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Riding Shotgun with Rick

Quick tip to determine how much space is left on a disk

Free disk spaceBefore I get to the meat of today's tip, let's discuss the definition of disk. A disk is any computer device that can store data. Many times, computer users only think of floppy disks or CD's as disks, but hard drives, USB flash drives, and memory cards are all considered disks.

It is important to know how to determine how much free disk space you have on some of your disks. No matter the type of disk, you can figure out how much space is being used and how much is free by following these very simple steps:

Backing up pictures to flash drives

Flash drives have become extremely popular over the past year. And why not…they are spacious, getting cheaper all the time and dare I say sexy? However, they still cost more per megabyte than any other backup medium. I did a little research tonight to illustrate why you should still use CD's or DVD's for photo and music backup rather than flash drives.

Consider this:

Type of Memory Capacity Cost Cost per megabyte
USB Flash Drive 512 mb $15.00 $.03
CDR 700 mb $15 for 50 disks $.00000000000004
DVD+R 4700 mb $30 for 50 disks $.0000000000000003

I will admit that flash drives are extremely easy to use and work well, but the economics just aren't there for long term storage…yet.

Alphabetize your Favorites (or Bookmarks)

Sort menus alphabeticallyThis question came up a couple of times on the show on Saturday and numerous times recently via email; How do I alphabetize my favorites or bookmarks?

Internet Explorer

  1. Click Favorites from the menus
  2. RIGHT Click on any item in the favorites list
  3. Click Sort by Name from the menu

Mozilla Firefox

  1. Click Bookmarks from the menus
  2. RIGHT Click on any item in the bookmarks list
  3. Click Sort by Name from the menu

That's it! You can do that as often as you need to keep your lists in order. Incidentally, you can apply this same technique to your programs menu…

Rethinking “old” computers

With Vista now being the only main stream choice for a new computer, I have stared to develop a new strategy to look at "old" computers. Computer users who have late model Windows 98 machines (bought in 1999-2000), they might be able to get a few more years out of their systems and get a more updated operating system by switching to a Linux based system. I plan on doing some testing over the next few months of revamping older systems with Linux and of course will post my findings here at the site.

For Windows XP users (computers bought between 2001-2006), XP should work fine for most people for many years to come. Early models of XP machines and later bargain models, however, came with only 256mb of RAM. With the early editions of XP, 256 was adequate, but with the 100+ updates that have subsequently been released and larger need for security software, 512mb is now a minimum for XP and I encourage my customers to strongly consider 1024mb (1 GB). If a computer user isn't careful about security and updates, a reformat and reinstall is necessary, but the computer will be running top notch again afterwards. 

Temporary Internet Files – Don’t let them stack up

Cleaning out temporary files on our computers (see the archives for Disk Cleanup) remains an extremely important step in keeping them running clean and error free. Programs and Windows create temporary files, when needed, to perform certain functions. The Internet uses temporary files to store cookies, and recently visited web sites and their graphics.

Temporary Internet files serve a useful function when you visit web sites on a regular basis. By storing the graphics and some of the text, our browser doesn't have to re-download the files, thus the page loads faster. On the other hand, these files are extremely small and too many of them on our computer (10's of thousands in some cases) can cause a sever performance drop in our computers.

Is it not ok anymore to be content with what we have?

I have had Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 sitting on my desk for more than three weeks now. I spent nearly $300 buying the stupid products so that I can install them on my machine, but I haven't. It's not because I haven't had time…I just have no burning desire to go through with the change yet. My Windows XP machine is running awesome, I like the configuration of my system and just don't want to upset the apple cart yet. I still occasionally turn on my backup machine that is running a beta version of Windows Vista, but I have only used it about ten times since I installed the beta version last September. 

Today I found a print screen utility that I had forgotten about….

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away computer users used to be able to push a single button on their keyboards and get a printout of whatever was displayed on the screen. When Windows took over computers, this function was lost. Pushing the Print Screen key on keyboards did nothing…seemingly. It actually does something, but I wrote a tip about what it does many years ago (click here to read it again…maybe for the first time) .

Today, I want to share with you a discovery I made while helping a customer. I had helped her setup her new computer a few years ago and she wanted a print screen utility…that was free. After some searching and experimenting, I came across a neat little utility called PrintDesktop (click here to download) . After I installed it for her, I completely forgot about the little gem…until today.

Internet Neutrality

We have not spent enough time here on the site or on the show discussing "Net Neutrality". Up to now and including today, the Internet has been a "free" space. We all have the ability to access anything we want at any time we want and at the speeds we choose to pay for through an Internet provider. Large telco companies in the United States want to impose certain restrictions on what, when, and how fast we see things on the Internet unless we agree to payer higher fees. Congress has been debating a "Net Neutrality Act" for a few years, but nothing has come of it as of yet.

Don’t back up a shortcut

I've mentioned this before many times, but it bears repeating often especially since I saw it at least three times this week. First, I want to commend the computer users out there for backing up and thinking of backing up! However, it is imperative to know what you are backing up. 

Folder shortcutA shortcut is indicated by a little arrow in the lower left hand corner of a folder or file. If your backup media has any of these types of icons on it, your backup is worthless. A shortcut is simply a "pointer" to where the actual data is saved. Backing up shortcuts is extremely fast because there is not data in a shortcut. I too often see computer users dragging a program icon (shortcut) or a shortcut to My Documents or My Pictures to their CD drives, external hard drives, or flash drives then wonder why they have no backup should they need it.