Are you an email hoarder?

Trust me, many of us are! It’s very hard for some people to hit that “delete” key and further…”permanently delete”! Why is it so hard to let go one of one small little email that probably has no use for you or your email program ever? For me, it’s not the content, but the person it came from. My personal email habits, on a level of 1-10 (1 being bad, 10 being excellent)…I am a 7 probably.

Here are a few rules I have (and I have 3 computers checking the same email accounts, so if you think you have it bad, try being me!)

• I empty my inbox nightly
• I keep folders under my inbox to file things I need for later
• I use “Rules” to keep certain emails organized when they come into my inbox (they go directly to the folder they belong)
• I delete almost everything that does not need filing
• Every 3 months or so, I take a copy of my deleted and sent items and move them to a PST file. I use a PST file as a storage so if I do need something, I can go find it.
• I don’t use Business Contact Manager to find folks, but rather my deleted and sent items for finding who I need as well. No, not the most “efficient”, but I’m not an organiser either, I fix computers! But I do know Outlook well!

If you are bombarded with email in your inbox and feel overwhelmed with how unorganized it is, I can help with getting those 100’s or 1000’s of emails managed a bit better so you can be relieved of your email hoarding.

This is for all email service/programs too! Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, MSN/Hotmail, etc!!

For Outlook users: We will create a PST and many rules, start running the rules and moving emails around to their proper homes. Then work on moving email to that PST file so you can figure out where your mail is after we are done.

Memory, motherboards and hard drives, what’s the dif?

Many of my clients will call and say their computers are slow and usually they say “I think my computer is out of memory, I have deleted a bunch of stuff and it’s still slow”

I explain to them that their memory is not out of space, but rather their hard drive may be out of space, and that’s not usually the culprit of a slow computer. Let’s first start with explaining what memory is and what a hard drive is.

MEMORY: Your computer comes with 2 types of memory, but the only one we will talk about is RAM (random access memory). These are little green sticks that are installed inside your computer. Every computer has RAM installed, but it’s usually the bare minimum. You need to purchase more to make the computer go faster. Or rather I should add, do more work. With more memory, you can run more applications and work much more efficiently.

HARD DRIVES: This is where your operating sytem and programs are installed and what makes the computer start up and get going. This is also the place where your pictures, music and your documents are stored.

MOTHERBOARDS: Finally, here is what a motherboard looks like. It’s like your car’s computer, it makes it run. Without it, you have no computer. There is really no reason a basic user will need to do anything with this component of the computer unless you want to install your own memory. I don’t recommend you get in there and play!

Many of my clients will call and say “I defragged, but it isn’t faster”…
 

Defragmenting a computer or “defragging” will not speed up your computer. I think it’s an old wives tale that comes from years ago when it probably did help the computer. But in these days, a computer running slow can be from many other issues.

What does “defrag” mean?

Simply put…
It means to clean up the fragmented parts of the hard drive (fragment means scattered bits that need to be put back into place that have been moved caused by uninstallation of programs or just Windows installation issues).

• If you defrag, your computer will run more efficiently, but not necessarily faster.
• For a faster machine, you can have a computer cleaning done by me. Charges run about an hour for this service.
• You may also need to add more memory. Especially if you are running alot of programs at once.
• As well…your hard drive may be getting close to full. With music and game downloading so popular now, it’s not hard to get your hard drive to max capacity.
• Buying an external hard drive for the music is a great idea! (and you can back up your data there too!)

For a consultation about your hard drive, computer cleaning or anything else in regards to computers, please contact me at craig@optidisk.com.au or 0407 700 770.