Chapter 5 Software Applications Highlighted Notes PDF

Chapter 5 Software Applications THE FOLLOWING COMPTIA IT FUNDAMENTALS+ (ITF+) FC0-U61 EXAM OBJECTIVES ARE COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER: 3.3 Explain the purpose and proper use of software Productivity software Word processing software Spreadsheet software Presentation software Web browser Visual diagramming software Collaboration software Email client Conferencing software Instant messaging software Online workspace Document sharing Business software Database software Project management software Business-speciﬁc applications Accounting software 3.4 Explain methods of application architecture and delivery models Application delivery methods Locally installed Network not required Application exists locally Files saved locally Local network hosted Network required Internet access not required Cloud hosted Internet accessrequired Service required Files saved in the cloud Application architecture models One tier Two tier Three tier n-tier 3.5 Given a scenario, conﬁgure and use web browsers Caching/clearing cache Deactivate client-side scripting Browser add-ons/extensions Add Remove Enable/disable Private browsing Proxy settings Certiﬁcates Valid Invalid Popup blockers Script blockers Compatible browser for application(s) 3.6 Compare and contrast general application concepts and uses Single-platform software Cross-platform software Compatibility concerns Licensing Single use Group use/site license Concurrent license Open source vs. proprietary Subscription vs. one-time purchase Product keys and serial numbers Software installation best practices Reading instructions Reading agreements Advanced options All of the hardware and the operating systems in computers just provide a base for what you really want computers to do, and that’s to run software applications. You want your computer to help you do something—often a lot of somethings—such as writing a letter, creating a presentation, managing your taxes, or playing a game. Thanks to the myriad of software titles out there, you can do all of these things and even more, quite often doing more than one of them at one time. Applications are the second major classiﬁcation of software (after operating systems), and that is the focus of this chapter. Some of the topics that I will cover are application architecture and delivery models, licensing, installation, and types of applications. Web browsers speciﬁcally will get a lot of ink because of their wide usage and the opportunities they provide for security problems. By the end of this chapter, you will understand diﬀerent ways that applications are designed for use and how to ensure that they are installed properly. You will also be familiar with several types of software available for both business and personal use. Software truly makes that box of parts sitting in front of you useful, so let’s begin! Understanding Application Architecture and Installation I’m going to go out on a not-so-shaky limb here and guess that you have used software before. If you have even touched a computer or a smartphone, then you have. And the fact that you are reading this book means that you’re interested in computers, so it’s an easy guess to get right. What you might not have done, though, is to take a step back and think about all of the things that need to happen for that application to run properly. Throughout this chapter, I will use the terms software, application, and program interchangeably. Surely someone created the software, and we’re pretty happy that it works. But what considerations did the developer need to think about when creating it? I am going to start this section by looking at application design principles related to architecture so you can understand more about how “an app” was created, why it works the way it does, and why it might work on your desktop but not on your smartphone. Then I will talk about installing software, focusing on licensing and installation best practices. Finally, you will learn about updating and patching software. Application Design Concepts You’re probably used to double-clicking or tapping an icon and having that program open or a ﬁle opening in the right program. How does that happen? First, ask yourself the question, what does the application talk to? It talks to the operating system, which talks to the hardware. If you need to save a ﬁle, the application tells the OS that you need to save the ﬁle, and the OS talks to the hard drive to make it happen. Sometimes those processes take place on one device, but at other times they happen across a network. While you might take those interactions for granted, software developers must focus on the best way to make the application do what it’s supposed to do. They think about who the user will be, how the application will be used, and what the required outcomes are. For example, will users use it on their local computer or over the Internet? On a desktop or a smartphone? Which operating systems will the application run on? Three areas that software developers need to think about are platforms, delivery methods, and architecture. Software Platforms You know that apps need to interact with hardware to do things like open and save ﬁles, and you know that the operating system is the interface between apps and hardware. So, it makes sense then that the most critical thing for an app to run right is for it to be able to talk to the OS. When you look for software, you will most frequently see apps made for one OS, such as Windows or macOS, or for another operating system. This type of software is called single-platform software because it works on only one platform. Software vendors might have diﬀerent versions for diﬀerent OSs, but software written for Windows will not work on a Mac, and vice versa. Applications that are written to work across platforms are aptly called cross-platform software. For example, if an app works on both Windows and macOS, it is cross-platform. The term can also apply to software that works across diﬀerent hardware platforms. For example, many versions of Linux can run on Intel x86-based processors as well as ARM processors. You’ll recall from Chapter 1, “Core Hardware Components,” that these processors work in very diﬀerent ways and therefore need diﬀerent programming. If a piece of software can run on both, it’s considered cross-platform. There are no limitations on the number of platforms a cross-platform app can work on—it just depends on the ambition of the software developer. A lot of Windows-based apps will work across various versions of Windows, such as Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10. This is not an example of cross-platform software because all are variants of the same platform. There are two ways to approach the development of cross- platform software. One is to write complete sets of code for each platform. While easy, this method can be time- consuming and expensive. The other is to use a special development toolkit or environments created for the purpose of developing cross- platform software. Historically speaking, single-platform software has been far more prevalent than cross-platform software. In today’s mobile environment, though, apps are being churned out at a breathtaking pace. Speed to market and low-cost development are critical, so we’re seeing more and more cross-platform mobile apps. In addition, cross-platform apps can reach a wider audience because they work on multiple types of devices. Updates can be developed faster as well and synchronized between platforms. Developing cross-platform apps is not without its challenges. Single-platform apps usually provide better performance and richer features, leading to a superior user experience. In addition, a major concern with developing cross-platform software is compatibility. Operating systems each have their own quirks, and getting an app to function properly across multiple OSs can be a tricky challenge. The developer needs to walk a very ﬁne line because getting the app to run on the second OS might take some minor tweaking that could cause its features not to work on the ﬁrst OS, or it could cause the output to be incompatible with output from the ﬁrst OS. In addition, compatibility concerns can open the app up to potential security breaches. Delivery Methods A second question that developers must answer is where the application will be installed and from what will it be executed. There are three options. It can be locally installed, hosted on a local network, or run from a cloud. The easiest from a programming and logistics standpoint is when an app is locally installed on a system. Most applications written today for desktop and mobile platforms reside on that local system’s hard drive and are executed locally. A network connection is not required, and all ﬁles are saved locally. For purposes of software platforms, the desktop group also includes laptops. The second method of application delivery is to have it be hosted on the local network. This can take a few diﬀerent forms. One is that the application itself is installed on a server, and all instances are executed from the server. In this case, data and ﬁles related to the app are most likely to be stored on the server as well. In other cases, you might see the app run from a client computer, but key data is stored on the server. In either case, these are examples of a client-server network model. Both systems are needed for the ecosystem to function properly. Of course, a local intranet connection is needed. Internet access is not required, though. Finally, there are cloud-hosted applications. You’ve probably heard about the cloud, and it can be a foggy concept for some. All it really means is that some other company owns the hardware (and maybe the software), and you access it from the Internet. Consequently, you’ll also see these types of apps referred to as web-based applications. Even though web-based applications run on a server somewhere else, from an end-user standpoint it often looks and feels like it’s local. A great example of this is Google Docs, which comes with Chromebooks. (It can also be run from other desktops and laptops too.) The app itself is based on Google’s cloud, and a Chromebook needs an Internet connection to be able to run the app. In many cases, users also need to subscribe to the service. Files will be stored in the cloud. The good news is that you don’t need to worry about installing or updating the application because Google does that for you. The bad news is you always need to have an Internet connection to use those apps or save ﬁles. In today’s world, this is no longer a showstopper, but there are places and times where you will be without the life-giving powers of the Internet. What Happens When the Internet Connection Fails? Online apps are becoming more widely used because they oﬀer ﬂexibility to users at lower cost than locally installed apps. For example, you can use Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings for free if you’ve set up a Google account and set up Google Drive. Granted, you get only 15 GB of storage for free, but that’s quite a lot. And did I mention it’s free? But what happens when the Internet connection fails? It depends on the app and how you have it conﬁgured. In the purest sense, if you’re using a cloud-based app and the Internet connection fails, you will no longer be able to use the app or to save data. However, some apps do let you synchronize with a local computer, allowing you to continue your work and save ﬁles oﬄine. In the case of Google Drive, it’s an option in Settings, as shown in Figure 5.1. As you can see, I’ve checked the box to sync so that I can edit oﬄine. FIGURE 5.1 Google Drive settings If I am editing a ﬁle and I lose my Internet connection, the ﬁle will be saved on my local computer. When the Internet connection is restored, the ﬁle will sync with the cloud. You can see the status of the saved ﬁle when editing it. In Figure 5.2, Google Docs tells me that the ﬁle is saved in