Yet and still, you can easily find similar tools for sale at computer outlets and download libraries. What's going on here? The truth of the matter is that the programs pre-installed are great tools for the beginning computer user. At some point down the road, usage will dictate a need for more powerful applications. But even still, operating systems have extended onto to non-computer devices such as game consoles, portable music players, and PDAs. 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. 2 To make them work inside of a program, programmers assign commands to objects like buttons for example. The commands in a program are pretty useless unless they have some data to act on so programmers either give the programs some data to work with (list of names or numbers for example) or they make the program generate it's own data. Sure, the programming behind such technology is extensive and advanced, but to the end user, it makes computer use less intimidating and plain easy. Of course when we talk about operating a computer, we envision more involvement than speaking on the phone or touching things on a screen. The above illustrations were just a couple of examples of how far computer technology has grown, and how far we've pushed "user-friendliness" to its limit. Most (if not all) manufacturer's reserve a portion of cyberspace and dedicate it to support the products that they build. Microsoft's help desk is good example. 3. Fan sites. Fan sites probably isn't a good name for this resource, but you can find websites that are dedicated toward supporting the users of a particular software program or piece of hardware. A firewall is software that checks all data entering and exiting a computer and it then blocks that which doesn't meet specified security criteria (user-defined rules).1 5. Don't click on website links in spam messages. In an effort to obtain personal information, some spammers will send email that asks you to click on a link.