Ed Bott - Windows 10 Support Secrets

77 CHAPTER 6 | Taking charge of hardware CHAP T E R 6 Taking charge of hardware The most startling characteristic of the Windows ecosystem is its sheer diversity. Regardless of their shape, size, or color, most PCs are made up of the same basic building blocks. But there are literally millions of possible variations of CPUs and chipsets and network adapters and display controllers and USB connectors and … well, the list goes on endlessly. And that’s not even counting external devices like printers and scanners and pointing devices. If you install Windows 10 on a PC that was designed and built in the past five or six years, it usually just works. When you attach an external device to a USB port or use a DisplayPort cable to connect a PC to an external monitor, that will just work, too. And if it doesn’t work immediately, there’s a very good chance you’ll get the necessary software and drivers the next time you connect to Windows Update. In this chapter, I focus on how to help users become comfortable with some of the most common types of hardware. Let’s begin with the one that’s arguably used more than any other. Adjusting your display You and your users spend hours every day looking at text and images on your display. Adjusting that display properly can help avoid eyestrain and headaches, not to mention saving battery power on a portable device.