Drive. If I didn’t have an Internet connection, it would say “All changes saved locally.” If I didn’t enable the sync option, it would fail to save if I didn’t have a connection. Also note that even with sync on, if I try to open another ﬁle or start a new ﬁle, I will not be able to do so. FIGURE 5.2 Google Docs changes saved in Drive To summarize cloud-hosted apps, Internet access is needed, a service is required (even something free like Google Drive), and ﬁles are stored in the cloud. Application Architecture Models A third consideration that developers must take into account is application architecture. Application architecture deﬁnes how the app is executed—if it will run entirely on one computer or if diﬀerent components of the app will be run on diﬀerent systems. For simple applications, this is really a no-brainer—it should run on one machine. But for complex apps that require database access and a lot of business logic, multiple tiers can help with scalability and performance. The umbrella term for application architecture models is n-tier architecture. The letter n is intended to be a variable, much like you would use it in algebra to mean “a number.” The models about which you should be aware are one-tier, two-tier, and three-tier architectures. Let’s start with the most complicated one ﬁrst. As you would expect, a three-tier model has three tiers: The presentation tier, which is the user interface (UI). The business logic tier, which coordinates between presentation and data, and it often does things like performing calculations and managing data ﬂow. It can also make logical decisions based on speciﬁed criteria. The data tier, which is the database or ﬁle system holding the data. Figure 5.3 illustrates how all of this comes together. FIGURE 5.3 Three-tier architecture model Each tier is hosted on a diﬀerent system, making this a client- server model (in most cases)—the client holds the presentation tier, and the server or servers host the other two tiers. The three-tier structure is fairly common for businesses with large data needs. A lot of sales-oriented websites will use this structure because it allows for increased security and distribution of the processing load. For internal company use, it provides ﬂexibility. For example, imagine that a company has a large database with several diﬀerent data types, such as customer information, inventory, and personnel data. A human resources app might only need the personnel data, whereas external customers need to see inventory, and salespeople need to see both inventory and customer information. The logic layer will act as the intermediary, making sure that the right users have the right data and protecting the rest. To take it one step further, say that the company now adds ﬁnancial performance data. Developers can program the logic layer to see it and feed it to a new ﬁnance app, blocking the other apps from it. None of the other apps would be aﬀected. Without that business logic layer, it might be easier for users of the other apps to see the ﬁnancial data that they’re not supposed to see. Advantages of a three-tier model include better security, scalability, ﬂexibility, and load balancing. These advantages come at the cost of more complexity and eﬀort to set up and manage. A two-tier architecture is also usually a client-server model, with the workstation having the UI and the server hosting the other layers. However, the business logic layer disappears, and the application layer directly accesses the database layers. Two tier models are usually cheaper to deploy than three-tier ones, and they are more suitable for smaller-scale applications. One tier is the easiest architecture of them all. All components of the application are run from one computer. This could be on a client computer or a server, depending on the application and user needs. Software Management Best Practices Software management isn’t too hard, as long as you follow a couple of basic rules—install and uninstall properly and update as needed. If you do those things, you will have relatively few problems with the software on your computer. And if or when you have a scenario where you are having problems with an application, rebooting your computer often takes care of the issue. If the issue keeps coming back, uninstall and reinstall, and you should be back up and running with no problems. In this section, I will cover best practices for software management. First, I will talk about the stuﬀ you need to think about before installing an application, such as whether it will work with your OS or not. Then, I’ll move on to the proper way to install and uninstall features of your operating system, applications, and drivers. Finally, I’ll talk about updating or patching the software on your system. Considerations for Installing Software Before you buy any software, you need to make sure of a few critical things. The ﬁrst is to ﬁgure out if the application works with your operating system, and the second is to ﬁgure out if your hardware is robust enough to support it. In addition, you should also consider the licensing requirements for that software and if your intended use falls within those requirements. Software Compatibility Sometimes, you will ﬁnd yourself staring at a web page, looking at the speciﬁcations for a new application, and wondering, “Will this work on my computer?” In the documentation for each application available for download or purchase, you’ll ﬁnd a “Minimum System Requirements” section. This usually includes a list of compatible OS versions, a minimum processor speed, a minimum amount of RAM, and the minimum required amount of hard disk space available. There may also be additional requirements, such as a particular display adapter, the amount of display adapter RAM, or a permanent Internet connection to use the software. Besides the generic minimum requirements, you would also be wise to research compatibility issues before spending a lot of money on an application. For example, some applications (particularly games) have known problems with certain display adapters. When judging whether you have enough hard disk space, keep in mind that at least 15 to 20 percent of the hard disk space should be left empty to ensure best performance. Don’t assume that if your hard disk has 1 GB of space left on it, you can install an application that requires 1 GB of space. If your system barely meets the requirements in one or more aspects, the application may install, but performance may suﬀer. For example, the application may crash frequently, run slowly, or have poor graphic or sound performance. If you want to run an older application that is designed for a previous version of Windows, you may ﬁnd the Compatibility Mode feature in Windows to be useful. This feature enables a newer version of Windows to mimic an older version selectively when it deals with an individual application. For example, an application may require a lower display resolution than Windows 10 provides; the Compatibility Mode feature can temporarily permit that lower resolution. To start the Compatibility Mode troubleshooter in Windows 10, click Start and then type run prog rams. The Start menu will show an app called Run Programs made for previous versions of Windows. Open it and follow the directions. Some applications require an Internet connection to install them. Depending on the settings of your ﬁrewall software (such as Windows Defender Firewall), a warning may appear when the Setup program tries to access the Internet. In most cases, you can click a button to let the ﬁrewall know that it’s okay to proceed. For security purposes, it’s good to have a ﬁrewall to help protect your computer. A ﬁrewall installed on your local computer, such as Windows Defender Firewall or Norton Internet Security, is called a host-based ﬁrewall. A network- based ﬁrewall is designed to protect multiple computers on a network. Software Licensing When you buy an application, you aren’t actually buying the application. Instead, you’re buying the right to use the application in a limited way as prescribed by the licensing agreement that comes with it. Most people don’t read these licensing agreements closely, but suﬀice it to say that they’re pretty slanted in favor of the software manufacturer. Don’t like the terms? Too bad. No negotiation is allowed. If you don’t accept the license agreement, your only recourse is to return the software for a refund. (And good luck ﬁnding a vendor that will take back an opened box. Still, the software manufacturer is required to take it back and refund your money if you reject the licensing.) A license agreement is also called an end-user license agreement (EULA). Although the majority of applications that you acquire will probably be commercial products, there are a number of alternatives to commercial software sales. Here are some of the license types you may encounter: Freeware Freeware is software that is completely free. On the small scale, you can get such software from download sites such as download.cnet.com or from the creator’s personal website. Large companies like Google and Microsoft also sometimes oﬀer products for free because it serves the company’s interests to have lots of people using that software. Examples include Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge. Freeware doesn’t include source code, and users aren’t allowed to modify the application. Open Source Open-source software is freer than free: Not only is the application free, but the source code (code used by programmers) is also shared to encourage others to contribute to the future development and improvement of the application. OSs such as Linux and applications such as Apache OpenOﬀice ﬁt this category. Open-source software can’t be sold, although it can be bundled with commercial products that are sold. In addition, many open-source software developers charge for technical support, which is how they make money. Open source is the opposite of closed source. Closed-source programs are also called proprietary or commercial software. Shareware Shareware is software that provides a free trial, with the expectation that you’ll pay for it if you like it and decide to keep it. In some cases, a shareware version isn’t the full product; in other cases, it expires after a certain amount of time. Some shareware provides a full and unlimited version, with payment requested on the honor system. Single Use A single-use program is commercial software for which the license restricts installation to a single user. Depending on the EULA, the user might be able to install the software on only one computer or multiple computers. Even if installed on multiple computers, only one instance of the app can be used at once. Concurrent A concurrent license allows the software to be installed on many PCs but used concurrently by a smaller number of them. For example, you may have 1,000 computers with the application installed, but only 100 users can use it simultaneously. This is useful in situations where everyone needs to have an application available, but the application gets very little actual use. Corporate, Campus, Group, or Site This type of license permits an organization to install the application on an agreed- upon number of PCs. For example, a school may buy a site license of an antivirus program and allow all students to download and install it freely to ensure that the school’s network remains virus free. Many software manufacturers are moving to a subscription- based model rather than a one-time purchase model. Microsoft Oﬀice 365 is a great example of this, and antivirus software companies have used this model for years. Instead of paying for the software once and then “owning” it, the user subscribes and then has access to the software, typically for one year. Sometimes the app will be online (cloud-based), and at other times the user can install it locally. When the year is up, the user can subscribe again (and most software will conveniently sign you up for auto billing) or lose access. When