Start Menu

The Start menu is the main gateway for all your activities within Windows, much like the dock on a Mac. It's located on the left edge of your taskbar, which is usually at the bottom of your screen.

This is a typical Start menu. A breakdown of what you're seeing:

1. Username: This appears at the top of the menu, telling you who is currently logged in.
2. Internet/E-mail: Your default web browser? and e-mail client. Windows comes with Internet Explorer as the default browser and Microsoft Outlook as the mail client if you have Microsoft Office. (If you don't have Office, the default client is Outlook Express, which you generally shouldn't use.)
3. Frequently-Used Programs: The list on the left side of the Start menu consists of the programs you use the most, so you can open them quickly.
4. All Programs: This gives you a list of every program currently running on your computer. Highly useful.
5. My Folders: At the top of the right column is a list of options that start with "My." These are shortcuts that allow you to easily navigate your hard drive.
6. System Tools: These options here are pretty self-explanatory. This is where you manage things like printers, program settings, and network connections.
7. Assorted Useful Stuff: These items on the Start menu don't really fall into one catagory, except that they're all extremely handy. Help and Support takes you to the somewhat cumbersome but quite in-depth Help and Support Center. Search gives you a comprehensive search of your hard drive. The Run... line is where you'll connect to network drives, and gives you an easy way to run programs. For example, if you want to run Microsoft Word, you can open Run and type winword.exe, and the program will open. Easy!