Class Summary 11-20-2014

It was another open forum day with many questions. The first question had to do with all those icons on your desktop. One myth is that they take up a lot of room in your computer and slow it down. This is not true at all. Have all the icons on the desktop as you want. Although many icons do make a clutter and make it difficult to find the one you are looking for. Here are some thoughts. 

• If you have an icon for it in the taskbar, remove the one on the desktop
• If you have not used an icon for a long time, do you really need it?
• Shortcut icons, the ones that have an arrow in the lower left of the icon, can be deleted without affecting the program they are a shortcut to. They are just pointers.
• Use the desktop as a temporary storage area for files/folders you are working with. When the project is finished move them somewhere in My Documents or My Pictures. If you are always going to want easy access to that folder, move it and them create a shortcut to it on the desktop. Then if you delete the shortcut in error you still have the real data in place.
• Create a folder on the desktop and move into it all the seldom used icons on the desktop. Then you can open that folder to access them. Or you can right-click on the taskbar and create a new toolbar of that folder. Then you can popup a list of the items in the folder from the taskbar.

Then I was asked what you can get rid of in the Startup Folder. I use either Glary or Ccleaner to access the startup folder. Look through the list and see if anything sticks out as a program you might not want to run. Disable it. When working on a slow computer, I run all the maintenance programs we talk about and disable all the items in startup. The ones that need to run seem to enable themselves. But if you do that, scan through the items and leave enabled the ones obvious to you, like your antivirus program for one.

Dropbox is an easy to use cloud storage. On your PC open http://tinyurl.com/b87mha8 and sign up for it. You do not have to install it on your PC, but it is alright to do so. If you do, you will have a folder in the navigation bar on your Windows explorer window. If you do not install it, simpy go to dropbox.com to view and access your files. If you have a tablet or a cell phone, you can install an app for DropBox and use the username and password you established with DropBox. Now you can set the app to auto upload any picture you take on your tablet or cell phone. Then when you get home your picture will already be in your DropBox folder in the cloud. If you installed it on your PC, then your pictures will auto download. 

We also looked at the new Amazon Cloud which, for Prime members, gives you unlimited storage space for your pictures.

If  you have Windows 8 or 8.1 it looks like Windows 10 will be a free download when released in 2015, Meanwhile, I use ClassShell.net to give me the look and feel of Windows 7. Give it a try.

I reminded everyone that they need to have more than one browser on their PC in case their primary one has a problem. I use Google Chrome and also have FireFox installed. When  you install additional browsers they will ask you if you want to import your favorites and other things from your primary browser. Say yes and all those saved shortcuts/favorites will be copied to the new browser.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving. See you at the club meeting on December 2nd and at the next class on December 4th.