So, lets recap. We have spent three columns considering the boot process of your computer. Before we move onto more sophisticated elements, lets take just this week to look at some basic Windows good-stuff that will helps from now on.

First off, keyboard shortcuts: Sometimes a particular function you require, for example (?copy & paste?), would require you, if you wanted to do it from the menu system, select ?File? on the menu bar and scroll down to ?Copy? in the menu list, then click where you wish to paste your item, and select ?File? on the menu bar, scroll down to ?Paste? and voila, the text magically appears.

Quite an involved piece of work, when you consider that selecting the text to copy, pressing ?Ctrl? and ?c?, then moving to the place you want to copy the text too, and pressing ?Ctrl? and ?v?, will do exactly the same thing.

Such an operation is called a keyboard shortcut, and will save you innumerable hours if you get to know the shortcuts that you as an earthling will require often (copy and paste is simply one of mine). But, where do you find the keyboard shortcuts? Is there a list?

Well, sort of: Look again at any of the menu?s accessible from your menu-bars. Next to them, to the right, the keyboard shortcut is most often listed. Get yourself used to them by trying a few - nearly all application programs have them.

The other type of keyboard shortcut is the ?Alt? method, that is, certain functions can be invoked by pressing the ?Alt? key (usually located next to your space bar), and another key.

By way of illustration, try this from within Internet Explorer: Press keys ?Alt+H?, followed by ?T?. What this will do is show you the ?Tip of the Day? ? an item of advice that Microsoft are providing.

You can close-out of the Tip of the Day, by clicking the ?X? in its left corner.

There are many more of these, you can discover what they are by looking closely at each Menu-bar item: You will see that one letter in each of the menu-bar items is underlined ? this represents the ?Alt? key associated with that menu-bar item, thus pressing ?Alt+E? in Internet Explorer will expand the ?Edit? Menu.

These ?alt? keyboard shortcuts and standard C?tr? keyboard shortcuts, will be invaluable to you as we continue our exploration of Windows.

Next, lets look at the file-structure of Windows. Windows uses a ?directory tree? structure, whereby files are contained within folders, which are sometimes contained within other folders, which are ? even ? sometimes contained within folders.

This nesting approach is used on all computer platforms - not just Windows - it keeps things tidy and neat and well organised.

The simplest way to see the whole directory structure, is to open ?My Computer?, select ?View? from the menu bar, and then select ?Explorer Bar? from the menu and then ?Folders? from the list.

What this will do is display the whole tree structure in the leftmost pane of your computer.

For each directory (or folder) that has further folders within it, there will be a small plus sign (+) next to it, clicking on the plus sign will expand the directory structure within it. Similarly, on an expanded tree, clicking on the minus-sign (-) will collapse the tree.

The Final thing we?re going to look at is the Minimize; Restore; Close shortcuts at the top right of every Windows Window.

The three buttons represent functions that can be carried out on the window in view.

Minimize does just that ? it kind of places it out of the way for now, elsewhere on your desk, if you like; Restore will either set the current window you are working on, to full-screen, or window-in-view, and it toggles between the two as you select it;

And finally, the Close button does just that, it closes the current window ? not minimised so it can be brought back into view later, but actually closes it out.

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Next time: The first of three articles looking at Microsoft Office Applications?

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Calling all Earthlings: By popular demand I am going to run another ?Ask an Earthling Question? column in June. Please send your questions to bobbmg.bm.