you buy any sort of commercial software, you will receive a product key, which you will need to enter during installation or the ﬁrst time the application is opened. The product key might be emailed to you, or it could be located on the physical media if you received installation media. Figure 5.4 shows an example of a product key. For some apps, you will also get a serial number required for activation. Others consider the product key and serial number to be one in the same. FIGURE 5.4 Microsoft product key How Do I Buy the Right Licenses? After talking to your boss about software licenses, you decide to investigate the oﬀice productivity software on your department’s computers. You are unable to ﬁnd proper documentation that the correct software licenses were purchased, leading you to wonder whether the company has the right licenses. Your boss wants to avoid any potential legal issues and asks you to go buy enough copies of the latest version of Microsoft Oﬀice for the 20 users in your department. What do you do? The ﬁrst question to ask yourself is, do all 20 people use their computers at the same time? If not, then you might be able to purchase a concurrent license for fewer than 20 users. If there’s the possibility of all 20 users needing Oﬀice at once, then you deﬁnitely need licenses for everyone. You might purchase a corporate license as well. Now that you have ﬁgured out what to buy, how do you do it? One option is to go to the local computer store, load up 20 boxes of Oﬀice (if they have that many in stock), and trudge up to the cashier. A second option is to go to Microsoft’s volume licensing site at https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/licensing/ product-licensing/oﬀice.aspx to learn about purchasing multiple licenses. Microsoft will direct you to an authorized reseller so that you can purchase them; it will email you the list of license numbers to use when installing the software. Now you need just one physical (or downloaded) copy to perform the installation. Be sure to keep copies of the license numbers and receipts—that’s the proof that you paid for the software! Installing and Uninstalling Software Software manufacturers have smartly made installing their products very easy. They understand that if the average user can’t get the software onto their machine, then it won’t get used and the company won’t make money. Within an operating system, you might want to install additional OS features, applications, or drivers. Each requires a slightly diﬀerent process, and I will cover them all here. Operating System Features Most operating system features are installed during the initial installation of the OS. There are some optional features that perhaps not all users need, but you do. For example, if Solitaire is not installed but you are bored at work and need to keep your sanity, you could install the game (not that I recommend installing or playing games at work). Conversely, if you’re the boss and want to keep the slackers in your group from playing Solitaire, then you can remove it. If you need to manage software that is already installed (and in this case, the OS is), you will do so through Control Panel. Exercise 5.1 walks you through how to do this in Windows 10. EXERCISE 5.1 Installing and Uninstalling Operating System Features 1. Open Control Panel by clicking Start and then typing control. Click Control Panel under Best Match. 2. Set Control Panel to view either by large icons or by small icons in the upper-right corner. 3. Click Programs And Features. 4. On the left, click Turn Windows Features On Or Oﬀ. (Note that you will need administrator-level privileges to do this.) You will get a screen like the one shown in Figure 5.5. FIGURE 5.5 Turning Windows features on or oﬀ 5. In this case, the Windows Subsystem for Linux box is not checked, indicating that this component is not installed. To install it, check the box and click OK. Windows will search for the required ﬁles and install the feature. Once the process is complete, the message box will disappear. 6. Close Control Panel. Do not enable OS features unless you are sure you need them! Enabling unused and unnecessary features can potentially open security holes in your system, making it easier for a hacker to exploit your computer. Applications You will get applications either on an optical disc, ﬂash drive, or from the Internet. Installing an application from a disc is simple. Just pop the disc into the drive, and the Setup program will generally start automatically. If it doesn’t, double-click the drive icon for the drive. If that doesn’t start the Setup program, it will open a list of ﬁles on that disc; locate and double-click the one named Setup (or something similar). You can also download and install applications. If you download an executable Setup ﬁle (usually it will have an.exe or.msi extension), you can double-click that ﬁle to start the setup routine. Occasionally, an application you download may come in a compressed archive, such as a ZIP ﬁle. In such a case, you must extract the contents of the archive to a new folder on your hard disk and then run the Setup ﬁle from that new folder. Applications are installed in similar ways regardless of your operating system. For example, most Mac applications come with an installer, similar to Windows. In other cases, you drag the program into the Applications folder. In either case, applications are often delivered in either a.zip ﬁle or a disk image, designated with a.dmg ﬁle extension. Double-click either of these ﬁle types to access the program or installer. Exercise 5.2 gives you practice installing an application called 7-Zip. You’ll use 7-zip later in this chapter. EXERCISE 5.2 Installing 7-Zip 1. Go to www.7-zip.org/download.html. 2. Click the Download link next to the ﬁle you want. For this exercise, I will download the.msi for 64-bit Windows. 3. Save the ﬁle to your desktop (or other location). 4. Double-click the.msi ﬁle to begin installation. 5. Click the box to accept the license agreement and click Next. 6. Choose where to install the application (the defaults are ﬁne) and then click Next. 7. Click Install to begin installation. 8. After installation is complete, click Finish to exit the installer. If you want more practice installing applications, follow Exercise 5.3. EXERCISE 5.3 Installing Free Applications 1. Go to download.cnet.com, and locate a freeware or shareware program that interests you. 2. Download the Setup ﬁle for the program. 3. Run the Setup ﬁle to install the application. If any problems come up, such as system permission or ﬁrewall issues, troubleshoot and solve them. Regardless of the software you want to install, there are a few best practices to follow. When installing software, you should always do the following: Read the instructions. Most people don’t do this, and you’ll ﬁnd that the more a person knows about computers, the less likely it is they will follow this practice. I’m as guilty as anyone! Read the instructions to make sure you don’t miss a step that could be crucial to the installation. Read the agreements. Along with the instructions, read the licensing agreement. You might be surprised what you learn regarding how the software company can collect information on you and possibly sell it to their aﬀiliates. Be aware of advanced options. Usually the default options are ﬁne. However, in some cases, you might want to change the directory where the software is installed. This will likely be in the advanced options. You might also be able to choose components to uninstall to save disk space or components to install to speed up the application. Sometimes things like security settings or app conﬁguration preferences will be in the advanced options as well. REGISTERING AND ACTIVATION Registering software (that is, providing your contact information to the software maker) isn’t usually required. Nonetheless, software makers try to make you believe that it’s in your best interest to do so. In actuality, it’s a trade-oﬀ. Yes, companies want to collect your personal information for marketing purposes, and yes, they may sell it to a third party. However, if you register, you may be eligible for discounts on new versions, free updates, and other goodies. Activating software is a diﬀerent story. Some products, especially expensive ones that are frequently pirated, include activation features that lock the installed copy (by installation key code) to a particular PC so you can’t use it on multiple PCs. In a nutshell, here’s how it works. The software company maintains an online database of all the installation key codes. When you install the software, you’re prompted to activate it. (Usually you have 30 days to do so, or a certain number of uses, before it stops working.) The activation program examines the hardware on your system (processor, motherboard model, and so on), and it generates a code that describes the general state of the hardware. It then sends that code to the activation server online. If you try to activate the software on a diﬀerent PC, the activation server compares the hardware code it has on ﬁle to the new one coming in, and if they’re too diﬀerent, it assumes that you’re installing on a diﬀerent PC and refuses to let you activate the software. How is this code generated? Manufacturers are very cagey about that because releasing too much information may give hackers what they need to thwart the system. Generally, a small hardware change on a PC, such as a diﬀerent network card or display adapter, won’t be a problem. However, if you replace the motherboard, the software probably won’t reactivate through the automated system. Most of the manufacturers that use activation allow you to call to request an activation reset, and they won’t give you any grief about it the ﬁrst few times. But if you repeatedly call to request additional activation chances, they’ll probably think that you’re trying to get around the license agreement and won’t let you reset the activation anymore. UNINSTALLING APPLICATIONS Removing an application that you no longer want can free up disk space. In addition, if that application has a component that runs constantly in the background, removing the application can free up the memory that was previously occupied by that function. For Mac users, unless the application speciﬁcally has a Remove folder/application, you can delete the application by dragging it to the Trash. Also delete any ancillary folders or ﬁles associated with that application that may be stored in other locations, such as in the Library/Application Support folder. Doing so removes all application ﬁles and associated system resources. With Windows systems, uninstallation is best handled through the Programs And Features app of Control Panel. (If there’s an Uninstall command or icon in the folder where the application is stored, that will lead you to the same place.) Open Programs And Features in Control Panel (as you did in Exercise 5.1) and Windows will compile a list of programs for you. Find the application that you want to remove and highlight it. You should see an Uninstall option above the applications list. Figure 5.6 shows an example of this. Click Uninstall and follow the prompts. Using this method is known as a clean uninstallation. FIGURE 5.6 Uninstalling an application In Figure 5.6, you can see a Repair option next to Uninstall. If you have an application that is not working properly, you may be able to come here and repair it. If that doesn’t work, you will probably need to uninstall and reinstall the program to get it to work properly. In Programs And Features, you can also identify the software version of the installed applications on your computer. During the uninstall process, you may be asked whether you want to keep certain data or conﬁguration ﬁles. That’s up to you. If you plan to reinstall the same application later (for example, if you’re uninstalling to try to correct a problem rather than to get rid of the program entirely), you may want to save the conﬁguration ﬁles. That’s a double-edged sword, though, because if you’re uninstalling to try to correct a problem, that problem could possibly be caused by one of those conﬁguration ﬁles. If for some reason you can’t uninstall an application using the preferred clean method, you can remove it using a brute-force method that involves manually deleting the program’s ﬁles and folders and perhaps manually editing Windows registry to remove the references to it. This is known as an unclean uninstallation. An unclean uninstall isn’t a good idea because the potential is great for accidentally deleting a ﬁle that is essential to some other application or making a change to the Registry that results in other problems. However, sometimes unclean uninstallations happen by accident. For example, you may accidentally delete the folder containing an application, or you may abort the standard Uninstall utility accidentally, resulting in a half- removed, unusable application that won’t allow itself to be removed using the utility. If you need to perform an unclean uninstallation for some reason, here are the basic steps for doing it: 1. Make sure that the application isn’t running. If it has a background component, turn that oﬀ. 2. Delete the folder containing the program ﬁles. It’s probably in the C:\ Program Files folder. If it’s a 32-bit application on a 64-bit version of Windows, it may be in the C:\ Program Files (x86) folder. 