Tag Archives: computer
March 13, 2012 Computer Speed-up Tips
In the past, my patience has been severely frustrated by how slow my computer would get. It would take an eternity to open up more than a couple programs or it would freeze easily. Web pages would load insanely slowly. Sometimes my patience level is not as high as I would like it to be. Besides, technology is supposed to make our lives easier and faster, right? I’ll bet most of you know some of these tricks of the trade but perhaps some of you will appreciate this. (I use Windows 7 so sorry to all you Mac users.)
1. Clean-up files.
In your control panel, type “disk cleanup” and choose “Free up Disk Space by Deleting Unnecessary Files” under “Performance Information and Tools.” Next, select the drive that you want to clean up and click ok. It will scan your computer and come up with a variety of files that could be deleted, for example, temporary internet files and files in your recycle bin. I usually delete these as well as the offline web pages. Select those you wish to delete and click ok.
2. Defragment your hard drive.
Defragmenting your hard drive takes small files and folder and internally “re-files” them. Just like at an office, where filing and organizing papers helps the office become more efficient, so is defragmenting. To do this, open your control panel and type “defragment” in the search box. Then click on the defragmentation link. You can also choose to have scheduled defragmentation on this window.
3. Install a reputable internet security program.
Once upon a time, I used Norton Anti-Virus, which is certainly a reputable company. However, even though it scanned my computer top to bottom daily, my computer became quite slow. It was then that I heard about AVG Internet Security. I uninstalled Norton after downloading and installing AVG and… guess what?!? AVG found 18 Trojan horses on my comuter among other things. After cleaning all those up, my computer worked beautifully again. I have only ever used the free version of AVG which suits my purposes just fine, but they also have more involved paid versions as well.
4. Uninstall unnecessary programs.
Every once in awhile, I look at the full list of programs and files that are installed on my computer. Sometimes I see a program that I have no use for and that I can regain space on my hard drive by uninstalling. This is especially true of all those annoying toolbars that somehow seem to sneak onto my computer in the small print of other programs.
Hope you’re having a happy Tuesday!
Tags: AVG, computer, computer programs, control panel, defragment, disk cleanup, hard drive, internet security, Trojan horses, uninstall
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- Posted under Organizing
March 7, 2012 First Steps to an Organized Computer
Is your computer a complete mess (or even a partial one)?
Do you have trouble finding photos or documents that you have saved?
Over a few blogs, I’ll address a few of these issues so your computer can be the best that it can be. I’m certainly no computer-mastermind, but perhaps a few ideas will help you get your folders and files in order and save you time in the long run.
Here’s an impressive statistic. Would you believe that the average person wastes 76 hours each year looking for things on her computer or in her home or work office?? Incredible, isn’t it? That’s over three entire days or almost two weeks of full-time work!
One of the most basic things you can do is to keep your desktop clean. You know what I mean! All those crazy icons jumbled crazily across your screen. Only keep the icons that you use most often. For me, that is a web browser, iTunes, a word document program and Windows Live Messenger. I also keep two shortcuts to folders that I use most often, My Documents and My Pictures as well as a handy sticky note or two. Taking the time to put various files into hard drive folders instead of directly on the desktop will actually boost computer performance speed. And don’t leave shortcuts on your desktop to programs you rarely use.
Once you have sorted and separated documents, music, pictures and any other main categories, you can further divide and conquer. For example, in My Pictures, I have separate folders for digital pictures from my camera, desktop wallpaper, clip art and miscellaneous categories.
My most frequently used folder is digital pictures. Within here, I subdivide by years and then months. If a special activity has occurred during a month (such as a vacation or special photo shoot) I may create a separate folder for this as well. I also often separate pictures for my blogging into sub-folders. This way, I can see all of my pictures in chronological order. Besides, it only takes a few seconds to start a new pictures folder each month!
If you don’t already have a great virtual organization plan, try this one out for your digital pictures. Or perhaps you have an organization style that works for you. I’d love to hear about it in a comment!
Happy Organizing!
Tags: computer, digital pictures, folder, shortcuts, virtual organization
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- Posted under Organizing
November 1, 2011 Only for Those with Patience
Today, I discovered how to thoroughly clean a laptop’s keyboard. No, I didn’t just do it because it sounded like a lot of fun. I did it because I spilled a quarter of a glass of sparkling pear juice on top of it last night.
(By the way, let me put a plug in for Ikea Food’s Kristian Regale Sparkling Pear Juice. DE-LI-CIOUS! Perfect for special occasions or just because. Check it out here.)
Anyway, it’s always a bad sign when you tilt your computer and a waterfall of liquid pours out. I can attest to the success of my cleaning since I am currently blogging on my laptop!
I mopped up what I could and then got a hair dryer out to dry under the keys as quickly as possible since it was late at night and I didn’t want to have to tear the whole keyboard apart at that moment. Today I began the process of taking all the keys off, cleaning them individually and putting them back on. It’s not as easy as it sounds since laptop keys are a bit more complex than those on a full-size keyboard. Here’s the how-to.
Supplies:
1. rubbing alcohol, 2. small plastic bowl, 3. miniature flat-head screwdriver, 4. clean, dry cloth, 5. digital camera, 6. great amounts of patience
First, you need to take at least one picture of your keyboard. No matter how well you think you know it, you may find that it seems much more confusing once you’ve removed the keys. Then you need to pop all the keys off. That is easier said than done on a laptop. To get the first key off, you may need to pop it off with a screwdriver. After the first one, you may be able to do the rest by hand. Try to pop the rest off by starting at the top of each key.
No matter how careful you are, some keys will still at least partially pull off the black plastic that connects each key to the keyboard.
Each key comes in three parts, the key cover and two black pieces that hook together. One of the pieces has two short
pins on either side that fit into corresponding slots on the inner edge of the larger piece.
This is what they will look like once they are snapped together.
This combined piece then snaps onto its corresponding spot on the keyboard.The inner black piece slides onto the bottom hook while the larger black piece has two holes along its upper edge which snap onto the smaller top hooks.
Some of the black pieces were only popped out on one side and could be popped right back in without completely removing it from the keyboard.
Meanwhile, I had the key covers soaking in a little rubbing alcohol in a plastic bowl.
I then poured rubbing alcohol on a clean, dry cloth and cleaned around every key thoroughly. Not only was there sticky sugar, but there was also dust and cat hair. I think it was time for a good cleaning anyway! The great thing about rubbing alcohol is that it dries so fast.
I first put on the larger keys such as the space bar, the shifts, and the backspace. These longer keys had extra metal pins that needed to first be slid into slots before the key could be popped back on.
I felt like I was doing a puzzle, but it worked out quite well. I will warn you – it took me over an hour to do the whole thing although I believe it would go much faster if I tried it again since this time I would know what I was doing. It’s also not a project for the faint-hearted. I’ve always enjoyed a reasonable challenge and decided that this was a great do-it-yourself project for me.
Tags: computer, do-it-yourself, hair dryer, Ikea, keyboard, keys, laptop, rubbing alcohol
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- Posted under Cleaning
