Share Two Computers

Many homes have more than one computer. Rather than leaving them as standalone PCs, it can make sense to set up a network. A network makes it easy not only to share files between computers but to share an internet connection and hardware, such as a printer. Although the idea of setting up a network can be daunting, it is actually an easy process.

We are going to take a look at how a combined broadband modem and router can be used to connect two or more computers to the internet. We will look at wired and wireless connections on Windows XP and Vista, and take crucial security measures into consideration.

follow step by step here....

One of the first steps to take before starting the process of setting up a network is to check that any desktop computers that you want to connect have a network interface card, or NIC. Computers bought in the past few years are likely to have a network connection built in, but it’s also possible to buy network cards, such as the one pictured, separately if required. In the case of notebook PCs, it is usual for a network adapter to be built in by default. Wireless USB adapters are also available for times when cabling cannot be used or isn’t wanted for as little as £10.

If you have subscribed to an ADSL broadband service – and most

With the modem/router duly connected, all that is left to do is connect each of the computers to the network ports on the back of the device using standard networking cable, sometimes referred to as CAT5 or Ethernet cable. If you are using a separate modem and router, the modem will need to be connected to the uplink port of the router before connecting computers to the router’s network ports. Connect the power and check the activity lights on the front of the router to see if the connection indicator is lit.

There are now a couple of steps to take within Windows that will make it easier to establish and manage a network connection. The first is to display an icon in the Notification Area that makes it easy to keep an eye on network activities. To enable this icon in Windows XP, launch the Control panel from the Start menu and open the Network Connection section. Right-click on the icon representing your network connection and select Properties. On the General tab tick the box labelled ‘Show icon in Notification Area when connected’ and click on OK.

In Windows Vista the network activity icon should be enabled by default, but if this is not the case right-click on the Taskbar and select Properties. Move to the Notification Area tab and make sure that the Network option is ticked before clicking on OK. Vista displays different icons in the Notification Area depending on the type of connection that has been established. Two flashing monitors indicates that there is a network connection, while the addition of a globe icon indicates that an internet connection is also present.

To ensure that the computers on the network can communicate, it is vital to ensure they are part of the same workgroup. In Windows XP, click on the Start button and right-click on the entry for My Computer before selecting Properties from the menu that appears. Move to the Computer Name tab and click on the Change button. Enter a name for the computer and then one for the Workgroup before pressing Enter. Restart Windows if prompted to do so.

To configure the computer and Workgroup name in Windows Vista, click on the Start orb, right-click on the Computer entry and select Properties from the menu that appears. In the ‘Computer name, domain and workgroup settings’ section of the System window that appears, click on the Change settings link and then on Continue in the User Account Control dialogue. Click on the Change button, enter a name for the computer and select the Workgroup option. Enter the same workgroup name as for the other computers and click on OK.

So far we have concentrated on configuring computers to connect to a home network using network cabling, but computers can also be connected wirelessly. It is first necessary to enable and configure the wireless settings of the router or modem that is being used. On one of the computers wired into the network, open a web browser window and type the IP address of the router – usually 192.168.2.1 but check with the manufacturer for details – into the Address or Location bar. The required username and password should have been provided in the instruction booklet.

Section names will vary from one piece of equipment to another, but find the wireless section of the setup utility. Start by giving the wireless network a name (or SSID) and select a radio channel on which to broadcast. This setting may have to be adjusted later if you notice interference from a nearby network. To safeguard data, wireless security must be enabled, so select the type of encryption that should be used and then type a password before saving the new settings. WPA security is the safest option, and should be offered by all modern routers.

When it comes to connecting a computer to a network wirelessly, many notebook PCs include a built-in wireless card which makes things much easier. If wireless connectivity is not built into a laptop, it can be added by connecting a wireless USB adapter or a wireless PC Card device. If you want to connect a desktop PC wirelessly, you have a choice between installing a wireless USB adapter or a standard PCI network card with a built-in antenna. In both cases, USB adapters such as the one pictured are the easiest to get up and running.