3. Delete the program’s icons or folders from the Start menu. To do so, open the Start menu, right-click the icon or folder, and choose Delete. 4. If you have enough information to know what to delete in the Registry, start the Registry Editor (click Start, type regedit, and press Enter) and make the needed changes. Always be sure to back up the Registry before you edit it! Drivers A driver, also known as a device driver, is a piece of software written to tell the operating system how to communicate with a speciﬁc piece of hardware. Without a driver, the piece of hardware will not function. Usually, the only time you think about drivers is when you install new hardware, such as a printer. Most of the time when you connect your new hardware device and turn it on, your OS will recognize it and begin the driver installation process for you. Sometimes your OS will have a built-in driver that it can use. If not, it will ask you to provide one. If you have to do it manually, installing a driver is often just like installing an application. Either it will come on a CD-ROM or ﬂash drive or, more likely, you will download it from the manufacturer’s website. It will probably be an.exe ﬁle; double- click it and the installation process will begin. Here are the basic steps to installing a printer driver: 1. Once you have connected and powered up the device, boot up the computer and wait for Windows to recognize the device. 2. Windows will pop up a screen indicating that it has detected new hardware and is installing it. If it does not have a driver, it will ask you for one. Provide the location of the CD-ROM drive or downloaded driver ﬁle. 3. Installation will ﬁnish. If the new printer (or other device) isn’t automatically detected, you can start the process manually by going to Devices And Printers in Control Panel, which will open a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 5.7. Click Add A Device or Add A Printer, depending on what you are trying to add. FIGURE 5.7 Devices And Printers window You will specify the type of device, and then Windows will ask you for the driver. Also remember that you can add and manage drivers through Device Manager. Updating and Patching Software Newer versions of existing software products are frequently released. These newer versions might ﬁx known bugs with the application, while others will add functionality that didn’t exist before. The frequency of version releases depends on the software manufacturer and the severity of the issue. If it’s an update or a patch to solve an issue within the program, the manufacturer will provide that update for free. In this section, you will look at updating and patching OSs, applications (including security software), and drivers. Here I will focus on how often you should update, scheduling updates, and automatic updates. Don’t confuse updating with upgrading. Upgrading refers to replacing your current OS with a newer or more feature-rich release. For example, if you have Windows 7 and you install Windows 10 to replace it, that’s an upgrade. It’s also an upgrade if you go from a more basic to a more advanced version of the same OS, such as from Windows 7 Home Basic to Windows 7 Ultimate Edition. On the other hand, if you apply a free patch from Microsoft that’s designed to correct a problem or provide a minor enhancement, that’s an update. Updating and Patching Operating Systems The OS is the platform on which everything else sits, so it’s important that it be a stable and reliable platform. You don’t always need to have the most recently released OS version, but you do need a version that’s current enough so that all of the software that you want to use runs on it. Whatever version you use, you should make sure that all available security updates are applied to it to avoid problems due to viruses, worms, and other exploits. Most OSs have an automatic update feature, which relieves users of the burden of remembering to look for and install updates. However, occasionally an update may cause a problem on some systems. For example, an update may have an incompatibility with a certain piece of hardware that you’ve installed, causing it to stop working, or an update may cause an older application to crash. For this reason, some network administrators prefer to keep control of updates themselves on all the PCs they support rather than enabling individual users to choose to download them or not; therefore, they may disable automatic updates on individual PCs. In Windows, you control automatic updates via the Windows Update app, as shown in Figure 5.8. You can manually check for updates, review update history, and more. FIGURE 5.8 Windows Update Older versions of Windows allowed you to turn oﬀ Windows Update. Windows 10 does not give you an easy way to do this. That said, it’s best to keep your system as up-to- date as possible. When you’re installing updates, be aware that some updates require you to reboot the computer when they’re ﬁnished installing. This can be an inconvenience if you’re in the middle of an important project or have many open windows and applications. When an update requires a reboot, you can decline to restart until a more convenient time. If it’s an update where a reboot is very important, the OS will remind you until you do it, letting you postpone the next reminder for a certain amount of time, from a few minutes to a few hours. Although it may seem more convenient to avoid automatic updates because of that pesky restarting directive, there are risks associated with ignoring an available update. Some updates address critical security ﬂaws. If you don’t install updates promptly that are designed to protect your system, your PC may be vulnerable to security attacks from the Internet. Windows Update (or Software Update on the Mac) can also recommend and install updates for certain applications, especially those made by the same company as the OS. Also, depending on your hardware, it may be able to make updates for your hardware drivers available, such as a new version of a display-adapter driver or network-adapter driver. In Exercise 5.4 you will conﬁgure Windows Update. EXERCISE 5.4 Conﬁguring Windows Update 1. Open Windows Update. To ﬁnd it, click Start Settings Update And Security. Click Check for Updates, and review whether there are any updates to be installed. 2. Click View Installed Update History. A list of the previously installed updates appears, like the one shown in Figure 5.9. Review this information, noting whether they were successful and the dates they were installed. You can click the link to get more information on the update. When you are ﬁnished reviewing, click the back arrow in the upper-left corner. FIGURE 5.9 Installed updates 3. Click Change Active Hours. This lets you tell Windows when not to restart automatically, or at least to check with you before it does. Set your times and then click Save. 4. Click Restart Options. Here is where you can conﬁgure the preferred time for Windows to restart as well as your preference for receiving notiﬁcations. When ﬁnished, click the back arrow in the upper-right corner. 5. Click Advanced Options. Here you can choose to receive updates for other Windows products as well, set delivery optimization settings, and conﬁgure privacy settings. When ﬁnished, click the back arrow. 6. Click View Installed Update History again. Notice that at the top, there is a link to uninstall updates. Click it and you will see a window like the one shown in Figure 5.10. FIGURE 5.10 Uninstalling a Windows update 7. Click one of the updates. An Uninstall button appears above the list. If you wanted to remove this update, you would click Uninstall to begin that process. 8. Close the Installed updates window and then the Settings window. Major updates to the OS are typically rolled out to consumers as a service pack, cumulative update, or security update. A service pack is like any other update except for its scope; it typically alters the inner workings of the OS in a deeper way than a regular update. Updating and Patching Applications Updating or patching an application generally isn’t as critical as the operating system, with the exception of your security software. As I mentioned in the previous section, Windows Update and other OS updating software can sometimes ﬁnd updates for your applications as well. If not, the application manufacturer will release updates and patches as downloadable ﬁles on its website. You install these updates just like the application, with an.exe,.msi,.z ip, or other ﬁle you open to begin the installation. Security software is the one major exception. You always want to make sure that your security software is up-to-date, which includes its deﬁnitions library. Regardless of the antivirus or other security program you have installed, automatic updates are a good idea. They keep you from forgetting and then ending up having not updated in several months. If you do want to control your security updates manually, it’s recommended that you run them at least once per week. Updating Drivers Drivers also require infrequent updates. Usually the only time you will want to update a driver is if you are having problems with your hardware. For example, I was having issues with my video card. Occasionally, when I would resize windows in Windows, the display would freeze, go black, and then return to normal. I would see an error message stating that my display device driver had stopped responding. I updated the driver and the problem went away. The best place to get drivers is always the manufacturer’s website. You can get to your device drivers to check for updates in a few diﬀerent ways. One of the easiest ways in Windows is to open Device Manager (open the Quick Link menu by pressing the Windows key and X, or use Control Panel). Figure 5.11 shows Device Manager. FIGURE 5.11 Device Manager In Figure 5.11, you can see that I have expanded a few categories to show hardware devices. If you right-click any of the devices, you will get an option that says Update Driver. Click that and you will get a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 5.12. FIGURE 5.12 Updating the drivers screen You can let Windows search the Internet for an updated driver, or you can point Windows to the location of a driver if you have downloaded one. If Windows searches for and does not ﬁnd an updated driver, it will let you know. Otherwise, you can install it. Another way to manage drivers is to right-click the device and choose Properties. Then go to the Drivers tab, as shown in Figure 5.13. From there you can look at driver details, update the driver, roll back the driver, disable