By VED from VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS, in collaboration with Claude
VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS
Aaradhana, Deverkovil 673508 India
www.victoriainstitutions.com
admn@victoriainstitutions.com
This page grew out of an older, much longer book of mine, VEILED routes to resources, in computers, and on the Internet, unVEILED!, first published in April 2014. It runs over 300 pages and is still available to read in full at that link. A fair amount of it has aged: whole chapters on CDs, DVDs, and Torrents, for instance, mean far less today than they did then, and a number of the specific tools and sites it names have since changed or disappeared. That said, some of it holds up well even now — the general reasoning on electrical safety, buying a computer, or online fraud, for instance, was not really tied to any particular year. Read it as a period piece with occasional continuing use, rather than as a current reference; this shorter page is the updated version for that purpose.
I have used computers and the Internet for many years now, entirely without any formal training in computer science. Everything I know, I picked up by using the machine, breaking things now and then, and finding my way out again. Some years ago I put much of that experience into a book called VEILED routes to resources, in computers, and on the Internet, unVEILED! That book grew rather large and detailed over time.
This page is a shorter, plainer companion to it — meant for someone who has never touched a computer, or who has used one but never quite understood what is happening underneath. Every section here is kept brief on purpose. Read one at a time. Try it on your own machine before moving to the next. Where I am simply repeating something I read elsewhere, I have said so; where it is my own experience, I have said that too.
Part 1 — Learning the Computer
Part 2 — Operating Systems
Part 3 — Common Software
Part 4 — Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Part 5 — The Internet and Browsers
Part 6 — Email
Part 7 — Google Apps at a Glance
Part 8 — Life Online
Part 9 — Money, Safety and Truth Online
Part 10 — Inside the Computer
Part 11 — The Command Line
Part 12 — Using the Computer with Code
Part 13 — Cloud Computing
Part 14 — Screen Sharing and Remote Access
Part 15 — Artificial Intelligence
Part 16 — Building a Website
A computer is a machine that follows instructions. It takes in information, works on it, and gives back a result. A desktop, a laptop, a notebook, a netbook, and even a smartphone are all, in this sense, computers.
When buying, look mainly at three figures: storage capacity (how much it can hold), RAM (roughly, how smoothly it handles several things at once), and screen size. Most new computers today use an SSD rather than an older hard disk, which makes a real difference to everyday speed. A computer can be bought from a shop, or just as well from an online store. I have never personally used a Macintosh computer myself, so I cannot speak to it from experience, but it is said to serve professional, high-end work very well; do note that some programs made for Windows will not run on it without a Mac version.
A few practical things I have learned the hard way:
None of this is a substitute for a qualified electrician or technician — treat it only as a first, practical check.
The monitor is the screen. Everything you do appears here — documents, pictures, videos, and the buttons you click.
Beyond ordinary typing, a handful of keys are worth knowing well. Most of the function keys along the top are rarely needed day to day, but a few are genuinely useful:
On a desktop keyboard, the block of number keys on the right works as numbers when Num Lock is on, and as arrow/navigation keys when it is off. Laptops usually hide this block inside the ordinary keys, switched on with an Fn combination that varies by make — worth finding out for your own machine once, and remembering.
Press the power button to switch on. To switch off, always use "Shut Down" from the menu — never simply cut the power, as this can damage unsaved work or, over time, the disk itself.
The main screen you see once the computer has started. It holds small pictures called icons, and a background image.
A small picture standing for a file, folder, or program. Double-click it (or tap once, on a touch screen) to open it.
Each open program sits inside its own "window" — a box you can move, resize, minimise (hide), or close using the buttons in its corner.
Windows: a bar at the bottom, showing open programs and a Start button.
Mac: a bar at the top, showing the Apple menu and the current program's name.
A file is a single item — a document, picture, or song. A folder holds files together, the way a folder holds papers in a real cupboard.
Connect or select your printer, then choose "Print" (Ctrl+P) from inside the program you are using. A window lets you set the number of copies and pages first.
