Turn up your INBOUND volume to make what you hear (in from outside).
Turn up OUTBOUND to make yourself louder to others.
Volume balance between everything else on your computer is actually quite a test of one's juggling ability: You'll have to muck with several volumes until you get a good balance.
My advice on the subject, tho, is this: You'll run into several things that do NOT have their own volume controls, for which the only way to adjust them is through the main/primary volume control offered by Windows itself. Find/run into one of those, and adjust your main volume accordingly. THEN and only then go to work on adjusting the volumes of things throughout your computer one at a time.
Oh, and most of this all goes out the window once you've run into the volume diff's between your speakers and your headset!
(Another way to do this is to simply adjust the Windows volume for whatever it is that you use most often that makes sound and then go set the rest. (E.g. I've set mine so that when I play music (via Winamp) it's audible to me with Winamp's volume on the low side. That way I can boost everything up when/if I need to.)
