From the course: Help Desk Handbook for End Users: Mobile, Networking, Security, and Troubleshooting

Personalizing a tablet

- Mobile devices enable you to connect to content on the fly, as long as you have a cellular or wifi connection, depending on the device. You can use them for consuming media, of course, like watching a movie in bed, or listening to music at the park. You can use them for email, web surfing, checking the news, shopping, and even occasionally for creating content. They're awesome little devices that come in many flavors, one of which will certainly suit your taste and pocketbook. Setting up a new device follows similar patterns, regardless of the manufacturer. You'll need to agree to the end user license agreement, or EULA, which basically says you can use the device, but not modify it, I mean aside from adding apps and such to personalize it. All of them require some sort of account with the manufacturer. To set up an iOS device fully, for example, you'll need an Apple ID. Android tablets often rely on a Gmail account. They all come ready to connect to wifi for proper set up and personalization. Two things to note here. First, neither the Apple ID, which is some email account, nor the Gmail address need be your primary email account. That you'll set up later. Second, connecting to other wifi networks after setup is a separate step that we'll run through at the end of this episode. The mobile device used here for example screens is a Samsung Galaxy Tab. I'll show you close ups of some of the setup screens, but not all of them, because they'll differ in look and wording among the many manufacturer's devices. And like the book says, just follow the prompts. Let's power on this device and start clicking through some screens. Nice little arrow, welcome. This device wants me to connect immediately to wifi and the internet. I'm here at my office, so I will select my office network. Once you've typed it in, click connect. Note it says connected. Let's go to the next screen. Now here's the End User License Agreement I told you about, the EULA. Say yes, no, I really do agree. The device will usually check to see if it's its most current. With Android devices, they're going to prompt usually for a Gmail account, so I'm going to type mine in. Mobile devices connect to some sort of app store so that you can download new apps, either free ones or for pay, and enhance the capabilities of your mobile device. So of course, it's prompting me for a credit card information right now. Or you can use PayPal, or in this case, we're going to remind me later so I can dig out my credit card. Because this tablet is already connected to the internet, the date and time is synced, and so it should be correct. Just double check. And yes, here we are in Central time. Security is incredibly important with mobile devices. It's easy to set this down in a cafe and somebody pick it up. It has all of your personal information, including your credit card information stored in there. This is not a good thing to lose. So one of the very first options here is to protect your tablet using a set screen lock now. This particular device offers me three different ways to set a screen lock. I can use a pattern, which means I move my finger around the screen. I can use a pin, a set of numbers. Or I can use a full blown password. Let's use a pin. The notification options is about what the device is going to show on the screen when you're not actually logged in. So for example, if you get a text message, right by default, it's going to pop and say, "Hey, you got a text message from your buddy, John." If you don't want that stuff to show, then you can change it here. Note that all of these settings you can change later easily. And Android devices tied into Google Services for backing up apps, app data, settings, some of your personal information. You can use Google's Location Services and much more. Samsung also needs you to create an account with them. You can use your existing Google ID. You can create a new ID, or because this isn't my first Samsung tablet, I can simply sign in. And that's it for your basic set up. You have your apps here along the bottom. A nice time, this is your home screen, or start screen. Let's look now at how to connect to various wifi networks. To get there, we go to Settings. On this particular tablet, we swipe down, and press the little Settings button. There's my wifi networks, and that's what this Samsung device can see around it or sense. Now note, I'm connected to my work wifi, because I'm still filming this video, but as long as I have the proper credentials, I know the password or passphrase, I can connect to any one of these other wifi networks in range. And there I am, connected to my buddy, Ivan's, mobile hotspot. Now let's further personalize this device by setting up our primary email account so we can get our email. To do this, we're going to go back into Settings. And we'll go down to Accounts, and note there are already two accounts associated with this tablet, both the Google account, the Gmail account that I used to log in initially, and the Samsung account that we created as well. But here's the kicker, I can simply add an account, and I have tons of different options. For example, my work email, uses IMAP. I would simply come here, type in my email address, put in my other credentials, my password, and within moments, I'll be able to get my email from my work so that my boss is happy. Setting up and personalizing a new mobile device is a pretty straightforward affair. You connect to the internet, you put in a username and password, you accept the EULA, you get the idea. You basically just follow the prompts. (energetic music)

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