricity but also those on wood or gas.

Keeping this parallel in mind it is easy to understand that Windows is an operating system i.e. it is the source of communication within the machine that we call the computer, something which we do not need to bother about unless our computer stops working. Of course as we go along we do need to understand more and more to make our computer system more efficient and to maintain it well.

Now a program is a series of commands of what is to be done. There are many such programs that are quite simple where the options are fixed and so is what the machine has to do e.g. in a microwave or in a washing machine. But if the uses are varied, changing, complicated, having many users each with their own needs and preferences, an operating system is used.

Besides Windows there are several other Operating systems – a few are DOS, Unix, Linux, Mac System. This enables the user to make changes in how the program runs, to keep software up-to-date and, most importantly, to add on many many more programs and hence to make your computer more versatile and useful. But since such changes are usually done by someone who is more experienced, to start with one needs to know how to use the mouse and the keyboard, how to open programs and files in Windows, how to search for files etc. only. It is the programs that need real learning.