PCs For Dummies® Windows®, 7 Edition

Chapter 18. Flinging Files

In This Chapter

• Getting text or graphics from the Web

• Locating free software on the Internet

• Downloading programs

• Installing downloaded software

• Receiving a file with your e-mail

• Sending a file with your e-mail

Networking is all about communications and sharing. It has its roots way, way back in the early steam-powered computing era. The idea wasn't to "tweet" personal thoughts, send photographs from telephones, or even play Call of Duty. Nope, the idea was to get information in the form of a file from one computer into another without anyone having to lift anything or walk anywhere. That was the goal in those days, and it's still something useful that your computer and its network are more than capable of handling today.

• See Chapter 20 for important information on the concept of a computer file.

• Copying a file to your computer is known as downloading. When someone sends you a file over the Internet, you download it. (Think of the other computer as being on top of a hill; it may not be, but it helps to think of it that way.)

• Sending a file to another computer is known as uploading.

Get Stuff from a Web Page

The text and pictures you see on a Web page can easily be copied from that Web page and saved on your own computer. Well, actually, the information you see on the display is already on your computer: The text, images, and other stuff you see are sent from the Internet and stored temporarily somewhere in your computer while you're viewing that Web page. This section ...