the device, or uninstall the driver. FIGURE 5.13 Driver management Occasionally, you will run into issues where you install a driver update and it causes more problems than you originally had. In situations such as this, you can roll back the driver. This basically uninstalls the current version of the driver and reinstalls the previous version. From there, you can continue to troubleshoot the situation as needed. Exploring Common Application Types There are a lot of diﬀerent software applications in the world—a lot. I wouldn’t even know where to begin if asked to count them. The good news is that if you want a piece of software that helps you accomplish a speciﬁc task, whether that task be productive or entertaining, you can probably ﬁnd it. The IT Fundamentals+ (ITF+) exam wants you to know about three groups of software —productivity, collaboration, and business. Web browsers are part of the productivity category, but because they are so widely used and can present a big security risk, they’re going to get their own section. Finally, I am going to add a section for utility software apps that provide security and other helpful functionality. File Extensions Before getting into speciﬁc application types, though, let’s take a minute to explore how operating systems know which ﬁles are applications. You’re probably familiar with ﬁlenames on a computer. You might have a pretty good idea of what ﬁles like AcroRD32.exe, resume.doc, finances.xls , or summervaca.jpg are or what they contain. Part of that is probably because of the ﬁle extension, or the “dot whatever” part at the end. The ﬁle extension tells you a little about the ﬁle, and it tells the operating system what to do with the ﬁle. The operating system knows that certain extensions are designed to execute a program directly—these are called executables. Table 5.1 lists some common executable ﬁle extensions that you should know. TABLE 5.1 Common executable ﬁle extensions Extension Use.exe Short for “executable,” it tells the OS to run the program. Most Windows desktop programs use this extension..msi For installation and removal of software within Windows. Opening an.msi ﬁle actually launches msiexec.exe, which reads the.msi ﬁle and does what it says..msi ﬁles use Windows Installer, so think of it as standing for “Microsoft Installation.”.app Executes a program within macOS (as.exe does in Windows)..bat Batch ﬁle. Used to execute multiple commands from the Windows command prompt (cmd.exe) within one ﬁle..scexe Self-extracting ﬁrmware updates that Hewlett- Packard (HP) produces, commonly associated with Linux machines. Never open an executable ﬁle you are sent via email or with which you are otherwise unfamiliar. Doing so is a good way to spread viruses. Based on Table 5.1, you can see that if you’re in Windows and you double-click an icon named excel.exe, it will open Microsoft Excel, or winword.exe will open up Microsoft Word. What about ﬁles with diﬀerent extensions? Why is it that if I double-click my resume.doc ﬁle, Word opens? (Not that we’re complaining here, but how does the OS know to do that?) The OS keeps a list of known ﬁle extensions and associates them with speciﬁc applications. For example, if you open anything with a.doc extension, the OS knows that it needs to open Microsoft Word to read that ﬁle. In Windows, you can go to Control Panel Default Programs to see and conﬁgure associations. Once in Default Programs, look for a setting called Associate A File Type Or Protocol With A Program. (You can also get there from Start Settings Apps.) That will open the Apps & Features window. Then click Default apps to get a screen like the one shown in Figure 5.14. FIGURE 5.14 Default Apps window In the Default Apps section shown in Figure 5.14, you can see that you can choose the default apps for various tasks. If you scroll down, there is the link to Choose Default Apps By File Type. Clicking the link will open a window with a list of ﬁle extensions like the one shown in Figure 5.15 (I have scrolled down to the.d section). You can see that there are quite a few diﬀerent ﬁle extensions associated with Microsoft Word! If you wanted to change the association, you would click the application and then choose a new one from a pop-up list. Where appropriate, I will talk more about speciﬁc ﬁle extensions and the applications with which they are associated throughout this section. FIGURE 5.15 Choosing default apps by ﬁle type Not All Operating Systems Need File Extensions After just telling you about ﬁle extensions and what OSs use them for, this topic might seem contradictory, but it’s not. While most operating systems (and their associated ﬁle systems) use ﬁle extensions, not all require ﬁle extensions. There are two methods an operating system can use to determine what to do with a ﬁle as it’s opened. The ﬁrst, as you know, is through the use of ﬁle extensions. The second is by encoding the information within the ﬁle itself. When ﬁles are stored, some of the initial information in them is called a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type. Don’t let the words Internet and mail throw you oﬀ—MIME is used for much more than that. Examples of MIME types include text/plain, application/msword, image/png, and audio/mpeg3. Windows ignores MIME types and relies solely on the ﬁle extension. UNIX, Linux, and macOS read the MIME type when a ﬁle is opened, and that is how they determine which application to use to open the ﬁle. That said, most ﬁles on computers with these OSs will have extensions, mostly to provide compatibility in case the ﬁle ends up on a Windows box. In some cases, a ﬁle extension on a Mac ﬁle can help if the MIME type is unclear. Web browsers and email clients also make use of MIME extensions to help determine what to do with ﬁles. Productivity Software The ﬁrst group of software types that I will talk about is productivity software. The group gets its name because, well, it’s designed to make you more productive. The software in this section will help you get more work done and ideally make that work easier as well. Word Processing Software Word processing software is one of the most common types of applications used by business and home users alike. With this software, you can create everything from simple letters or résumé s to detailed reports and ﬂyers. The most popular word processing program on the market today is Microsoft Word, which is part of the Microsoft Oﬀice suite. Figure 5.16 shows a simple Word document. FIGURE 5.16 Word document Within a word processor, you will have the ability to change fonts and styles; insert pictures, shapes, and tables; and manage many diﬀerent facets of the document’s appearance. Of course, there are several other word processing programs, some of which are free and others that are not. Among the commercial oﬀerings are Corel WordPerfect and Corel Write. Free options include Google Docs, AbiWord, Jarte, and LibreOﬀice. Each one has slightly diﬀerent menus and features, but in general they all do the same thing. With features, sometimes you get what you pay for. In addition, the biggest issue you might run into is compatibility between formats. It’s not guaranteed that a Microsoft Word document will be readable in WordPerfect or Jarte, or anything else for that matter. For the most part, you won’t run into any problems with simpler documents, but more complicated ﬁles with unique features can pose problems. Compatibility can also be inﬂuenced by the format in which you save it. Simple text (.txt) ﬁles are more compatible across platforms than are.docx ﬁles. Table 5.2 lists some common ﬁle extensions for word processing software. TABLE 5.2 Word processing ﬁle extensions Extension Use.txt Basic text ﬁle. Almost all word processors will open this, from the basic Notepad in Windows to Microsoft Word, and most other commercial and free apps as well. Generally, very few conﬁguration options (such as fonts or inserting images) are available..rtf Rich-text format. A fairly basic document format developed by Microsoft and generally more compatible than.doc ﬁles..doc/.docx Microsoft Word ﬁles..docx ﬁles are newer and support more features than older.doc ﬁles. The ﬁle extensions in Table 5.2 are only a few of the ones that exist in the wild—know that other extensions exist too. For example, WordPerfect typically uses the.wpd extension; AbiWord uses.abw; and OpenOﬀice can use several extensions, such as.odt,.ott, and.sxw. I have talked about Google Docs before and how it’s run from Google’s cloud. Microsoft has a cloud-based version of its popular Oﬀice software as well, called Oﬀice 365. It gives you fully functional versions of Oﬀice software and works on workstations, tablets, and Android-based phones. You buy a subscription to use it (either monthly or yearly) and store ﬁles online just as you would with Google Docs. Spreadsheet Software Spreadsheets serve an important niche, which is to manage numbers and small quantities of data. They are almost as popular as word processing programs. In fact, most oﬀice “suites” of software bundle word processing and spreadsheet applications together, along with basic database and presentation software. Microsoft Oﬀice includes Word (for documents) and Excel (for spreadsheets), and OpenOﬀice has Writer and Calc. Other versions include Quattro Pro, Google Sheets, and Gnumeric (for Windows and Linux). The.xls and.xlsx extensions are associated with Microsoft Excel; Figure 5.17 shows a basic Excel spreadsheet. FIGURE 5.17 Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet software is mostly used for managing numbers or lists of data. You can have it do math for you using formulas, sort data, create visuals with charts and graphs, and perform relatively complex data manipulation tasks using macros. Some spreadsheet programs also have add-ins that let you do more complex analyses, such as correlations and regression analysis. If you have more sizeable data management needs, then it’s more eﬀicient to use database software. Databases are covered in depth in Chapter 7, “Database Fundamentals.” Presentation Software You might ﬁnd yourself in a situation where a meeting is coming up and you need to convey a message to a group of people. Presentation software is designed to help you do that by letting you put your ideas in slides so you can share a full-screen slide show from your computer. Within your presentation, you can add text, graphs, charts, pictures, and shapes; embed videos for playback; and even create special eﬀects such as having text fade in or out and adding sound. You can also set it up such that the slides transition after a set amount of time. Some people do this and set up a recording of the presentation to create what amounts to a presentation video to send to others. As with other software types, you have plenty of presentation packages available, free and commercial, locally installed or web- based. Microsoft PowerPoint comes as part of the Microsoft Oﬀice suite and is a commonly used piece of presentation software. OpenOﬀice’s equivalent is called Impress, and a popular Mac version is Keynote. Figure 5.18 shows you what editing a basic presentation in PowerPoint could look like. The.ppt and.pptx ﬁle extensions are associated with PowerPoint. FIGURE 5.18 Microsoft PowerPoint The IT Fundamentals+ (ITF+) exam objectives list web browsers under productivity software. They get covered in their own “Web Browsers” section later in this chapter. Visual Diagramming Software They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In some cases, visual diagrams can be worth ten thousand words. Some concepts simply need to be diagrammed. Visual diagramming software can help tremendously. Examples in the business world include organization charts, ﬂowcharts, and business processes. Technology examples include network diagrams, database structures, and data ﬂow. These six examples just barely scratch the surface. Diagramming software can often create charts and graphs, as well as complicated schematic drawings such as ﬂoor plans or circuit