Millennium Magazine_3rdEd

Living in a time where many of us have very tech-focused lives, keeping one’s digital world organized is often as important as keeping any other aspect of your life organized. If you are heavily reliant on your computer and the Internet for work or study, it is even more important to get into some good organizational habits. The following tips will help you to train yourself to better keep track of your digital life. Tips for Organizing Your Computer and Online Accounts It Starts with Your Desktop Uninstall unwanted applications from the Programs section of the Control Panel. Getting rid of programs that you no longer use will free up space on your hard disk and improve your computer’s performance overall. There will be less drain on system resources, less programs automatically starting up when you log into windows and less clutter on your desktop and start menu. Organize your files and folders in the Documents folder for your user account. This way, everything is kept safely in your own account folder away from other users and locations where you can more easily lose them. Rather than having things like documents and pictures clutter up your desktop, place them into the default folders in your user account folder. Get rid of junk files to free up space on your computer and improve performance. Windows includes the Disk Clean-up utility to take care of this for you. Disk Clean-up will remove temporary and junk files from your computer in a matter of minutes. Try better organizing your start menu, or in Windows 8, the start screen. Categorizing your applications by dropping their shortcuts into custom folders will make it much easier to find what you need when you need it from within the start screen itself. Organizing Your Online Accounts Today, the average Internet user typically has one or more email accounts, from social media accounts and Internet banking to online shopping, forums and more. Keeping track of all your login details as well as all of the information that you have stored online is essential for the sake of both organization and security. If you use multiple email addresses, try consolidating them by using the Windows Mail app in Windows 8 or Outlook for the desktop and older versions of Windows. Alternatively, you can use a completely Web-based service such as Gmail. Gmail offers several gigabytes of free storage space, allows you to consolidate email accounts, create and label custom folders and use a powerful search function. Close down accounts that you no longer use. This is better for security, since there is no point in keeping accounts and storing data online if you don’t need it any more. If there’s an email account or social networking account that you haven’t used in months, it may be time to close it down and remove any data stored with it. Make a note of any login data and passwords that you use, and keep them safely stored in a very secure location. Having different passwords for different accounts is a good habit to get into for the sake of security, but remembering everything can get difficult.