New Year Computer Cleanup
Not all of us are as fortunate as I am to start the new year with a brand new computer. If your current system is anything like my old computer, which I happened to have left behind in 2008, it is probably a little messy and in need for a good clean up. What better a time to do that than at the start of this brand new year. Here are some things that I recommend you do if you haven’t done so already.
One thing that I know many people don’t do is backup their computer. Whether this is just your important documents, or all your user files or ever single thing on your hard drive, having a back up copy of your files is very important. If something was to go wrong and you lost everything, you’re probably going to wish you had a backup of your files, but were either too busy or too lazy (or both) to do that task. It could be as simple as dragging you files over to a few blank DVD’s and burning them, or copying your files to an external hard drive. Make sure you backup as soon as possible, and if you can, have a regular backup schedule for 09. Most modern OS have this functionality built in but there is also software available to make this much easier and somewhat automated.
Everyone has software installed on their computer that they don’t use anymore. This would be a good time to uninstall and delete any programs you don’t use anymore. Along with uninstalling software you don’t need, this would also be a good time to delete files on your hard drive you never use anymore. You don’t necessarily have to delete them for good. You can always burn these “junk” files to a disc for if you ever needed them again. Both of these things should make your system run a bit better and also free up some hard drive space. No doubt that in 12 month time, you’ll have more junk on your computer that needs uninstalling and deleting.
Your computer is not the only thing that get messy and frequently bombarded with more junk that gets pushed aside to deal with later. If your email inbox is anything like mine, it is hit with bacn (“emails that are subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all.”) This includes emails from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg or any email subscriptions you had subscribed to in the past. I recommend that this would be a good time to start taking action against it and whenever one of these messages come, instead of deleting it, archiving it or just ignoring it, go and unsubscribe to stop these notifications. Not only will this help stop your inbox from getting bogged up, it will also be one less thing to think about when checking your email in the morning.
These are just a few things that I think everyone should do as soon as possible. A clean computer is a better performing computer and makes you a more productive person. All of these may not apply to everyone but there must be something that I have said that does apply to you which you can do something about today!
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i am also going through and cleaning up my computer
it was getting bogged down with all those little apps that accumulate over time and when i looked at my hard drive i found out that i only had 1GB free, out of 240GB.
i want to just go and reformat so i have a fresh install, but i will get a new hard drive before i bother doing that
Unfortunately, at some points the best thing you can do is reformat. A slow, virus-infected computer with a million things installed is likely to remain so, even after cleaning, unless something drastic is done.
Also take note of how much RAM you have. It’s the cheapest computer upgrade, and it will do wonders for ANY computer. Anything up to 2 or 3 gigabytes is great for a normal multitasking user, and if you’re doing audio, visual or video editing, much more than that can be useful (though you may need to go to a 64-bit operating system).