Is This Thing On?, Revised Edition: A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers, Technophobes, and the Kicking & Screaming

Stokes gives the feeling that a friend is explaining it all to you.

— The New York Daily News

Is This Thing On? is a reassuring, jargon-free, and totally straightforward nuts-and-bolts guide that introduces late bloomers, grandparents, technophobes, and the digitally challenged to all the wonders of using a computer, and will even have them using digital cameras and PDAs with ease.

Written for the reader who did not grow up with personal computers, this book updates and expands on Stokes's previous title, It's Never Too Late to Love a Computer. It covers everything you need to get wired: how to select, buy, and set up a computer; how to sign up for e-mail and internet access, and how to use the world wide web. There's information on peripherals--printers, scanners, wireless routers--and basic software, such as word processing programs. Plus, this new edition delves further into the online world to cover search engines and web navigation, information on online banking, shopping, travel planning, and dating. It covers security issues, netiquette, instant messaging, and blogs, and there's an entire chapter devoted to digital photos--transferring them from camera to computer and sending them as attachments. Abby Stokes--who has a gift for taking the terrified by the hand and teaching old dogs new tricks--branches out into other essential digital accoutrements: cell phones, iPods, and Blackberries. A companion website, www.abbyandme.com, offers a safe place to practice and keep learning. Appendices include recommended websites, a resource list, and more.

Now updated and revised, the user-friendliest, most reassuring, jargon-free, smartest, and most comprehensive nuts-and-bolts guide for seniors, who are the fastest-growing demographic among social networks.

Abby Stokes is the perfect guide to the digital domain: She’s taught more than 140,000 seniors how to use a computer.  In an easy, authoritative, hand-holding way, she covers it all: how to choose, buy, and start using a computer. How to connect to the Internet, sign up for e-mail, and use search engines. Plus, how and why to get digital in the first place: the ins and outs of online shopping, banking, travel planning, dating, research; how to take and share digital photographs and videos; how to discover online communities, and use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; the world of apps, online music, and streaming movies; and, importantly, online security and “netiquette.” There’s information on iPads, smartphones—including the Blackberry, iPhone,
and Android—and e-readers like Nook and Kindle. A companion website—www.abbyandme.com—plus a Facebook page and Twitter feed provide easy and safe access to this brave new world.

Abby Stokes teaches courses in basic computing at both Cooper Union and New York University's School of Lifelong Learning, as well as computer skills to private and corporate clients. She has lectured on the topic across the country. Ms. Stokes splits her time between New York City and Niantic, Connecticut.