If you can remember that there are hoards of alternatives to costly commercial software (and you make the effort to get it), you'll discover that you can keep up with the rest of the computer industry at a significantly cheaper cost than if you attempted to pay your way down the software aisle. Software piracy just isn't the answer. Automating Things with Batch Files They Work on Today's Computers Too! If you're familiar with MS-DOS at all, you'll recall that it's a command-driven operating system that performs functions issued at the C:> prompt. The only way to get an MS-DOS computer to do something was to type a command at this prompt and if you can imagine, it was a rather cumbersome way to use a computer. This article looks at compressed files a little closer and it describes how to compress and decompress them using two of the most popular archiving programs. Identifying Compressed Files Most files are compressed in .zip format (if you're using Windows) or .sit format (if you're using a Mac). The two most popular software programs used to compress and decompress files are Winzip and StuffIt respectively. User interface - this is the visual design of a program. It may contain squares, boxes, words, icons, and buttons. If you're experiencing insufficient memory for example, you might see black rectangles across the user interface of your software programs. Title bar - this is the top-most part of a program that displays its own name or it may describe the contents displayed in another part of the interface. On the other hand, it can also grant the same access to those who aren't supposed to get it. Although it's a rare occurrence, hacking has become the biggest criminal nuisance in computer history. Make no bones about it. There's nothing innocent or cute about the hacker. Today's hackers aren't the pimply-faced teen rebels that you might be thinking of. Regardless of the device, the operating system installed onto it serves the same purpose across the board: to enable user-to-hardware communication. When you think about upgrading your computer to a new operating system, be careful to make sure that you have the necessary hardware components. We tried to upgrade one of our Windows 98 machines to Windows XP, but we were cautioned that the former may not be hardware compatible with XP technology.