The exact process of installing a wireless adapter will vary from one piece of equipment to another, but it should boil down to the same essential steps. Start by inserting the CD that came with the adapter and install any necessary drivers. Once this is complete, connect the adapter and wait for it to be detected by Windows. When the installation process has finished a message should soon appear indicating that wireless networks have been detected.

Click the message that is displayed or right-click on the wireless network icon in the notification area and select View Available Wireless Networks from the menu that appears. Windows will then display a list of all the wireless networks that have been detected in range. Select the entry that relates to your own network and click on the Connect button. As encryption has been enabled,you must provide the password that you chose earlier before a connection can be established.

To display the equivalent wireless network-detection screen in Windows Vista, click the Start button followed by the Control Panel entry and then open the Network And Sharing Center – this can also be accessed by clicking the Notification Area icon. In the Tasks list to the left of the window that appears, click on the ‘Connect to a network’ link. As with Windows XP, a list of available networks will be displayed and a connection can be established by entering the correct password. There are also tools on hand to diagnose connection problems.

In some cases a utility is provided with a wireless adapter and this must be used to detect and connect to networks rather than using Windows’ built-in options. However, it may be possible to choose which you would prefer to use. Most utilities work in similar ways and after selecting a network, all that needs to be done is to provide the relevant password. In this Workshop we have established wired and wireless connections that can be used to connect several computers to the internet.

Wallpapers that Change Automatically

The Windows XP wallpaper, a blue sky over green fields, is familiar to most computer users but that doesn’t mean we have to look at it all the time. It’s easy enough to change wallpapers and use photos stored on the hard disk or grabbed from websites, but it requires effort to track down good ones after an initial burst of enthusiasm for something new.

This Workshop explains how to change that by installing a simple free program, John's Background Switcher, that will deliver attractive new Desktop backgrounds automatically as individual images, scrapbooks or full-screen collages.

As we will show, these pictures can be stored on your computer or retrieved from free internet photo libraries and this opens up endless possibilities for giving your desktop that personal touch.

First, follow step below to download John's Background Switcher.

Go to www.johnsadventures.com by entering this address in your browser or clicking the link in the intro. Click the My Software link at the top and when the page loads, choose John’s Background Switcher. Scroll down the screen to the ‘Download the installer’ link and click that once. Ignore any security warnings and click Save. Choose a location for the download, such as the Desktop, and then click the Save button again to copy the file to your PC.

Find the Switcher Setup icon and double-click it. Ignore the Open File Security Warning dialogue and click Run. Follow the instructions to set up the software, accept the licence agreement and then when the last dialogue box appears, leave the two options there ticked and click the Finish button. After a second the ‘What’s New’ text file will open along with the Options dialogue where Background Switcher stores all its important settings. To get started straight away, click Yes to have the program use its default sources for photographs.

By default, Background Switcher will take photos from several sources on the free Flickr photo-sharing service and then display them full-screen, one after the other, changing every hour. For fun, we’re going to set pictures to change every minute so we get a better sense of what’s on offer. Open the dropdown menu and select 1 minute. We’ll explore other online sources of photos in the panel you'll see on the left and play with some of the settings a bit later on.

Click the OK button to confirm the change and have a read through the What’s New file; then close it by clicking the ‘X’ in the top right-hand corner. Move the mouse pointer down to the Windows Notification Area at the bottom right of the Taskbar, find the new Background Switcher icon there and right-click on it once to open the menu. From here it’s easy to move back and forth between wallpapers, save a particular image to disk, mark it to be ignored in future by selecting Never Show Again, and so on.

We’re going to use some of our own photos with Background Switcher. With the menu still open, move the mouse pointer to Settings and left-click. When the dialogue box opens, make sure Flickr is selected as the photo source in the left-hand panel and click Add. We’ve got a free Flickr account (set one up by visiting www.flickr.com) so we’re going to pull photographs down onto our test PC’s Windows Desktop from that. At the Photo Selection dialogue box we choose ‘A Specific Person’ from the dropdown menu, then type in our user name and click OK.

Click OK to confirm any changes. From now on, our own photos stored on Flickr will be mixed in with those taken from Background Switcher’s default selection. Look carefully at the top-right corner of this screen, it says ‘Sunset over lake’ by Adurman (that’s our account name). Let’s try something else. Right-click the Background Switcher icon again and choose Settings. This time, click the Folders icon on the left. This lets the program display pictures stored in any folder on the PC. The default is My Pictures, which is fine, so we click OK.