The operating system (OS) is the main program that runs everything else. It manages the screen, files, and all other programs. Without it, a computer cannot do anything.
The most common operating system on desktops and laptops. It uses a Start button, a taskbar, and movable windows. Windows 11 is the current version. Windows 10 reached the end of its official support on 14 October 2025 — it still runs, but no longer receives regular security updates unless the owner separately pays for Extended Security Updates. Anyone still on Windows 10 should be aware of this and consider upgrading, if their machine supports it.
The operating system on Apple computers (Mac, MacBook). It uses a menu bar at the top of the screen and a "Dock" at the bottom for open programs.
For typing letters, essays, and reports. Examples: Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice Writer.
For numbers, tables, and calculations, organised into rows and columns called "cells." Examples: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets.
For making slide shows for talks and lessons. Examples: Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides.
PDF is a format that keeps its layout wherever it is opened, which is why it is used so widely for documents meant to be read rather than edited. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the best-known program for opening them, and free; most web browsers can also open a PDF directly. A yellow or coloured bar appearing at the top of a PDF is usually a warning — read it before trusting the file. Adobe's tools also let you convert a PDF into an editable Word or Excel file, add an electronic signature, or fill an online form, though the more advanced features often need a paid subscription. Foxit PDF Reader is a well-regarded free alternative to Adobe's own reader, generally lighter and quicker to open, with much of the same everyday functionality — editing, signing, and converting — available in its paid tier.
On Windows, Clipchamp comes built into Windows 11 and is a reasonable free starting point; the Photos app also has a simple built-in video editor. (Windows Movie Maker, which older guides still mention, was discontinued by Microsoft back in 2017 and is no longer officially available.) For something more capable and still free, DaVinci Resolve is well regarded, though it takes more learning. Professional software such as Adobe Premiere Pro also exists, though I have not used it myself, so I cannot say much about it beyond its reputation.
aTube Catcher is another long-running free Windows tool, still updated as of this writing, that combines a screen recorder with basic video conversion. It is useful for recording a webinar, a tutorial, or your own screen. Its installer is ad-supported, so go slowly through the setup screens and decline any extra offered software; and where it is used to save video from a website, be mindful that not everything online is yours to redistribute — see the note on copyright further down this page.
VSDC is another free Windows video editor worth knowing, with more genuine editing depth than Clipchamp — multiple tracks, colour correction, and effects — at the cost of a less polished, somewhat dated interface.
Used to play music and videos. Examples: Windows Media Player, VLC, QuickTime (Mac).
The program used to visit websites. Examples: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari (Mac).
Protects the computer from harmful programs, which come in a few distinct kinds: a virus attaches itself to other files and spreads when they are shared; a worm spreads on its own across a network without needing a host file; a Trojan horse disguises itself as something useful or desirable while doing damage quietly in the background. Windows now comes with Microsoft Defender built in and switched on by default, which is enough for most ordinary users; Norton and McAfee are well-known paid alternatives.
Shrinks files, or bundles several into one, usually ending in .zip. Right-click a file and choose "Compress" or "Extract."
Beyond Reader, Adobe makes the professional tools much of the design and publishing world runs on: Photoshop for photo editing, Illustrator for drawing and logos, Premiere Pro for video, and Acrobat Pro for serious PDF work. These are sold together as a subscription called Creative Cloud, rather than bought once as they used to be. It is genuinely powerful software, but a real expense and a real learning curve, so I would only point a beginner toward it once a specific need for it is clear — for most ordinary purposes, the free tools mentioned elsewhere on this page will do.
Canva is a free, browser-based design tool that has become the easiest way for an ordinary person to make a poster, a social media graphic, a certificate, or a simple presentation, using ready-made templates you can adjust rather than building anything from a blank page. It does not replace Photoshop or Illustrator for serious design work, but for everyday needs it is usually all that is required, and far less to learn.
WavePad is a straightforward audio editor for trimming, cleaning up, and adjusting sound recordings, with a free tier for personal use. Audacity is a longer-standing free and open-source alternative that does much the same job. Either is enough for editing a voice recording, a podcast, or a piece of music.
