You may have heard about the hands-on class we teach from our website, or past blog posts.  We call it ‘Computer Boot Camp’ because it is Basic Training for computer users.

Specifically, it’s for laptop users with Windows (XP or Vista) operating system.  We will be offering this class as a Gypsy Gathering pre-rally in Celina, Ohio on September 26 and 27.

We find lots of people on the road are using a laptop for the first time.  A lot of them don’t know about the switch on a laptop that turns the Wi-Fi capability on or off.  And, they also don’t know what happens when they close the lid of their computer. 

Some of these people have been using computers for many years as part of their work.  When they were at work and something went wrong – they just called the computer guy.  They can’t do that now, and there’s more they need to know.  They need to know how to make backups.  They need to know about computer security and maintenance.

Jim and I have been in the computer support business continuously since the early 80’s.  Since we’ve been on the road and helping our fellow RVers, we’ve compiled a checklist of essential knowledge and skills we believe every computer user should possess. We developed this class – and many of our Show-Me-How Videos – to help people fill in the gaps in their knowledge.

As you can imagine, with the wide variety of information to teach and the wide variety of experience levels in the class, this is not an easy class to teach.  To keep everyone on track, we’ve written a workbook and recorded Show-Me videos to guide us through the class. You can click on the picture of the workbook to see the table of contents.

The class is broken up into 3 sessions with 2 or 3 specific exercises to be completed in each session.  Much of the class is taught by the videos (that’s why you see the headsets in the photos), so people can learn at their own rate.  And, there are many more videos on the disk than what we cover in class – there’s *no* reason to get bored in this class!  You can click on the disk image below to see the disk contents.

Here’s the review questions for the class, why don’t you take it and see how you do?  If you can confidently answer all the questions, then the class is too basic for you.

If you’re unsure of half or more, then the class would be great for you.  And, if you’re in the vicinity of Celina, Ohio at the end of September, you can sign up for the Boot Camp at the Gypsy Gathering Rally.  The cost is $99 for the two day class, bring your own computer.

If you have any questions, or you’ve attended one of our boot camps and have any comments, we’d love to see them as a comment to this blog post.

If you know of a rally, or an RV park where they would like us to present our Boot Camp, we can do that too.  We need a minimum of 6 attendees, and a maximum of 20.  Of course, it needs to be somewere in our vicinity.  We plan to spend the winter in Florida.

If you’re interested in the Boot Camp, but you can’t attend a class, you can purchase the book and DVD for $20.   Here’s the introductory video to the DVD.

Related posts:

1. Leesburg, Florida and Computer Boot Camp
2. The Geeks at FMCA
3. Geeks on Tour Tutorial Videos on Disk
4. Do you turn your computer off?
5. Computer Backups are Worthless