Therefore I hope this will help clear things up for those still having questions:
I am glad you are slowly finding your way around the computer. Slow is ok when you are managing to retain what it is you are learning.. the simple fact is, what I 'suggest' is in no way 'enforcement', but rather a proven knowledge of methods of increasing productivity and efficiency with regards to what it is you are attempting to do on the computer, and in your case, reading and composing as well as forwarding email; as well as the other basic functions of windows which would include copying of files (or burning them to a cd)..
The real problem, I have learned over the past few years--pretty much since Google has become such a dominator when it comes to the internet, is within the services they provide (all of which are free of course). Such things has email has truly become what I say is a 'no brainer' simply because any and all other methods of email are simply antiquated when it comes to safety and security over malware/trojan viruses and that is mainly why I will 'suggest' to my clients, to open a gmail account and use it. Whether you choose to tell everyone that this is your new email address and to hopefully/eventually have everyone sending you mail only to your gmail account, even though your existing Internet provider account is and can always remain active so long as you are getting the internet service from them, however if/when you were to change to some other service, from your broadband provider to an ADSL provider (should they come up with a screaming good deal and be able to provide the fastest service, which they can't right now), you would lose your email address with the existing provider and would have no choice but to open a new email address, whether it be through that new internet provider or at that time, set up a gmail account. In the case you now have a gmail account and should wish to not inform people of the new account, that is fine as well, and you can continue on as normal, but the difference technically is that the email accounts (your existing internet provider in this case) are now being retrieved from gmail and so no matter what email program you choose to use, it actually picks up the mail using GMails "IMAP SERVER", which allows for synchronization to/from your computer to the account all the time. Now the problem I am witnessing over these past years is the fact that we have all become pretty much brain washed from Microsoft with regards to how we get our mail, using OUTLOOK EXPRESS or OUTLOOK and as a result the way we manage things are in the fashion that has been laid out for use from the graphical interface of the Outlook program, such as the "inbox" and the "folders" that you can create on the left hand side, allowing you to drag and drop the mail message in the case you wish to save it.
Along comes Google's GMAIL and from the initial view through the gmail.com website using any web browser, shows the Inbox only, with such items like trash, spam labels on the left hand side. The method for getting around within this website are to use such items like ARCHIVE, which is how you go about saving mail. The problem is, when you go to save a message by clicking ARCHIVE, it simply disappears and because our brains tells us that it should be in some folder that you can access to retrieve the message at a later time, this becomes confusing when you can't find it.. and that is because you aren't using the SEARCH method in which Google has become so popular for searching for things on the internet.. but now that your email is on the internet (gmail), you can simply search for whatever it is you wanted to retrieve by simply entering a word or words that pertain to the message you are looking for. For example, if you have archived all the messages from "John Hancock" and you know there was an email John had talked about passwords, for example, from the search bar which can always be found at the top of the gmail page, you would simply enter something like "John Hancock passwords" and it would bring up resulting email that has those words in it.. probably all of the mail from John, but it would also have to have the word 'passwords' in it, and you can refine your search even further, if you found the results were too many to find that exact message... truly, 'keeping it simple' is the methodology they use and that is, unfortunately as I mentioned earlier, something we have become unable to do, thanks to the brain washing of Microsoft's Outlook email and their infamous 'create a folder and save the messages there'
The next problem was creating mail for multiple users.. again, we are so familiar with Outlook that we click on the address book and start selecting people from the contacts list and moving them to the 'to' column, creating this list of people.... of course if you are sending mail to multiple people, you should be sending mail to yourself as the 'undisclosed recipient' [see the tip "The Correct Way to Send/Forward Email" to multiple people-altough the tip was created way back in the early days of email it is quite accurate as this is the method that should be used for any email composition ] since you always have to send it to at least one person, and then the rest can be sent through the BCC (blind carbon copy) line (or CC-carbon copy if you want everyone you are sending mail to, to actually see the others that will be receiving that message-this method should only be used when sending to a known group you may belong to such as a bridge club-stamp collecting club, etc, otherwise everyone will see the other peoples email address and this is usually very frustrating for the receiver of the email in the case they do not even know the other people, and as a result ,now have given up their email address to complete strangers).. So with google's GMail, again keeping it very simple, you first must send it to someone so in the 'to' column simply start typing "arthur" and probably after the first few letters you are typing, depending on how many other Arthur's there are in your contact list, you will see your email address--note: if you are using Undisclosed Recipient you would simply start typing "undisclosed" and it should also bring up your email address from your contacts, only it will be listed the way you want (undisclosed recipient).. then go to the BCC and start typing who you want to send the mail to, for example "Betty", "Sue", "Carl", "Roger" in all these cases, you would probably just type "Be" and Betty would show up, then adding a second, simply type "Car" and Carl would probably show up, etc... if you are unsure of who you want to choose you can type only one letter, such as "a" and it will show you all of your contacts that start with the letter "A"..
So you see, it is really quite simple.. the problem that isn't simple is de-programming your brain from the "old way of doing things" and I have found the best way to embrace new technology is to not look back, at least not until you are completely familiar with the new way, then when you do go back, in most cases you will agree that the new way is by far more "user friendly" and "efficient"
Now for those of you attempting to "delete" a bunch of messages.. and again, this is NOT what google's gmail recommends... of course you can and probably should delete messages that are dated such as a daily or weekly emailing of the current winning lottery numbers or todays weather forecast, but if the message is from a friend or other newsletter that you may want to refer to down the road (even if you don't think so but it is not a dated item), simply ARCHIVE it and forget about it... since gmail's storage is so large, the odds of you ever filling it up are very slim... for example, I archive every email message from clients and have been using gmail for about 3-4 years now and (scrolling to the bottom of the gmail window) you can see how much percent you are using..For me it displays [You are currently using 1642 MB (22%) of your 7376 MB] therefore I should be good for at least another 6 years before I run out of room, however Google's gmail server storage is constantly increasing so you see, they are looking out for you as well... and, if you were a heavy user of email and found that you were getting close to your limit you can buy more storage.
Finally, the saving or copying of files to a cd/dvd.. With Windows 7 such programs like "nero" or "roxio" cd/dvd burning software are no longer required and that is simply because (finally) windows 7 no longer requires this... simply placing a blank cd or dvd in the drive (obviously if you have more then one cd or dvd player and are wanting to copy to DVD, you would need to be sure you place the blank DVD in the DVD burner and not the CD burner but on most new computers, there is only one 'cd/dvd burner' as the device can handle either format) and, once you insert the blank DVD, windows will recognize this and show you as having a dvd with 4.7gb of available storage.. now, simply ask yourself what it is you want to do.. for example, you want to copy all of your documents to a dvd.. the dvd drive happens to be drive D for example, from the documents you want to copy to dvd, simply highlight them and if you were to RIGHT CLICK on this, the menu would have the option to 'copy to cd/dvd' or you can drag and drop to that device. From window XP and Vista, you could do this for a cd but not a dvd and that is why you required NERO or ROXIO to be installed, but no more.
So, to make this simple.. go to your pictures and from there, you should see near the top of that window, the options of what you can do with each picture.. if you click on a picture, the picture viewer opens and near the top, you will see "email", "copy", "burn", etc...
I am also suggesting for google issues, the gmail for example, to utilize the 'help pages' as they have very simply help and tutorials that may make this even more clear.
