Student Essay on Connecting Your Computer

Connecting Your Computer

Summary:   Describes the process of connecting a computer to a monitor and connecting accessories, including a printer.

Connecting a computer is not that hard, but it requires some steps which should be taken cautiously, and it also involves lot of patience. Some people pay technicians just to hook up their computer, which I think is very useless and absurd. Now if you follow my steps which I consider are really easy, then you should be able to hook up your PC in as much time as it would take you to make a sandwich. To begin with, you should make sure that you have following things with you: 2 power cords (1 for monitor and 1 for a CPU), 1 keyboard with a purple cord, 1 mouse with green cord, a Central Processing Unit (CPU), 1 monitor, 1 pair of speakers and 1 printer (optional). After doing so, you should get a 6 or 7 outlet surge protector as a protection for your computer, but this choice is completely optional. Now, follow the subsequent steps to connect your computer. Remember not to skip any steps in hurry, as this is only going to take few minutes which are worth for avoiding malfunctioning of your computer.

First find the CPU and turn it around so that the outlets for the wires are in front of you. Next, take the power wire which is black and has 3 holes on one side and 3 pins on another, and plug the side with 3 holes to the outlet on the upper left corner of your CPU. Now when doing this make sure that you push the wire completely in so that the pins are completely inside the holes otherwise the wire will blow up when you turn the power on. This should leave you with 1 more power cord which is supposed to be connected with monitor. Then find a big blue wire with two small screws on both sides, and attach that wire to the big blue outlet on the CPU board and tighten the screw after doing so. While doing this don't use too much force, but do it more smoothly by turning the screw rather then pushing it. Now affix the other end of that wire to the monitor and now your monitor is directly connected with your CPU. If you followed my instructions mentioned above then two main parts of your computer should be attached and the 70% of the work is done. But in a computer small parts also matter a lot, therefore it's really necessary for us to join the keyboard and the mouse before turning the computer on, especially if you want to use your computer. So now take the keyboard and attach its blue cord to the blue outlet with 6 holes in it. You should find this outlet on the upper right corner of the CPU. As you are doing this make sure that you don't push the cord without checking where the pin inside the cord goes, because many people have a tendency to break the pin, on their first try. Same thing with the mouse, be careful when pushing the mouse cord into the green outlet with a little mouse drawn below it. And now finally the speaker, you can attach the speaker by pushing its little yellow pin in the same colored hole behind the CPU. After following these steps your computer is basically attached and is ready to function, but if you want to join any accessories such as printer, scanner etc. (which I recommend) to the computer then you should attach them now rather then doing that afterwards.

Now that your basic parts are attached you can follow these general steps to connect your accessories. The printer basically prints documents directly from your computer so I would recommend purchasing a printer. If you want to attach a printer then first connect the printer to the surge protector, then find a Universal Serial Bus cord, which should have come with your printer. Once you do that plug the USB wire to the USB outlet behind your CPU or in the front (different location in different CPU). If you want to attach a scanner then follow the same steps but make sure that the scanner is also connected to the power outlet and is turned off before you use it. When attaching any accessory you have to follow steps which are almost similar to the ones listed above. Keep in mind that any of the accessories that you attach with your computer should be installed with a CD or a disk to your C drive after you turn the computer on. In general, adding any supplementary machine to your computer is similar to adding extra cheese or extra ketchup on top of a sandwich after it is done. Just as this depends on a person's taste, adding an accessory to a computer depends on your usage of the additional device added to your computer.

Now if you followed my steps, then your computer should be ready to use. After starting the computer follow the instructions on the screen. This should guide you through the set up of your computer. Now that you have hooked up a computer you should realize how straightforward it is to hook up a computer using the guidelines which I provided. As I mentioned before, hooking up a computer takes just as much time as making a sandwich does, or maybe a minute or two more, but it requires lot of patience which almost everyone tends to loose in the end. For most people hooking up a computer is a bit of problem when doing it the first time without any instruction, however doing it by my guidelines it wouldn't be such a dilemma. In conclusion, you should not spend money on a technician just to set up a computer, if you have my easy techniques to follow or any other easy procedure to follow.