paths. If you need to draw the relationship between multiple items or ideas, diagramming software is the way to go. Dozens of options exist in the marketplace. Some popular programs include SmartDraw, Microsoft Visio, Gliﬀy, Creately, and Lucidchart. Figure 5.19 shows an example of a diagram created with SmartDraw. FIGURE 5.19 HR hiring process ﬂowchart example Sample image copyright SmartDraw. Used with permission. Which Software Should You Choose? You are consulting for a friend who owns a small business with about 20 employees. She is in the process of standardizing all the software her employees use. They use a lot of productivity software, speciﬁcally presentation software, spreadsheets, and word processing applications. In addition, they quite often share the ﬁles with external agencies that collaborate on work with them. Your friend wants to keep costs down, but she also wants seamless integration with her external agencies. What should you advise her to choose? You have probably three main choices: Microsoft Oﬀice, a free local option such as OpenOﬀice, or a cloud-based solution such as Google Drive. All of them will provide the functionality that your friend’s employees need, and odds are that the employees are already familiar with their shared features. The biggest concern might be sharing the ﬁles with external agencies. If the external agencies use Microsoft Oﬀice, then it will be much better for your friend’s company to use it as well. If your friend is less concerned with occasional interoperability issues and more concerned about the bottom line, then free options might be a better alternative. Present the three options along with pros and cons to your friend so that she can make the most informed decision possible. Collaboration Software The world is more interconnected today than it has ever been. If you work in an oﬀice environment, it’s entirely possible that some or all members of your work team will be located in diﬀerent cities or on diﬀerent continents. No matter the situation, you still need to get work done eﬀectively as a team, just as if you were sitting in the cubicles next to each other. That’s where collaboration software comes into play. The goal of collaboration software is to blur the lines between those who work right next to you and those who do not. It’s sort of ﬁtting then that most collaboration software applications blur the lines between the categories of collaboration software listed in the CompTIA IT Fundamentals+ (ITF+) exam objectives. Said another way, one software package might be able to provide everything you need for collaboration, including email, working online, sharing and storing ﬁles, sharing screens, having videoconferences, and instant messaging each other. That said, I’ll still cover each of the categories of collaboration software individually, mostly to address the speciﬁc goals of each type of software. Email Client Software Email is by far and away the most commonly used collaboration software today. The vast majority of people with computers or mobile devices use it daily. It’s so prevalent that it can be a distraction for people; we could argue that it actually hurts productivity for some users. Regardless of whether you think you can’t live without email or if you ﬁnd the number of messages you get to be overwhelming, email is entrenched in our society. To use email, you need an email client. Email clients let you send and receive messages, manage your contacts and calendar, and assign yourself tasks with deadlines, and they will give you reminders when you need to follow up on something. Most businesses that use a commercial email client will choose between one of the two giants: Microsoft Outlook or IBM Notes (formerly Lotus Notes). There are dozens of other email clients that you can install locally on your computer, such as GNUMail and Mozilla Thunderbird. If you have an email account through your company, university, or other organization, you will likely use one of these clients and connect to an email server managed by that organization. If you use Outlook and Microsoft Oﬀice, they synchronize pretty well together. Formatting Outlook emails is similar to using Microsoft Word, and Outlook also links seamlessly with Microsoft’s instant messaging software, which I’ll talk about later in this chapter. There are lots of free Internet email services that you can use as well. Examples include Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, Outlook.com , and Mail.com. Each has diﬀerent features and peculiarities. Most have the ability to use an instant messenger, link to your social media accounts, and work on your mobile device. Oftentimes, you also get presented with copious amounts of advertising. But they’re free. Conferencing Software Two types of programs covered in the IT Fundamentals+ (ITF+) objectives—conferencing and online workspace—are closely related to each other. In fact, most software that does one of these functions will do the other as well—and then some. It just depends on how you want to use the service. Conferencing software can simply be for phone calls, but most incorporate a video component. Videoconferencing is making a call, like a telephone call, to a remote location using your computer. As the name implies, you and the other people on the call can use webcams to see each other, as opposed to just hearing their voices. This type of solution has obvious advantages, but it also means that you probably can’t take calls lying around home in your pajamas anymore. Well, maybe you can—it depends on your co-workers! The technology in this area has improved dramatically in recent years, with the goal of some of the higher-end videoconferencing suites to make you feel like you and the people on the other end of the line are actually in the same room. This has been termed telepresence. To make this seem like an authentic experience where everyone is in the same room, special videoconferencing rooms are set up. The rooms at both locations often have the same style of table and chairs and the same dé cor, including similar artwork and fake plants! With most videoconferencing software packages, you have the ability to share what’s on your screen. You can choose to share all applications or just one speciﬁc ﬁle. In addition, you will have options such as recording the session and allowing others to annotate your screen. Recordings can be played back later for people who couldn’t make the conference or if you want to review comments made by someone on the call. There are dozens of software solutions available for those who want videoconferencing. Cisco WebEx, GoToMeeting, Fuze, join.me, Slack, Mikogo, and Adobe Connect are some popular commercial options. Free options include Skype, Google Hangouts and Duo, UberConference, FaceTime, and Camfrog. The paid options usually have a quality of service (QoS) guarantee, whereas the free ones don’t. The free ones might work ﬁne one time and then be plagued by connection issues the next. In addition, the free ones are not as likely to have all the same features of their commercial counterparts. One technology that is often seen along with videoconferencing is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It isn’t a speciﬁc software package but rather a group of technologies that work to deliver voice communications over the Internet or other data networks. VoIP can give you voice-only transmissions over network cables or video along with voice, all over the same network connection. To see whether you are using VoIP, look at where the phone plugs in to the wall. Does it plug into a standard phone jack or a network jack? If it’s the latter, you are probably using VoIP. The biggest advantage of VoIP and teleconferencing is that they help reduce travel costs. Instead of paying to ﬂy people to a remote location for a meeting, you can simply connect with your business partners in another location. Good teleconferencing systems are pretty expensive, but with the travel savings, the systems pay for themselves very quickly. Instant Messaging Software Instant messaging is sending a text note to another user in real- time. If you do it on your phone, it’s typically referred to as texting. Instant message (IM) software will keep a list of contacts that you have added. Some, such as Microsoft Skype (formerly Lync), will synchronize with your Microsoft Outlook address book to make ﬁnding connections easier. Many IM programs will also let you share your screen with those with whom who you are chatting. There are dozens of IM applications, and most of them are free. In addition to Microsoft Skype, there are Yahoo! Messenger, Google Hangouts, ICQ, Adium, FaceTime, Pidgin, Digsby, Trillian, Miranda IM, and many others. The key is that the person with whom you want to chat needs to be on the same system; otherwise, you won’t be able to connect. Some, such as Pidgin and Digsby, allow you to connect simultaneously across several messaging networks. Online Workspace Online workspace speciﬁcally means that multiple people can collaborate on (and make changes to) the same ﬁle at the same time. This, of course, involves sharing the screen of the ﬁle on which you are working with others. Screenhero (now built into Slack) and Mikogo are two examples of online workspaces. Features include a multiuser whiteboard, session recording, and instant messenger chat. Document Storage and Sharing If you are working with colleagues in a diﬀerent location, being able to access the ﬁles your team needs to work on quickly and easily is a big deal. Today, there are multiple cloud-based services that let you store and share documents online. Examples include Google Drive, Microsoft Oﬀice Online, Box, Dropbox, IDrive, and OpenDrive. Some are more geared toward online backups, whereas others are focused more on making sharing easier. Here are some key features to look for when considering online document storage and sharing: Storage and Upload Maximums How much data will the solution allow you to store, and what is the size limit on the ﬁles you upload? This might not be as big of a deal with a small team, but if you are considering a solution for an entire organization, size limits matter. Backups Is the data backed up? And if so, how often? There would be nothing worse than to trust someone else to manage your data and then to lose it because it hasn’t been backed up. File Synchronization This can be a big deal if multiple people are working on a ﬁle at the same time and don’t realize it. How does the system know, and what version does it keep? Also, some solutions allow you to keep a virtual copy of those ﬁles on your local system. Make sure that those are synchronized with the online versions. File Encryption Are the online ﬁles encrypted when they are stored? They had better be. Storing plain-text data on a cloud- based resource is basically asking to have your data stolen. Maintained Servers Who owns and maintains the company’s servers? Do they do it themselves or license it out to a third party such as Google? Companies that own their hardware have more control over that hardware and of course have a vested interest in making sure that it runs properly. