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First Steps

If you find computers confusing and difficult to use, there is some basic information on this page that we hope will be helpful.

There is also a lot of practical information online. Here are a few websites that you may find useful:

• AbilityNet
• Age UK's Making the Most of the Internet
• Barclay's Digital Wings
• The British Council's Basic Digital Skills Training Manual
• The Good Things Foundation
• Learn My Way

And, if all else fails, you can always try asking your favourite search engine or AI bot.

What Is A Computer?

A computer is an information processing machine.

You feed information in, the computer processes it in some way, and it produces some sort of result.

You can feed in all sorts of information.

• You can type in text with a keyboard.
• You can create a photo with a camera.
• You can record sounds with a microphone.
• And you can get all sorts of information from a memory stick or the Internet.

The computer can process this information in a myriad of ways. It can store it for retrieval later. It can reformat it to make it easier to understand. It can filter out unnecessary detail. In fact, as the British mathematician, Alan Turing, proved in the 1930s, it can perform any operation that can be written down precisely.

But a computer won't do anything until you tell it what you want it to do. The instructions you give it are called a program. Some programs are supplied with the computer and some of those will start when you turn on the machine. Others you start yourself by clicking an icon or typing a command into the command window. These are the apps.

What Is An Operating System?

Every computer has an operating system. It is an essential layer of software between the apps and the hardware. It enables apps to run on different devices, it shares the hardware between multiple apps, and it enforces important security rules.

The most common operating systems are:

• Microsoft's Windows (for laptops & desktops)
• Apple's macOS (for laptops & desktops) and iOS (for tablets & phones)
• Google's ChromeOS (for laptops) and Android (for tablets & phones)
• GNU/Linux (for any device, from phones to Internet servers and super-computers)

There's some more information about what an operating system is and what it does in these slides from a presentation given to the U3A Digital Skills group in July 2025: What Is An Operating System?