PC Maintenance and Security

      One of the first tutorials I chose to watch was the 'Using the junk e-mail filter in Microsoft Outlook'  because I have been getting a lot of virus/junk emails sent to my school email from students personal email accounts.  I am scared that one day it will be an email that the link will not need to be clicked on, that it will just automatically give me a virus, so I thought this was an important one to watch!  I learned that in the junk email options you can have it set to safe lists only that will only allow people you have assigned to be trusted and all of your contacts to be protected.  However, I think for school, I need to use the suggestion of having it set to high protection because sometimes I do get emails from parents, students and other staff members that I may not have included on my safe list.  As for the one thing that surprised me (and that I learned) was the option to have your setting set to 'don't turn on links in messages that might connect to unsafe or fraudulent sites.'  This is something that I really need, so it doesn't automatically download anything and harm my computer.
     The second video I chose to watch was 'Setting up search preferences for Google.'  I never knew that on the Google website that there was a preferences place to allow for your searches to be restricted!  I thought that this was something that our schools had access to (limiting the web use for students) but I never realized this is something you could do with your home computer searches also.  I found that this would be very helpful in the future, if I ever have children, to make sure that they do not stumble upon information they should not be exposed to!  I was really excited to see that I could also modify the number of searches that would pop up per screen (permanentaly and not have to change it ever search) and that I could also open the links in a new window (so I don't have to hit 'back' a million times)!
     The third video I watched was 'Uninstalling unwanted applications,' I thought it was a personal video because it started off stating "some people are pack rats-OMG is he talking to me!?!?"  I always  knew there was an add/delete place for your software on your computer but I learned some good suggestions of how to do this, because like I said, sometimes I'm  a pack rat :-).  I liked the suggestion to first look for any duplicate programs you may have or "trials" whether it be games, software, etc. that you are no longer using.  I liked the idea of taking 'baby steps' in looking through and cleaning up your computer.  I guess I never realized how slow having so many applications could make your computer and is something I will keep in mind!
     I found many of these videos to be very informative!  Somethings I know about computers, but it is always nice to get helpful hints to use and continue your computer education.