HandBrake is a free tool built specifically for converting video from one format to another, and for shrinking a large video file down to a more manageable size without losing much visible quality — useful before uploading somewhere with a file size limit, or simply to save space.
Typing quickly, without looking at the keys, is a skill worth deliberately building, and there is dedicated software for it. Typing Master is a well-known paid option; TypingClub is a solid free, browser-based alternative. A short daily practice session, kept up over a few weeks, makes a real and lasting difference to how comfortably you use a computer for anything else.
A short-range wireless technology, used for connecting a mouse, keyboard, headset, or printer without wires, and for transferring files between nearby devices. Most modern computers already have it built in.
Similar in spirit to Bluetooth, but meant for longer range and higher speed — it needs a central access point (a router) rather than connecting devices directly to one another. A typical home Wi-Fi router covers perhaps 35 metres indoors. It also uses more power than Bluetooth, which is one reason phones lose battery faster with Wi-Fi left on.
An unencrypted, open Wi-Fi network — the kind with no password, in a café or airport — can let others on the same network see some of what you send. It is worth avoiding banking or anything sensitive on such networks.
A worldwide network connecting computers so they can share information. A website is a page of information; the World Wide Web is the whole collection of such pages.
Open a browser, type a web address (like www.example.com) or a search term into the bar at the top, and press Enter. A search engine then lists relevant pages, found automatically by programs called web crawlers that continuously read and index the Web.
Google is the most used search engine by far, but it is not the only one. DuckDuckGo, for instance, is known for not tracking your searches. There are also search engines built for particular communities and interests. It is worth remembering that no search engine shows you the whole Internet — each one has its own way of choosing and ranking what it shows.
A bookmark saves a page's address so you can return to it without searching again. Every browser also keeps a history of pages you have visited, and lets you clear it. Extensions are small add-on tools that extend what a browser can do — install them only from the browser's own official store.
Most modern computers can display and type in Indian and other regional languages through a system called Unicode, which gives every character in every language its own code, so text displays correctly across different computers. Windows has a built-in Character Map for inserting characters not on your keyboard. I have used only a handful of the available tools myself, so this is far from an exhaustive account — but even that little has been useful.
Only download from sources you trust. Downloaded files usually appear in the computer's "Downloads" folder.
A place on the internet where files are kept safely and reached from any device. Examples: Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox.
Gmail is used here as the example, simply because it is the one most people encounter first — the same ideas carry over to any email service.
Email works like a digital letter. You write a message, add the recipient's email address, and press "Send." It usually arrives within moments, anywhere in the world.
Click "Compose," fill in the recipient's address, a subject line, and your message, then send. Formatting options let you bold, underline, or add links and images to the body of the message.
Files can be attached directly, or, for larger files, added from cloud storage such as Google Drive. Very large attachments often fail to send unless a cloud link is used instead.
A filter automatically sorts incoming mail matching certain rules — into a label, into the archive, or straight into the bin. "Spam" is unwanted, often deceptive mail, which most email services try to catch and set aside automatically, though nothing catches all of it.
Be cautious of unexpected attachments, and of messages urging quick action ("your account will close in 24 hours"). Genuine organisations rarely ask for a password by email.
Google offers a wide family of free tools, all reached with one account. A brief rundown of the ones a beginner is most likely to use:
Each of these could easily be its own lesson; this is only meant as a map of what exists.
Everything above is the free, personal version. Google Workspace is the paid, business version of the same tools — Gmail, Drive, Docs, Calendar, and the rest — built to work with a company's own domain name (so an email reads as name@yourcompany.com rather than @gmail.com), along with shared team storage and administrative controls an ordinary personal account does not have. Worth knowing about once you are running a business or organisation of any size, rather than for personal use.
Websites built around connecting with other people — sharing updates, photos, and messages. Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) are among the best known; there are many others besides, built around particular interests or professions. It is worth being deliberate about what you share, and with whom.
