Lesson 5:  Customize!  Customize!    The Introduction

Objectives of this Tutorial:

 

R   The student will be able to change the background of their desktop.

R   The student will be able to change the screensaver and resolution of their monitor.

R   The student will be able to add a Quick Launch bar to the taskbar.

R   The student will be able to place shortcuts on the desktop and taskbar.

 

Customizing Your Desktop to Suit Yourself

    These settings are specific to the current user profile. In our school settings, the Trenton Public School District has provided us with our teacher profile and the student profile so that our files and settings are secure from student users.

     What does the "current user profile" mean?  If you share a computer with someone else, you and the other person can maintain custom settings in separate "user profiles".  Each desktop can be customized for each user, not only as to how the desktop looks, but also as to how you organize your files.  Your desktop settings can be visually and organizationally different than the student settings.

     With Windows 2000 Professional, you can customize your desktop in many ways:

R   Change the way your desktop looks—apply a digital photograph of the sunset you took on your last vacation, insert a scanned image of your child's artwork, or choose one of the many themes or designs provided by Windows 2000 Professional.

R   Arrange your icons and folders to where you want them to be   (you Macintosh users will now all be moving icons back to the right side now).

R   If you are visually challenged (we have the attention of the bifocal-wearing over-50 crowd now), you can increase the size of text and folders to make it easier to view things on the monitor.

R   You don’t want to have to double-click every time you open a program, so you create the Quick Launch Bar. Put shortcuts to the programs you use most on the Quick Launch bar.  Then you can just single-click the shortcut to open the program.

R   Use Personalized Menus, a feature that adapts the Start menu to the way you work by showing the applications you use most often and hiding those you have not used recently. This is similar to the way the menus in Microsoft Office 2000 work.

R   Add an Address bar to the taskbar or the desktop, making it convenient for you to type an Internet address or network location without opening Internet Explorer first.