10 years minus 5 days and counting…

By | July 6, 2015
This content is 9 years old. Please, read this page keeping its age in mind. Thank you.

It’s now the second half of the year – where’s that time gone?

In fact, come to think of it, where have the last ten years gone – because later this week it’s ten years since I set up this business and launched my first PC book. Ten years since I wrote the first newsletter, too.

A lot’s changed since then. I was covering the new-fangled Windows XP as well as the older Windows 98 when I started and in the very early days I was working from my spare attic room. In fact for the first month or so I was nervous about “what if it didn’t work” and to avoid the risk of printing lots of the books, I printed the first hundred out on my little desktop printer, then bound them with a “comb binder” to avoid spending lots of money or getting thousands printed.

Over those ten years I’ve written dozens of books and recorded quite a few videos.

So I thought over this week I’d go over a few of the things we’ve done in the past ten years.

It all started with Computers One Step at a Time and The Internet One Step at a Time, and they’re still the most popular books we’ve published. They explain how to use your PC or laptop, all in plain simple language with pictures of the screen to show exactly what to do.

They’re now in their 5th edition (and before long we’ll be bringing out yet another edition, for the new Windows 10). Since that first edition ten years ago, I’ve had hundreds of letters, emails and notes saying thank you for these books and how much they’ve helped – and I know lots of readers of this newsletter have them.

Anyway, here’s a shameless plug: if you are interested in these, you can order them on free trial. The pair for Windows 7 or Vista is here or the pair for WIndows 8 or 8.1 is here.

The other book I brought out in the first year was Computer Jargon into Plain English – a sort of dictionary of jargon. It’s a little, pocket sized book that explains what all the jargon, gobbledegook and abbreviations mean. You can’t completely avoid them, so it’s worth being able to look them up. It’s now called Computer, Tablet and Smartphone Jargon into Plain English and was completely updated earlier this year, but it’s still going strong. If you’re interested, you can order that one here.

(Or if you want that and the One Step at a Time books, you can add it to the order form once you’ve clicked on of those links)

It’s odd to look back and realise it’s ten years since I first wrote these books – but one of the things that makes me very happy is looking back and knowing they’ve helped literally thousands of people.

On the other hand, you’d think I’d have learnt after ten years…
On the other hand, you’d think I’d have learnt to avoid daft mistakes after ten years (and 7 years or so before that working for a different publisher doing different types of books).

But no, I still make as many as ever. Last time, for example, I said ctrl and C was the shortcut for the charms bar, when I meant Windows and C (I even sent a separate email to everyone to hopefully save you from being confused when it didn’t work).

Not only that, I got my apostrophe wrong and talked about the German’s Enigma code instead of the Germans’ Enigma code. I could try and argue that I meant one German in particular, but I’d be on thin ice…

I’m still trying to get better! Let’s hope I haven’t missed any daft mistakes in this issue…

Windows 10 – out at the end of this month and they’ve finally fixed how email works in it
The new Windows 10 should be out at the end of the month. Not that you have to switch to it, but that’s when it’ll be available.

We’ve been experimenting with a pre-release version, but there are still quite a few things that I think they’ll fix in the final version.

One thing they have sorted, though, is the email app. In Windows 8 or 8.1, you can’t use the built in email app with most UK email addresses – the ones you get from your broadband provider. (The problem is with POP3 based email, which it just can’t handle, unlike older versions of Windows.)

So you either had to use webmail and check your email on your email company’s website or get a different program for your emails (Thunderbird for example). Or change your email address, I suppose.

But in Windows 10, it looks like they’ve solved it, so you now can use the built in mail app for any email account. They’ve even fixed what looks like one of their daft mistakes – there was no button to print your emails.

I’m glad to know it’s not just me that makes daft mistakes – Microsoft do too. And they’ve been at it longer than me!

9 thoughts on “10 years minus 5 days and counting…

  1. Lynne Maddock

    Will you be publishing one of your books on Windows 10

    Reply
    1. Tim Post author

      Hello
      yes, we’re already hard at work on Windows 10 versions both PC One Step at a Time and The Internet One Step at a Time. We’re currently working with a pre-release version of Windows 10 but once the final version comes out, we’ll go back over what we’ve done and then tweak anything that changed at the last minute before bringing them out. So it won’t be available straight away once Windows 10 is out, but it won’t take us very long.
      I’ll keep everyone up to date on it in the email newsletter as the time gets closer.
      Tim

      Reply
  2. Maria Crabtree

    I just love your Monday e.mails.You are so HUMAN
    You certainly ,make life easier and far more pleasent
    Maria

    Reply
    1. Tim Post author

      Thank you! I always love to hear that all the things we do do help people – messages like this really do brighten the day!
      Tim

      Reply
  3. patricia

    Hi Tim, I don’t know where I first came across your company but I hope you get some response from your advert in this month’s WI Life. Todays members are a mix of the very young who “know it all” when it comes to technology and those like me who hang on by their fingernails when it comes to keeping up so hope you will be able to help those who struggle as you have me over the years! Good luck

    Reply
    1. Tim Post author

      Thanks – it certainly looks like lots of people are responding to that advert at the moment. We’ll have to wait and see how it works out!
      Tim

      Reply
  4. Vera M Collins

    You’ve done very well over the past ten years. I can
    understand things when you explain them, and I am not a quick learner. There seems to be no rationale
    with computers, you either know the right buttons
    or you don’t, so it’s good to know a man who does.
    Don’t worry about the odd mistake. The man who
    never made any mistakes never made anything else
    either. Good Luck in the next decade. VMC

    Reply
    1. Tim Post author

      Thank you! It’s always nice to hear nice comments… and I must admit I’ve always liked that quote. I’ve made a few mistakes along the way but it always makes me feel better to think that mistakes do happen when you’re trying to do things – the only way to avoid mistakes completely is not to do anything!
      Tim

      Reply
  5. Ann Allies

    Hi Tim congratulations on 10 years,I have got the books still reading them also the videos .i cannot remember where I saw your advert in a magazine but ido remember that you talked about your Mum & Dad learning so I thought that’s for me! Thanks for your help over all of these years best of luck to you & your Family from Ann Allies .

    Reply

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