A blog is simply a web page where you write your thoughts for others to read and comment on. It is sometimes presented, by those who do not know the field well, as an easy path to a great deal of money — in my experience that is not accurate. Blogger.com, part of Google's family of tools, is still a free and simple place to start, especially for a personal blog with no great ambitions; if the aim is to grow an audience seriously, most people today are steered toward WordPress instead. Monetising a blog, if you choose to, generally means going through Google AdSense or an affiliate programme, and takes sustained effort and an audience before it earns anything meaningful.
A great many books can be read online, free of cost, through libraries such as Google Books, the Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg (which specialises in older works whose copyright has expired). Amazon Kindle is the best-known paid option, and also lets ordinary people publish and sell their own books.
Frankly speaking, I have not personally made a profit from any internet venture myself — only lost some money here and there along the way. That said, I have seen genuine opportunities online; almost all of them still involve real, hard work, and the Internet is usually only the medium, not the whole business. Be doubtful of anything promising quick or easy money, and be aware that a few such schemes (certain kinds of online gambling and lotteries, for instance) are not even legal in every country.
Just as in any other area of life, there is fraud online too. Phishing is a common form of it — a message or website pretending to be from a bank, company, or someone you trust, made to trick you into giving up personal or financial details. Treat unexpected requests for such details, however official they look, with suspicion, and verify independently before acting on them.
Use a different, strong password for each important account. Never share a password with anyone, and be wary of any message that asks for one.
It is very easy to copy things online — often just a right-click and "Save As" — but that does not make it lawful to do so. A few terms worth knowing: Public Domain work has no copyright restriction left, usually because it is old enough; Creative Commons licences let a creator permit certain uses (like sharing, with credit) while keeping others reserved; fair use / fair dealing allows limited use of copyrighted work, such as for commentary or criticism, without formal permission, though what counts as "fair" varies and is decided case by case.
With most children now having some digital device in hand, it is worth setting up whatever protections are available rather than relying on their own discretion. Windows and most browsers offer parental control and "Safe Search" settings that filter out a good deal of unsuitable material, though none of them are complete on their own — open conversation with a child about what they see online still matters more than any setting.
Beyond the ordinary Internet that search engines catalogue, there exists a much smaller part that is deliberately kept out of search results — sometimes called the "deep web." Some of it is unremarkable (private databases, internal company pages); a portion of it is also where illegal trade and material circulate, hidden by design. It is best regarded as a place to stay well away from rather than to explore out of curiosity, and this page will not go further into how it is reached.
Windows: the "Settings" app (or the older Control Panel). Mac: "System Settings." Here you change the screen, sound, internet connection, and more.
To install: download the program and follow the on-screen steps, or use an official store (Microsoft Store, App Store). To remove: use "Apps" in Settings (Windows), or drag it to Trash (Mac).
Fast, temporary memory the computer uses while it works. Modern operating systems and browsers are heavier than they once were, so 8GB is a reasonable everyday minimum today, with more being useful if you keep many programs or browser tabs open at once.
A computer tends to slow down over time as it fills up and accumulates clutter. A few things that reliably help:
(Defragmentation, once a standard tip, is no longer needed on modern SSDs — it is only relevant to older, mechanical hard disks.)
Keep the operating system and programs updated — updates often fix security problems. Restart the computer now and then so updates can finish installing.
Instead of clicking icons, you type instructions to the computer as plain text. It looks bare, but it can be a fast, powerful way to work.
A command-line tool built into Windows. Open it by searching "PowerShell" in the Start menu. A simpler, older relative is Command Prompt (cmd).
dir # list files in this folder cd foldername # move into a folder cls # clear the screen Get-Help # show help for a command
Called "Terminal." The equivalent commands are:
ls # list files cd foldername # move into a folder clear # clear the screen
Writing instructions, called "code," in a language the computer understands — so it can do something specific, much like a recipe the computer follows step by step.
A single line, in a common language called Python, that prints text to the screen:
print("Hello, world!")
This is often the very first line every beginner writes.
Good starting languages: Python (simple and readable) or JavaScript (used on websites). Free lessons are widely available — small, regular practice is the surest way forward. I say this as someone who came to all of this with no formal training at all; there is no real barrier to entry except beginning.