Background Switcher has some other interesting ways to showcase pictures. Open the Settings dialogue again and either stick with the same photo source, or switch to another. Then, find the Photo Options heading in the dialogue box. Open the dropdown menu and choose one of the other available layouts. Here we’re going to pick ‘thumbnail mosaic’. Click OK to confirm and after a moment, the Desktop fills with tiny pictures. (We’ve re-opened the Settings dialogue here to show the chosen option and the effect when it’s applied.)

Experiment with different layout styles by picking from the Photo Options list (the one in the background to this screen is ‘snapshot scrapbook’) and then go back to the Settings dialogue box and choose More Settings from the left-hand panel. From here it’s possible to alter the way Background Switcher behaves in all sorts of useful ways -­ the orientation of the photos, for example -­ as well as adding useful extras. Here we’re going to include a static three-month calendar on the Desktop.

Stay in the More Settings dialogue for a moment and click the next option down in the left-hand panel -­ Montages. Here Background Switcher provides the settings to change the individual size of the thumbnails themselves as well as those used in the scrapbook layout. It’s also possible to select a random background picture and add an effect such as monochrome or sepia. Here we’ve selected a random background and turned the effect off. Click OK to confirm the changes.

And here’s the result of our changes. Notice that the mosaic has been replaced by an attractive scrapbook-style arrangement with pictures scattered across the screen. This also features a calendar for the current month (larger and to the left) as well as two months ahead as specified in Step 8 (this is for reference only, it’s not a ‘live’ calendar). This kind of flexibility makes Background Switcher a genuinely powerful way to spice up any Windows Desktop.

Background Switcher is also smart enough to gather pictures from other sources, notably the Yahoo search engine and any site that has an RSS feed designed to push information over the internet to a PC. Let’s start with Yahoo. From the Settings dialogue, click the Yahoo button in the left-hand panel. After that, click the Add button and then type in a search query, for example ‘cat’, and then click OK. Again, we’ve re-opened the dialogue box to show the setting and the result.

Don’t just stick with a single search item. Instead, add as many to this list as you like. Here, for example, we’ve continued the pet theme by adding dog, horse and cow in exactly the same way as described in the previous step. Using the Yahoo search engine in this way limits the layout options offered by the program, restricting them to variations on a single image displayed at full screen as shown here.

Background Switcher also supports RSS feeds, which are often a good source of unusual or more up-to-date photographs. With the Settings dialogue open, click the RSS Feeds button in left-hand panel and then click Add. The Add/Edit Feed dialogue has some suggestions so click on one to open a web browser and go to the site. We’ve chosen Photobucket, home to a wide selection of great-looking photos on all sorts of subjects. When the site loads, we find a photo category we like (funny signs) scroll to the bottom and click the RSS icon.

When the RSS web page loads, right-click on the address in the Address or Location line at the top (where the ‘http://’ is) and choose Copy. Go back to Background Switcher and right-click in the empty URL box and choose Paste. Click the Test button to confirm the address is correct and that the feed works and then click OK and then OK again. Click OK twice more to close all the dialogue boxes. Again we have re-opened the Settings dialogue to show both the RSS feed and the photos it produces.

Hide Desktop Icons

One of the things I love about Stardock's icon organizing Fences program is the way it can quickly hide all your desktop icons. Just double click any empty area and poof : They're gone. A second double click brings them back again.

Bet you didn't know you can accomplish the same thing in Windows Vista and 7 (I'm not sure about XP), no Fences required.

Here's how :

1. Right click any empty area of the desktop, then mouse over View.
2. Click Show Desktop Icons to remove the checkbox.

Presto! No more icons! Now you can enjoy that fancy Windows wallpaper without all the clutter. Don't worry, the icons aren't gone for good : To bring them back, just repeat the above steps.

Personally, I think hiding all your icons permanently is a great way to go. Just train yourself to run programs via the Start Menu, or, better yet, with a keyboard based launcher like Launchy.