From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Find the right application

From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Find the right application

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- [Instructor] An important part of progressing beyond the novice level of using computers is being able to quickly determine which applications to use to accomplish various tasks. Choosing the right application for your needs is a skill that you can develop as you become more aware of the types of applications available and how to use them. As we've seen some apps come pre-installed on your computer like calculator or Notepad, but you can also install new apps on your computer. When we need to do that here in Windows 10 is by browsing and searching the Microsoft Store. Now the Store icon might be pinned in your task bar like it is here, in which case you can just click it to go to the Store, but you can also find it by going to the start menu, and you should see the Store as one of the tiles here in the menu. If you don't see it you can just type Store into the search bar and then select the Microsoft Store, when it appears as one of the search results. Any one of those options will open up the Store. And here you can browse apps by category like gaming, entertainment, productivity, and so on, because apps are essentially tools that fall into different categories. Here in the Microsoft Store, you'll find featured apps at the top of the screen. As you scroll down, you'll be able to browse through the available apps under categories like best-selling apps, which is a good place to find the most popular apps, which could be an indicator of the apps that you'll find useful, or you'll find categories around specific tasks, or activities like photo and video editing apps, productivity apps, and so on. Click on any app that looks interesting to read more about it. Here you'll find an overview of the app, and you can read reviews, view the system requirements for using the app and so on. Now, if you're looking for a specific app, you can type its name into the search bar at the top of the window. For instance, I'm looking for an app called Microsoft Whiteboard, so I'll type Whiteboard and there it is. I'll click it to go to its product page. And again, I can read more about it here. And if I decide that I want to use, or at least try this app, I just click get to install it. Now in this case Whiteboard is a free app. So the button says get. If the app costs money you'll see a buy button. Many paid apps also offer free trials on their Store pages. So you can try them out for a limited time to decide if you want to purchase them. But again, this particular app is free so I can install it by clicking get. So from there, it will download, and install onto my computer, and I'll be able to use it right away. Notice we now have a launch button, so I can click launch to open up that app here on my computer. I'll just close that for now. And I'll close the Store. Now it's important to understand that certain types of files require certain applications to open them. For example, I have this document here on my desktop, when I right click on it and go to the open with menu, I'm presented with a list of apps I have installed on my computer that can open this type of file, in this case, Notepad and WordPad. Similarly, if I right click on this photo file, and go to open with, I'll see a different set of photos on my computer that are suitable for opening and editing photos. If a friend or a colleague sends you a file that you can't seem to open on your computer, you'll need to check with them to see what app they used to create that file, and you may have to install that same app or a similar app to access the file. As you gain more experience using your computer, you'll start to learn and understand which apps are the right apps to use to open, and work with different types of files. And if you often work with others, you'll probably find that some or all of them have the necessary software installed on their computers, and it should be relatively easy to get recommendations of what applications you need to accomplish your tasks.

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