Earlier in this page, under Cloud Storage, I meant simply a place to keep your files online — Google Drive, iCloud, and the like. Cloud computing is a broader idea: instead of a company buying and running its own physical computers, it rents computing power, storage, and software from a large provider over the Internet, paying only for what it uses. Most of the apps and websites you use daily are, behind the scenes, already running on someone's cloud.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is Google's rented-computing service, aimed at businesses and developers rather than ordinary users — it is a different thing from Google Drive, though both carry the Google name. It offers, among a great deal else, servers to run a website or app on, large-scale data storage, and tools for building the kind of AI features many apps now advertise. I have only touched the edges of it myself; it is worth knowing the name and the general idea exists, more than mastering its detail, unless your work specifically calls for it.
Google Cloud has two large rivals worth knowing by name: Amazon Web Services (AWS), the oldest and largest of the three, and Microsoft Azure, which fits naturally alongside a business already using Windows and Microsoft 365. For an ordinary user these are mostly invisible, working quietly underneath services you already use.
Software that lets you see and hear other people over the Internet, and show them your screen instead of, or alongside, your face. Examples: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams. Screen sharing is useful for a class, a meeting, or simply showing someone at a distance what a problem on your computer looks like.
A step further than sharing your screen: software that lets another person actually control your computer from theirs, useful when someone is helping you fix a problem remotely. Examples: TeamViewer, AnyDesk, or Windows' own built-in Remote Desktop. Only grant this kind of access to someone you called yourself, or otherwise trust with certainty — this is also, unfortunately, a common method used in phone and online scams, where a caller pretending to be from a bank or a computer company talks a person into installing one of these and handing over control.
This is a fast-moving field, more than any other part of this page, so treat the names below as examples of a kind of tool rather than a fixed or final list.
Programs you can hold a conversation with in plain language, to ask questions, draft writing, explain a topic, or help think through a problem. Examples: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude. They are genuinely useful, but they can also state things confidently that are wrong, so anything important is worth checking independently rather than taken purely on trust.
Tools that create a picture from a written description. Examples: Midjourney, DALL-E, Google's Imagen. Useful for illustration and design work; also worth knowing that AI-made images can be entirely convincing and entirely false, so a striking photograph found online is no longer, by itself, proof that the thing shown actually happened.
Text-to-speech tools can now read out written text in a natural-sounding voice, useful for narration, audiobooks, or accessibility. A further step, voice cloning, can recreate a specific person's voice from a short sample of their speech. This has genuine uses — an author narrating a book in their own voice without re-recording every edit, for instance — but it has also become a tool for fraud, used to impersonate a relative or a colleague on a phone call to ask for money urgently. If you receive an urgent, unusual money request by voice or video, verify it independently through a separate channel before acting, however convincing it sounds.
Newer tools that generate short video clips from a written description, or from a photograph, are now becoming common. Examples: Runway, Sora. They are impressive and rapidly improving, and carry the same caution as AI images — a video is no longer, by itself, reliable evidence of what actually happened.
None of the above is a reason to avoid these tools — I use some of them myself, and they are genuinely useful. It is only a reason to hold a slightly longer pause than before, when something online asks for money, personal information, or urgent trust, however convincing the voice, face, or writing behind it looks.
A website needs, at minimum, three things: a domain name (the address, like yourname.com), hosting (space on a server somewhere that keeps the site available), and the site itself — its design and content. All three can be bought separately, or bundled together by a single provider.
WordPress is the most widely used option, flexible and eventually powerful, though with a real learning curve. Wix and Squarespace are simpler, drag-and-drop builders, better suited to someone who wants a good-looking site quickly without learning the underlying technicalities. Google Sites is a free, very basic option, fine for a small personal or club page with no great ambitions.
If you would rather not build it yourself, that is a service I offer directly — you can see details of it here: deverkovil.com/website-service.html.
Drawn in part from VEILED routes to resources, in computers, and on the Internet, unVEILED! by VED.