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new laptop
Peter Smythe | Mar 16 2008
Hi everybody, I'm a newbie to this forum tho I've been logging in and reading stuff for a while now. I have been trying to "declutter" my own home for a couple of years and have been following Merlin's thread on that theme. I've just bought myself a new laptop and I love it (tho' I'm ashamed to say it's a PC not Mac in this august company!) Taking advice from various sources I elected to saty with Windows XP rather than the slightly queasy-making Vista and I'm very happy with the hardware and general set-up. What is bothering me is not wanting to clag up this machine with a lot of computer "clutter". I'm a sucker for information, a complete gadfly when it comes to interests in things, and I can spend many a happy hour leapfrogging around the "Interweb" (!) because there is so much out there and so much of the world is fascinating. All the same I don't want to end up bookmarking a million sites, signing up for endless e-newsletters and all that kind of thing I can so easily scatter my time on. And I certainly don't want to transfer all the thousands of files from the old computer onto here "just in case" I'd find some of them useful sometime. So does anyone have any experience to share on how you can keep a 'putie clean and lean as it were? Or any "don't do this" tips to pass on for evaluation? thanks guys love the site(s) 4 Comments
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 Information & Technology ManagementSubmitted by CuriousGeorgeGuy on March 21, 2008 - 7:42am.
Hello: I'm facing a similar set of concerns. Basically you're looking at managing the information and technology in your life. It can be daunting. I think you're starting with a clean slate, which is good. I think the challenge is similar for all of us in this day and age. I would say as far as newsletters the easiest thing is to just get a junk e-mail, which is what I do. I have far too many e-mails, but my basic paradigm is this: One e-mail account for friends and family One e-mail account for professional purposes One e-mail account for everything else -- a kind of catch-all for junk mail, newsletters, etc. As far as what to download onto your computer, that's a more challenging question. I think it's not planned. You end up with a lot of "stuff" on your computer without meaning to, and it's almost unavoidable. I'm not sure what to suggest except maybe a two-logon system. Maybe one logon is your main logon and you keep it "clean." So if you run across some download, etc. you put it on your "playspace" logon and mess with it until you decide if it is worthy of going into your "clean" space. That is still a very cumbersome solution, admittedly. I hope others will chime in, because in this day and age personal IT management is a huge issue, I agree! » POSTED IN:
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