5. Installing and Configuring Devices

Chapter at a Glance

In this chapter, you will learn to:
	Display more on your monitor.
	Configure your system for multiple monitors.
	Change the keyboard input language.
	Change the way your mouse works.
	Configure Tablet PC options.
	Install and share a local printer.
	Connect to a remote printer.
	Set up speakers and a microphone.

People discuss computers in terms of hardware and software. As you probably know, physical items such as computers and monitors are hardware, and all the programs that you use to do things with that hardware are collectively known as software.

Whether you're working in an office or at home, you will eventually want to install one or more bits of extra hardware, called peripheral devices, on your computer. Some devices, such as the keyboard, monitor, and mouse, usually come with the computer, but you will purchase others separately. The most common devices are speakers and a printer. Other popular devices include scanners, storage devices such as Zip drives, and fax machines. Depending on your interests and use of the computer, you might also have a microphone, camera, biometric identification device, joystick, or drawing tablet.

The hardware devices fall into two categories:

• External peripherals. You can install these devices by connecting them to ports without having to open up your computer. Examples are your computer's monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

  Many external peripherals that connect to your computer through a USB port fall into a category called Plug and Play, which quite literally means that you can plug them in and use them. When you connect such a device to your computer, Windows Vista communicates with it and configures the necessary settings. Other external peripherals might require a specific device driver in order to work properly. Device drivers are bits of code that enable peripheral devices to "talk" to your computer, but they are unfortunately not universal. To hook up a printer, for example, you might need a driver that is not only specific to the printer but also specific to Windows Vista. If you purchased the peripheral before the release of Windows Vista, you might need to download updated drivers for it.

  Some devices come with software you can install to take full advantage of its capabilities. For example, you might connect an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copy machine to your computer and be able to print, fax, scan to a file, and copy without installing additional software, but to be able to send scanned pages as e-mail messages or to edit them as text files, you will need to install the software provided with the machine.

• Internal peripherals. You have to install these devices inside your computer's case. The internal component might be in the form of a card that provides a new connection at the back of the computer, or it might be a new hard disk drive, DVD drive, or tape backup drive that is accessed from the front of the computer. Probably the most common internal devices people install themselves are RAM (random access memory) sticks, because increasing the RAM in a computer increases its speed and performance.

  See Also

  For information about increasing the speed of your computer, see "Improving Your Computer's Performance" in Chapter 11, "Optimizing Your Computer System."

  
  

  To install an internal device, you need to remove the cover from your computer and delve into its innards. Be sure to shut down the computer and disconnect it from its power source before attempting to install any internal component. Then follow the installation instructions provided by the manufacturer of the device.

The point of all these devices, of course, is to make your computing experience more productive, more enjoyable, and hopefully, simpler (although it might not seem that way when you need to use a half dozen hardware devices in order to write a letter).

In this chapter, you will work with a computer's most common external peripheralsthe monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, speakers, and microphone. You will adjust your screen resolution to provide the largest possible working area, and if your computer supports dual monitors, configure the primary and secondary displays as you want them. You will change keyboard and mouse settings and see how to configure Tablet PC options. You will install a printer for your own use and make it available for other people to connect to, and then you will learn how to locate and connect to printers on your network. You will also set up speakers and a microphone.

Need More Ports? Most computers come equipped with a standard set of ports with which you connect a keyboard, mouse, monitor, or printer. If your computer has a sound card and a network card, you also have audio and network ports. All modern desktop and laptop computers have Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports through which many peripheral devices connect. (A USB connection provides both power and data transfer capabilities to a peripheral device.) Many computers also have IEEE 1394 ports for the high-speed transfer of audio and video data. If you want to install several peripheral devices on the same computer, you might find that you don't have enough ports to connect them all. All is not lost! Here are three options for expanding your connection capacity: Install extra ports. You can purchase a card with more ports in almost any computer store. After turning off your desktop computer and removing its cover, you insert the card into one of the available expansion slots. When you turn the power back on, Windows Vista detects and installs the new ports without further ado. Daisy-chain multiple devices. Many devices that connect to the computer via its parallel port can be "daisy-chained" together to form a linked network of devices. For example, you might connect a Zip drive to your computer's parallel port and then connect a printer to the parallel port on the Zip drive. Data you send to the printer will pass through the Zip drive. Use a hub or switch box. You can connect a single multi-port hub to your computer and then connect multiple devices to the hub, enabling all the devices to share that single connection. Hubs are available for network, parallel, and USB devices. If you want to physically connect multiple peripheral devices but you don't need to use more than one at a time, you can use a switch box, which looks similar to a hub but allows only one active connection at a time.