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a company that uses a third party such as Google to manage their cloud, but it does introduce one more player into the mix, which introduces more potential issues. Security Mechanisms Can you set folder permissions and set diﬀerent permissions for each folder? You should be able to. In addition, managing the security should be easy for anyone in your organization. Mobile Platforms It should work with mobile devices, and most online storage and sharing systems do. Almost all online systems will synchronize with mobile devices as well. Help and Support How accessible is their help and support system? Do they just have email support, or can you get live chat if you need it? There isn’t really a one-size-ﬁts-all solution for all business situations. The best idea is to research the diﬀerent options, weigh the pros and cons, and then choose the best one for your needs. Business Software Businesses make prodigious use of productivity and collaboration software, so it may seem a bit odd that business software is its own category. It is though, so here we’ll cover database, project management, business-speciﬁc, and accounting software. Basic Database Software Databases come in all shapes and sizes, from small systems that hold a few hundred records to massive behemoths that hold hundreds of millions of records. Here, we’ll focus on the smaller, more user-friendly variety. Database management is a lucrative career for many IT professionals. In its simplest form, a database doesn’t look like much more than a spreadsheet. It contains data in a logical structure, which should make it easy to access. Databases can be a lot more complex, though, with multiple tables interacting with each other to produce the data you need to use. As with other applications, there are plenty of basic database choices on the market, some free and some commercial. Microsoft Access comes with the Oﬀice Suite, and OpenOﬀice contains a database solution called Base. The key when looking for database software is to ensure that it’s relatively easy to use, can expand to meet your storage needs, and has the security you require. The most popular large-scale database provider is Oracle. Microsoft also has a popular large database platform called SQL Server. Project Management Software For any company that runs large-scale projects, project management software is a critical organizational tool. Project management software provides a visual representation of tasks needed to complete a project. Nearly all packages will let you create tasks and set dependencies (when one task is reliant upon another), set milestones, perform scheduling, and create reports and Gantt charts. A lot of project management software operates on a subscription basis, and companies pay either a ﬂat monthly fee or a per-user fee. Some oﬀer mobile apps, and nearly all provide online storage space. Popular programs include Zoho Projects, LiquidPlanner, Microsoft Project, and Teamwork Projects. Figure 5.20 shows an example from Zoho Projects. FIGURE 5.20 Zoho Projects software Sample image copyright Zoho Corporation. Used with permission. Business-Speciﬁc Software The topic of business-speciﬁc applications is nearly as wide as the topic of software in general. There are thousands of titles out there, and the one a speciﬁc business requires will of course depend on the business needs. A magazine publisher has very diﬀerent requirements than an engineering ﬁrm or a doctor’s oﬀice. Here I’ll provide three examples—desktop publishing, computer-aided drafting, and medical or scientiﬁc software—but know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Desktop Publishing or Page Layout Software If you wanted to create your own book or magazine, you would need software to help you do that, and desktop publishing is that software. Desktop publishers aren’t limited to complicated oﬀerings, though; they are perfectly capable of creating smaller projects such as pamphlets or ﬂyers for distribution. With today’s software, there has been a blurring of the lines between what desktop publishing software can oﬀer versus word processing applications. The long story short is that word processors have gotten to the point where they oﬀer so many features that they are almost as fully featured as desktop publishing packages out there (and in some cases more). Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but there are several desktop publishing software packages available, both for free and commercial. Microsoft Oﬀice comes with Publisher, and Figure 5.21 shows what it looks like when it opens. Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, and Apple Pages are other popular versions. FIGURE 5.21 Microsoft Publisher Perhaps the most obvious diﬀerence between Publisher and Word is that Publisher has several more built-in templates from which you can choose. Once you decide which type of document you want to create, editing that ﬁle is practically identical to using Word. One thing that you might use more of with a desktop publisher than a word processor is image ﬁles. If you’re going to create an eye-catching poster or ﬂyer, you need to include pictures. Pictures are stored with speciﬁc ﬁle extensions, and some of the most common ones are included in Table 5.3. TABLE 5.3 Image ﬁle extensions Extension Use.jpg Called a “j-peg,” and sometimes you will see ﬁles with a.j peg extension. The JPEG standard deﬁnes how images are compressed and stored. Very commonly used by digital cameras..gif Pronounced with a hard g like the word go, it stands for Graphics Interchange Format. Uses a diﬀerent compression standard than JPEG. Commonly used on websites..tiff Pronounced like a word and sometimes found as just.tif. Stands for Tagged Image File Format. Uses lossless compression, which preserves better image quality than JPEG or GIF..PNG Portable Network Graphics. Designed as a lossless compression format to replace GIF. Very common on websites..bmp Short for bitmap. One of the oldest and simplest image formats, usually for lower-quality pictures. Any desktop publishing software will recognize all of the image ﬁle formats shown here. Most photo-editing software will as well. Occasionally, you will run into photo software that only lets you edit a few of the formats, but again, most will work with any of the extensions in Table 5.3. Computer-Aided Design and Graphic Design Computer-aided design (CAD) systems are used by designers of buildings and other structures as well as artists to create two- and three-dimensional drawings. If you’re going to build a house, you need blueprints, and odds are they were created by an architect or engineer with a CAD program. AutoCAD is probably the best-known and most fully featured CAD package, but there are versions for novice users as well. For example, HGTV produces the HGTV Ultimate Home Design package that lets you create ﬂoorplans for a house, complete with full interior design, landscaping, and decks. Graphic designers use similar software but obviously specialized for graphics. Practical applications include designing corporate logos, professionally altering photos (Photoshop, anyone?), or designing websites. Medical and Scientiﬁc Software Professionals in medical and scientiﬁc ﬁelds often have very speciﬁc software needs. If you have visited your doctor or the hospital recently, you’ve seen that there are computers everywhere. It’s likely that those computers are running an electronic medical records (EMR) or electronic health records (EHR) package. These packages hold the patient’s medical records but also allow the provider to interface with medical testing equipment such as an electrocardiogram (EKG) kit. There are also software packages speciﬁcally for medical practice management and billing software that helps link to insurance companies. Finally, you might have seen software that lets patients link to their own records so that when they get medical tests back, they can log in online and see their results. Of course, when we’re talking about medical records, privacy and security are of the utmost concern, so that’s an issue about which you should be aware as well. Scientiﬁc software can be somewhat universal, such as for statistical testing, or it can be highly specialized. For example, there are software packages that help aid in research in topics from bioinformatics to genetics to nuclear magnetic resonance to computational astronomy. Clearly, the processing power of computers has greatly advanced our knowledge of science. Accounting Software Accounting (or ﬁnancial) software has two major divisions: professional use and small business/home use. Professional investors or traders have specialized software packages that allow them to analyze the market and make trading decisions. For small business owners or home users, there are a number of applications that help manage ﬁnances, such as Quicken, QuickBooks, Microsoft Money, and iCash. Web-based apps are gaining traction in the market, led by Mint and doxo. Most of these programs allow you to set and track budgets, manage your banking, plan investment choices and retirement savings, generate reports, and pay bills automatically. Tax preparation is another big area for small business and home users who might not want to pay for professional services. TurboTax and H&R Block’s tax preparation software are the leaders in this ﬁeld. Utility Software Many extra services that you can use on a computer are handy to have but are not necessarily ones that help you get your project done or communicate with others. These functions are managed by utility software. The programs in this section are not mandatory, but all of them are pretty useful. Anti-Malware Malware is software that does harm to your computer. Why would software harm your computer? Well, the unfortunate reality is that there are bad people in this world. It’s sad in a way because many people who are otherwise talented programmers choose to use their skills to harm others. It’s reality, though, so you need to do what you can to protect your computer against malware. The term malware is really a grouping of diﬀerent types of bad programs. I am sure that many of their names will be familiar to you, such as viruses, worms, spyware, and rootkits. I’ll talk about each of these in more detail in Chapter 9, “Security Concepts and Threats,” but for now I’ll just cover how to keep them oﬀ your computer. As the name of this section suggests, you use anti-malware software to keep the malware oﬀ your machine. Some of the more popular programs in the anti-malware arena are Symantec’s Norton Security (formerly Norton Antivirus), McAfee, AVG, Avast, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Malwarebytes. When choosing a software package, it’s important to understand what it speciﬁcally protects against. Some apps protect against several types of threats, but others are speciﬁcally antivirus or antispyware packages. There’s nothing wrong with those specialized products, as long as you’re aware of the level of protection your computer has. Just because you have anti-malware installed does not mean that you are guaranteed to be virus or spyware free! Still, going without the anti-malware software is very dangerous for computers with an Internet connection. How Anti-Malware Works Generally speaking, anti-malware works by monitoring activity on your computer for any activity that appears suspicious. For example, an antivirus program is generally run in the background on a computer, and it examines all the ﬁle activity on that computer. When it detects suspicious activity, it notiﬁes the user of a potential problem and asks the user what to do about it. Some antivirus programs can also make intelligent decisions about what to do. The process of running an antivirus program on a computer is known as inoculating the computer against a virus. For a listing of most current viruses, refer to Symantec’s AntiVirus Research Center (SARC) at www.symantec.com/security-center. These programs have a database of known viruses and the symptoms each one causes. They look for those symptoms as well as signatures, or speciﬁc patterns of computer code, that could be suspicious. Antivirus databases should be updated frequently. About once a week is good, although more often is better. Most antivirus programs will automatically update themselves if conﬁgured properly. While a true antivirus program will scan for viruses, anti- malware programs are a superset of virus scanners and will look for more than just traditional viruses, such as spyware. The operating systems from Microsoft are the ones most aﬀected by spyware, and Microsoft has released Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender to combat the problem. (Microsoft Security Essentials is built into Windows Defender in Windows 8 and Windows 10.) Conﬁguring Anti-Malware After you install your software, you need to conﬁgure it. For the most part, the default settings for the anti-malware program are going to be suﬀicient. The biggest thing will be to ensure that the software is set to update automatically. Figure 5.22 shows the main screen of Norton Internet Security. FIGURE 5.22 Norton Internet Security In Figure 5.22, you can see the security settings to turn on or oﬀ, as well as the ability to scan your system immediately and other features. To get to the conﬁguration of updates in this software, I clicked Settings. It gave me the screen in Figure 5.23, and you can see that automatic updates are on. FIGURE 5.23 Automatic updates are on. Removing Malware If you think you have an infected computer, you will want to remove the malware. The following discussion presents the information you need to know for removing the bad software: 1. Identify malware symptoms. Before doing anything major, it is imperative ﬁrst to be sure you are dealing with the right issue. If you suspect malware, then try to identify the type (spyware, virus, and so on) and look for the proof needed to substantiate that it is indeed the culprit. 