At DOS command prompt you can type "print" followed by name of a document and a printed copy will be generated. But don't expect fancy fonts or formatting. Although command line interface can be very powerful for some tasks, for other tasks it is very crude.

When you first start your computer, it has no software loaded. You could say your computer is "brain dead". It doesn't even know how to use hard disk drive to load operating system.

The BIOS is non-volatile memory built into computers motherboard. Non-volatile means that instructions in memory are not lost when you turn power off.

When you first start your computer, it is hard-wired to start reading first instruction in BIOS. The BIOS is not usually all in a single chip. As BIOS starts, it looks for other parts of BIOS that reside in chips on expansion cards. From these instructions, it learns how to check itself out (Power-on Self Test) and how to locate and load operating system. The computer "BOOTS" (pulls itself up by its bootstraps).

The last thing BIOS does is locate drive containing operating system and begin loading operating system. Because hard disk has vastly more storage capacity than a BIOS chip, operating system software can be large and powerful. As operating system loads, it begins loading device drivers and configuring hardware.

In early days, BIOS programs where stored in ROM (read only memory). Todays computers usually store BIOS programs in a type of memory, called "Flash memory" that can be rewritten. This allows you to reprogram BIOS to fix bugs, or to update it. For example, You might download a BIOS update program from Web and run it from a floppy disk.

The important thing to understand is that your computer has layers of software. You should understand where each layer resides in path from user to hardware. You should now understand that when you dial out with your web browser, request is passed to operating system, which passes it to modem driver, which communicates with a BIOS on modem. That BIOS is program that actually works electronics of your modem.

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Leave ALERTS setting turned on for a couple of day as it's both interesting and alarming to see number of instances when an outside computer will try to access your own. Normally user is oblivious to such instances. You can turn off alerts once they begin to become distracting.