Spring clean your computer and digital devices

Post date: May 19, 2019 9:50:34 PM

As the rain melts the snow, Spring is on its way, and some of us are spring cleaning--tackling cluttered closets, hauling off recycles, and boxing up things for Stuff or Goodwill. However, don’t forget to clean up your digital devices and computers. Here’s how.

Your Phone and Tablet

Take a closer look at your apps—are there some that you don’t use anymore, or some you downloaded and didn’t like? Delete them and free up precious space.

Take a critical look at your photos. I’d like to blame it on becoming a grandmother because I have hundreds and hundreds of photos of my two grandsons, but smartphones and tablets have made it easy to take photos. Unfortunately, most of us take too many photos and do not clean up our devices, deleting photos on a regular basis, getting rid of duplicate photos or bad photos. These are those unfortunate photos that are unfocused, unflattering, or simply unnecessary—if you’re like me, you have ten photos of your grandsons playing or decorating cookies. Pick the best 2 or 3.

Remember, if you have an android phone and have a Gmail account, you probably have photos on Google’s Photo App (formerly called Picasa Photos). This is an example of cloud storage. You can create albums, share them with friends and family, and create projects. To find Google photos, click on the little table of dots at the upper right-hand corner of your Gmail account, and you will find all of your Google Apps, such as Photos, Calendar, and Google Docs/Drive. If you have an Apple phone, your photos are on i-Cloud, so you need to create an account and log onto https://www.icloud.com/. So, when was the last time you cleaned up all of those photos—on your phone, computer and cloud storage? Finally, a microfiber cloth and some lens/screen wipes will help you freshen up your devices and screens as well.

Your PC or laptop

If you create documents like me, you may have multiple versions of documents. Delete the earliest ones. Remember you can sort a folder of documents by selecting the details feature: then, you can sort by date or name.

If your documents are precious, you should be backing them up two ways: first, using an external hard drive, and second, backing up to the cloud using Google Drive, iCloud, drop box, or another product.

Like the dentist says, only brush what you want to keep! So, only back up the docs and pics you want to keep. I learned this the hard way when an old Dell laptop died: I was using it to scan in family photos and documents. Mike thought the hard drive had failed, one but when he put in a new one, the computer didn’t work. So, my son suggested he get a device that let him read the old hard drive—and he was able to recover all of my scans and photos. I uploaded them to the appropriate folders on Google Photos, and felt very fortunate! I then “got religion” and tackled my big PC, getting rid of a staggering 130 gigs of photos and docs and uploading docs to Google Drive. Of course, you can grab that microfiber cloth and lens/screen wipes to help you freshen up your screen, keyboard, and other equipment.

If you don’t live with an IT guy or have a son in IT, you need to follow a few simple guidelines:

1) Save all docs to folders in your Documents library on PCs and save all pictures to your Pictures library. If you like to have your current projects handy, you can create shortcuts to the desktop, but it is important to have it all in your Documents folders, if you want your backups to be complete.

2) Buy an external hard drive—Seagate or Western Digital make excellent products. Installation isn’t terribly difficult: plug in, install software, and set up.

3) Finally, don’t wait for a disaster to strike to clean up your devices! If you’re writing a book, compiling your family history, or scanning in precious old photos, you want to be able to preserve and share your hard work. Back it up.

March 15, 2019