2. Quarantine the infected system. Once you have conﬁrmed that malware is at hand, then quarantine the infected system to prevent it from spreading the malware to other systems. Bear in mind that malware can spread any number of ways, including through a network connection, email, and so on. The quarantine needs to be complete to prevent any spread. 3. Remediate infected systems. The steps taken here depend on the type of malware with which you’re dealing, but it should include updating antivirus software with the latest deﬁnitions and using the appropriate scan and removal techniques. 4. Schedule scans and updates. The odds of the system never being confronted by malware again are slim. To reduce the chances of it being infected again, schedule scans and updates to run regularly. 5. Educate the end user. Education should always be viewed as the ﬁnal step. The end user needs to understand what led to the malware infestation and what to avoid, or look for, in the future to keep it from happening again. Software Firewalls A ﬁrewall is a hardware or software solution that serves as your network’s security guard. They’re probably the most important devices on networks connected to the Internet. Firewalls can protect you in two ways. They protect your network resources from hackers lurking in the dark corners of the Internet, and they can simultaneously prevent computers on your network from accessing undesirable content on the Internet. At a basic level, ﬁrewalls ﬁlter network traﬀic based on rules deﬁned by the network administrator. Anti-malware software examines individual ﬁles for threats. Firewalls protect you from streams of network traﬀic that could be harmful to your computer. Firewalls can be stand-alone “black boxes,” software installed on a server or router, or some combination of hardware and software. In addition to the categorizations of hardware and software, there are two types of ﬁrewalls: network-based and host-based. A network-based ﬁrewall is designed to protect a whole network of computers and almost always is a hardware solution with software on it. Host-based ﬁrewalls protect only one computer and are almost always software solutions. How Firewalls Work Most network-based ﬁrewalls have at least two network connections: one to the Internet, or public side, and one to the internal network, or private side. Some ﬁrewalls have a third network port for a second semi-internal network. This port is used to connect servers that can be considered both public and private, such as web and email servers. This intermediary network is known as a demilitarized zone (DMZ). A DMZ can also be conﬁgured as a space between two ﬁrewalls. Figure 5.24 shows examples of DMZ s. FIGURE 5.24 Two ways to conﬁgure a DMZ A ﬁrewall is conﬁgured to allow only packets (network data) that pass speciﬁc security restrictions to get through. By default, most ﬁrewalls are conﬁgured as default deny, which means that all traﬀic is blocked unless speciﬁcally authorized by the administrator. The basic method of conﬁguring ﬁrewalls is to use an access control list (ACL). The ACL is the set of rules that determines which traﬀic gets through the ﬁrewall and which traﬀic is blocked. ACLs are typically conﬁgured to block traﬀic by IP address, port number, domain name, or some combination of all three. Packets that meet the criteria in the ACL are passed through the ﬁrewall to their destination. Enabling a Software Firewall Windows comes with its own software ﬁrewall called Windows Defender Firewall. There are also numerous software ﬁrewalls on the market. Conﬁguring Windows Defender Firewall is beyond the scope of the IT Fundamentals+ (ITF+) exam. For now, know that turning on a ﬁrewall is a good thing to help protect your computer from hackers, and it should be turned on by default. Windows Defender Firewall is found in Control Panel under System And Security. Figure 5.25 shows the screen where you enable Windows Defender Firewall. FIGURE 5.25 Windows Defender Firewall Some third-party security software, such as Norton Internet Security, comes with its own software ﬁrewall. In cases where you have those types of programs installed, they will turn oﬀ Windows Defender Firewall automatically (as is the case in Figure 5.25). Compression Software You probably share ﬁles with other people quite a lot, and sometimes those ﬁles get really big—so big that they can clog up your email pipes and not make it through the server. At other times, you have 20 ﬁles that you want to share, but you really don’t want to have to sit there and attach 20 separate ﬁles to an email. Compression software is the solution to both of these dilemmas. Compressing a ﬁle is often called zipping a ﬁle, named after one of the compression ﬁle extensions, which is.zip. Compression software removes redundant information within ﬁles and by doing so makes them smaller than their original size. You will see diﬀerent levels of compression based on the type of ﬁle you are trying to compress. Text ﬁles and worksheets often compress quite a bit, whereas pictures don’t usually see much of a size reduction. As noted earlier, compression software can also take multiple ﬁles and compress them into the same archive, which can be uncompressed later and the original ﬁles retrieved. The gold standard in compression software for many years has been WinZip. It’s a great program, but it’s not free. Other popular options include WinRAR, PKZ IP, 7-Zip, gzip, and Express Z ip. Table 5.4 lists common compression ﬁle formats and their use. TABLE 5.4 File compression formats Extension Use.rar Compression format introduced by WinRAR program.tar Short for tape archive, it’s a format used in the UNIX and Linux environments. It’s not compressed; a compressed.tar ﬁle would have the extension.tar.gz..zip The most common compression format, supported by most compression software. Originally created by PKWARE, which makes the PKZIP program.dmg macOS disk image ﬁles.iso Disk image archive ﬁles for optical media, such as CD-ROMs.7z Compression ﬁles generated by the 7-Zip program.gz Compression ﬁles generated by the gzip program, which is mostly found on UNIX and Linux systems. gzip is the replacement for the compress utility..jar Short for Java archive; similar in format to.zip ﬁles. Usually used to distribute software programmed in the Java language Earlier in Exercise 5.2, you downloaded and installed 7-Z ip. In Exercise 5.5, you will use 7-Z ip to create an archive. EXERCISE 5.5 Using 7 -Z ip to Create an Archive 1. Click Start, and you will have the 7-Z ip File Manager in your applications menu. Click it to open it. You will see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 5.26. You can click any folder to navigate to it, or you can use the up folder arrow to the left of the location bar to move up one level. FIGURE 5.26 7-Z ip ﬁle manager 2. Navigate to a ﬁle or folder you want to add to the zipped archive, and click the green plus (Add) button. It will give you a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 5.27. FIGURE 5.27 7-Z ip archive options 3. The defaults are ﬁne to accept, but notice that you have options. The ones that you are most likely to use pertain to renaming the ﬁle, the level of compression, and password protecting the ﬁle. 4. Click OK, and 7-Z ip will create the ﬁle for you. 5. Compare the.7 z ﬁle to the original. How much smaller is it? PDF Viewers and Creators The.pdf ﬁle format, short for Portable Document Format, was created in the early 1990s by software maker Adobe Systems. Adobe’s goal was to create a document format that would work regardless of the user’s computer platform, such as Windows, macOS, UNIX, or Linux. Instead of needing software such as Microsoft Word, which might or might not run on your computer, you needed a.pdf reader, such as Adobe Reader (called Acrobat Reader back then), which could be installed on any OS. Usually,.pdf ﬁles are documents, but they can be ﬂyers, worksheets, presentations, or really anything you want them to be. Some organizations use.pdf ﬁles as a basic way to do desktop publishing. For most of its history, the.pdf format was proprietary and owned by Adobe. In 2008, it decided to relinquish control and make it an open standard, managed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which is a volunteer organization that establishes international standards. Background on ISO ISO might seem like it should be abbreviated IOS, but it’s an international organization with three oﬀicial languages: English, French, and Russian. The organization’s name would require diﬀerent acronyms when translated into each of the languages, so it settled on ISO. Some of the more common standards for which they are known are ISO 9000, quality management; ISO 27001, information security management; ISO 14000, environmental management; and ISO 22000, food safety management. ISO isn’t a policing organization, so it can’t enforce standards. Compliance is accomplished more through peer pressure; showing that you are ISO-compliant indicates to potential business partners that you take quality (or information security, or whatever) seriously, so you are a legitimate business partner. The method to read a.pdf ﬁle hasn’t changed much since the early 1990s—you still need a.pdf reader. Adobe Reader is distributed free, and there are other free readers on the market as well. Most web browsers (both workstation and mobile) either have the ability to read.pdf ﬁles natively or have a downloadable add-on to make it happen. One of the nice features of.pdf ﬁles is that normally when you distribute them, they are read-only. Other people can’t modify the ﬁles unless they have.pdf-editing software; and even then, you can set passwords to protect the ﬁle’s contents. Another cool feature is that you can enable the.pdf ﬁle for people to edit certain parts of it. For example, say you are distributing a form to clients and you want them to enter their name and address, as well as choose from several options in which they might be interested (by checking boxes). You could create a.pdf ﬁle that lets users edit those ﬁelds but not the rest of the document. To create or edit a.pdf ﬁle, you need special software called a PDF creator. The most popular creator is Adobe Acrobat, and several versions are available. You will also ﬁnd numerous free PDF converters online that will take existing documents and convert them for you. Others will convert.pdf back to a format such as.doc, but usually you need to pay for software that does this. Finally, Microsoft Oﬀice 2010 and newer have a feature that lets you generate a.pdf ﬁle directly from the application. As shown in Figure 5.28, if you go to the File menu and navigate to Save & Send, you have two options for creating PDFs—one to create a PDF/XPS document and the other to attach a PDF copy of the document in an email. Or, you can c

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