How to become more IT savvy..

Pietzki

Pietzki

New Member
A warm g'day from Australia :)

My dad has a small home business for which he uses his pc a lot, and I am the person in the family who knows the most about pc's, so I have to play wannabe-admin :o But I want to learn more, because the real admin stuff is still way beyond me (I know, very general question..I'll try and be more specific). The problem is I can't afford a university course or anything like that. I know that there's lots of stuff on the web, but I don't know specifically what to look for. I am quite good with finding and using utilities and generally tweaking XP (eg changing registry keys), but more advanced things like security policy are still a bit scary so I don't touch them, because I don't wanna mess anything up. Now, security policy is one of those things where I do know what to look for, so I can just google it. But what other sorts of things do you think I should look into? What sort of things are important basic steps towards becoming a halfway decent home admin?

I know I'll never become a proper IT professional without studying it formally, but I just wanna expand my knowledge, because at the moment it doesn't go much beyond tweaking the registry, using things like ad-aware and peerguardian, disabling unneccessary services and startup programs after googling them and those sorts of things...

I hope you guys can give me some pointers as to what I should learn about in order to do my unpaid job better!

Thanks a lot in advance! :)


EDIT: oops, nearly forgot to say, he uses XP Home and I use Pro..
 
yeah but what I was asking was more like: which one should I read? I mean, there are about 1000 different books on IT related stuff at my local borders, but of course nothing general which i could look at to tell me, for example, what's important for pc security at an admin level..

or let me put it this way, what did you first learn?
 
In IT you need to learn everything, or at least those you favor, so what do you want to learn, both hardware and software ? and since you mention admin, which involves security you need to learn networking also.
Software and Network are key to administration, knowing how to block ports,setup a good firewall etc, but it all depends on you. So i suggest you learn all 3 of em.

Am no sys admin but i started with hardware, i did A+ then move to A+ software then A+ networking, yes i failed networking but that doesn't mean the road ends here.
You can also get some certification
 
Thanks for your answer! I wanna learn more about software rather than hardware. Simply because our hardware changes less frequently than the software we use, so I think it's less likely I'll have significant problems with it.. Networking sounds like a good idea, as it's something I don't know much about.. So what did you learn about in A+ software?
 
Pietzki said:
So what did you learn about in A+ software?
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baf, it was all about OS nothing much, working with mmc ,mangement etc etc
covering every single MS operating system, maintanance,Internet teminology,domains,Novell Netware Networks.

I don't remember sh*t about this course really, all i do remember was me and the others playing games on the network :o
here's my book, it's 2 years old :)
 
I became semi computer savvy after I joined CF.
Browsing the internet on the topics that interest you the most also helps.
 
I have a few IT qualifications but I find it easier to learn stuff that I need to know about, rather than stuff I might need to know about.

So... break something and then learn how to fix it!
 
Me I learned to basically build a computer from my uncle everything else is on the internet. A lot of stuff is fairly boring and you do sometimes feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall, but prettty much everything yiu would ever need to know about comps is on the internet its just a matter of finding it when you need it.
 
The best thing to do, is simply get some university information on their IT programs which are usually called Management of Information Systems, or Computer Information Systems, check out the required courses are find out some details about what the courses involve. Then start studying as if you were a IT student finding the necessary material on the web. I think that's the best way. I wanted to study IT, went with computer science, and am now deciding to go back to IT, cause computer science is just way way too much work.

Whoever said that you don't need to know most of the stuff is wrong, a lot of administrative tasks require general knowledge, especially when detailed trouble shooting comes into play. IT is great, It's a very rewarding field, it generally pays extremely well, the industry keeps growing so there are a ton of jobs available, and the best part is you generally get to work in a team setting where you way better off than having sole responsibilities to something else.

IT is definitely one of the fields that ignorant college students think is most likely extremely difficult and tend to stay away from, so the degrees are somewhat rare making the pay really good. IT is awesome all around, and a lot of the work for the bigger companies is a joke, such as setting up email service on blackberry's and stuff along those lines.

A degree in IT is not so difficult to obtain, if you are really interested I would really consider going to a public college, financial aid is usually available if you qualify, and earning a degree in it. If not, you can always become a certified microsoft technician or something a long those lines, the pay isn't as good, but it's still decent and you get to be on the road a lot which is way better than sitting in a cubicle all day long.

Technology will never slow down, and you seem to have a interest in this. I wish you the best of luck with everything.
 
wow, thanks for all the answers!!

Simon@Linux said:
I have a few IT qualifications but I find it easier to learn stuff that I need to know about, rather than stuff I might need to know about.

So... break something and then learn how to fix it!
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hahaha sounds good, that's pretty much been my strategy so far except with security...

UriA702 said:
The best thing to do, is simply get some university information on their IT programs which are usually called Management of Information Systems, or Computer Information Systems, check out the required courses are find out some details about what the courses involve. Then start studying as if you were a IT student finding the necessary material on the web. I think that's the best way. I wanted to study IT, went with computer science, and am now deciding to go back to IT, cause computer science is just way way too much work.
Click to expand...
hey, that's a really good idea!!! I'll definitely go and do that!! damn, now you've made me wanna study IT :D

Thanks again for all your answers!!
 
I knew squat about computer last december, look at me now! Er, well, i know abit more than squat now. I used internet resources primarily, I joined a forum, browsed the wikipedia, abused Google, etc. I also read A Huge A+ certification textbook, though I admit I learned more from the interweb.

PattyV! I didn't know you were A+ and software+ certified! Good one buddy :D I've yet to try, though I've been studying for quite a while..
 
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