PC Tips For Beginners Thread

Subject: PC Tips For Beginners Thread Mon May 19, 2008 7:56 pm

I spent ages writing some tips for my mate a few days ago, being new to
PC's and downloading and the internet. I always thought it was a good
idea to have a tips for beginners type thread in here I just
never could be arsed to write it, so since I've already done some, I
figured I'd post them and people can add their own tips. I haven't
wrote anything on torrents so if someone fancies writing a few tips
feel free. If you do write some tips, try to avoid writing in IT
jargon. I'd like this thread to be usuable by people who don't know
their way around computer, and they're not gonna know what you're
talking about if you make it too technical. I'll try and add some more
to it when I get chance to write it.

Here's what I've got to start up with:

E-Mule:

Leave e-mule running as long as possible. The longer it's running the
more upload quese you'll be added to, the quicker you download.

Always have between 15-20 files downloading (depending on your
bandwidth - this is based on a 1Mb cable link). When you notice a file
has completed, start another one.

Don't sit and watch it download. It's like watching a clock tick when you want time to go faster, it has the opposite effect.

E-mule and Bearshare will slow your PC down the longer they are left
open, so if you want to play a game or do anything else and the
computers running slow, close down emule/bearshare AND restart the PC.
Restarting the PC clears out the memory and so speeds it right back up
again.

You may find if it's been on for a particularly long time without a
restart (like a few days) that the PC is unresponsive when you press
keys or move the mouse. It hasn't necesarrily crashed, it's just
e-mule/bearshare has used all the available memory and there isn't any
left to deal with what you're telling it to do. A restart will sort it.

E-mule is the best application to use for downloading video files in my
opinion, because there almost anything you could wish to find available
on there, and the files are usually what they say they are.
On the Transfers screen in e-mule the downloads are broken into a bunch
of different headings - File Name, Size, Completed, Speed, Progress,
Sources, Priority, Status, Remaining.

File Name: On some downloads under this heading you'll see exclamation
marks. If they are green, it means the file is what it says it is. If
they are red, chances are it's either something else. The way to check
this is click on the file with the right mous button and go to and
select Details. This will bring up a window with a bunch of tabs across
the top, the two you're interested in are File Name and Comments. Under
the File Name tab it shows all the different names that file has on
other peoples PC's. You can check this to see if they all say the same
thing. If some say for example Lost.S2E09.avi and some say
Teen.Gets.Messy.Facial.mpg, chances are it's porn and not what you
think you're downloading. Under the Comments tab, sometimes people
leave a comment to say if it's an incorrect file, so check that too.
Also in the File Name heading to check when you're downloading a file
is it's in the right language. If the file name has tags in like FR,
ITA, they relate to what language it's in.

File types - if you're downloading a DivX or an Xvid which are the best
quality DVDRip files, the last three letters of the file name (called
the extension) will be .avi. Another video file type is .mpeg or .mpg
which isn't as good quality but often used for TV shows. There are
other types like .wmv or .mov but I don't bother with them unless I
have to. If you decide to download games or DVD's they'll usually be
.iso or .img or .bin (for this one you need the .cue file that goes
with it) or .mdf (you need the .mds file to go with it). Music you want
to try and stick to .mp3's. There are other types, .wma is becoming
more and more popular because they can put security into the file so
that when you try to play it it asks you to buy a license. It's easier
to stick with mp3's.

Size: The full size of the file in Mb or Gb. The way file sizes work is
theres 1024 bytes (b) in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes (Kb) in a megabyte,
1024 megabytes (Mb) in a gigabyte and so on. A basic rule to go on when
downloading is music files will usually be less than 10 Mb (depending
on how long the song is and what sort of quality it's been ripped at),
T.V shows are usually around 350Mb (sometimes 700Mb) and full movie
DivX's will be around 700Mb or split into 2 or 3 parts of 700Mb (like
The.Alamo.CD1.DVDRip.DivX.avi 700Mb and The.Alamo.CD2.DVDRip.DivX.avi
700Mb. The reason for this is you can only fit 700Mb on a CD). Full
DVD's will always be in Gb's and usually 4.3Gb's (occasionally smaller,
especially if it's a game not a movie).

Completed: The amount of data you've already downloaded on that file.

Speed: How fast the file is downloading. On emule it will usually be
around 1kb/s - 30kb/s. Sometimes it will peak and go for 50 - 80 kb/s
but not very often.

Progress: The coloured bar represents the file you're downloading. If
any parts are red and stay red all the time, delete it. That means that
part of the file is not available, so it's never going to complete. You
want the bar to be blue, the darker blue the better. The darker blue it
is the more available the file is, so the easier it is to get. If there
are grey bits, those are bits that you've already downloaded. When it
turns green it's finished.

Sources: This will be displayed like 384/483 or something like that.
The last number is how many people emule knows has the file. The first
number is how many people emule has connected to. The higher both these
numbers the easier it is to get a file.

Priority: Emule will automatically handle the priority of files. It
will set them to low, normal or high depending on how available the
file is. If not many people have the file it will set it to high and if
loads of people have it it will set it to low. You can manually change
the priority of files by right clicking on the file and selecting what
priority you want. I use this if I'm downloading say 10 episodes of a
show but I want episode 1 to finish first, so I'll set that to high
priority and leave the other as they are. Don't set everything to high,
it defeats the object and has no effect. If everything is set to high,
they are all the same priority, and so no file is going to be
prioritised above the others. If you have say 15 files download set a
maximum of 3 of them to high priority.

Status: This will only ever say 4 things. Waiting - it's looking for
someone to download from, Downloading - self explanitory, Completing -
it's finished downloading and preparing the file for you to use,
Complete - everythings done you can use the file.

Remaining: This will have a time and a file size in brackets. The time
is how long it will take to download at it's current speed. Since
downloads stop and start, speed up and slow down, this time will always
be changing so it's not a lot of use. The file size is obviously how
many Mb's you still need to download.

Bearshare

Bearshare works in a different way to emule. I use it just for
downloading music mainly because it's quick. It is subject to legal
restrictions. Like if you do a seach and select music, it will only
search for wma's, which once you try and play them will ask you to buy
a license. This has only just come into place and is fucking shocking
if you ask me. The way around it is, if you want to download a song,
don't select music, select Any File (or whatever it says), and then in
the search box type in mp3. For example if you wanted to find Coldplay
- Trouble you'd type in to the search box: coldplay trouble mp3.

If you use it to download movie files too, it's not the same as emule.
If you are trying to download 15 files, it will try to download say 5
at a time and leave the rest until those 5 are done. The more files you
add to the queue the slower each individual file will download. Thats
why I prefer emule, you can queue a load up and just let them download,
bearshare you have limitations.

All the headings you can probably work out from what I've said about emule.

General PC hardware info

If you're going to get into PC's you need to understand basically how
it works. The 4 main components that you need to know about are the
processor, the memory, the hard drive and the motherboard.

Processor: This is the brain of the computer, as in it does all the
thinking. Data is sent to it and it processes it - thats why it's
called a processor. The faster your processor, the faster your computer
can think.

Memory: Most people confuse this with the hard drive, it does a very
different job. The memory is where temporary data is held. For example
if you click on Word to open it, Word will then load into the memory,
and when you close it it will leave the memory. The more memory you
have in your PC the more things it can do at once, the faster it'll
run. Games use a lot of memory, so the more you have in your PC the
better they will run.

Hard drive: Your hard drive is where all your data is stored
permanantly. Everything you've downloaded, the games that are
installed, it's all stored on your hard drive. It's like the filing
cabinet of the PC. Data is just sitting on it waiting for you or the
computer to do something with it (like open up a game or play a movie
file). The bigger your hard drive, the more data you can store. You can
also (just to confuse matters) get different speeds of hard drive,
which can improve performance on your PC. Think of it like a record
player, different hard drives spin at different speeds - the faster it
spins the quicker the computer can access data.

Motherboard: The motherboard you don't really have to worry about other
than to know it's what everything else in the PC plugs into. The only
reason I mentioned it is because if you wanted to buy a much bigger
processor than the one you have, you may also have to buy a new
motherboard to support that processor.
_________________
HAPPY TO BE A PROUD MEMBER OF NERDSWORLD

VISIT OUR VERY OWN BLOG AT

http://n3rdsworld.blogspot.com