| Online photo albums and external hard drives. |
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| By What's Up Hutch | ||||||
| Wednesday, 23 July 2008 | ||||||
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Despite popular belief this is not because Bill Gates is the devil. It is because you are storing too many files on your hard drive. As the hard drive disk space fills up... It doesn't have as much available memory to run applications so trying to run anything gets slowed down. I am not a computer hardware guy and can not explain it any further than that... but I promise you, that is how most folks wear out there computers so fast. Ok so whats the answer? We posted one great solution here, get email off your computer and let the good folks at Google/Yahoo/Some webmail provider deal with the hardware issues of email. I guarantee it will extend the life of your computer if it is not already too late. Also think about the fact that if you have to get a new computer for any reason... There would be no email files to transfer from one to the other. You just turn it on and log-in. If you are in Hutch and on a cox email don't fret just forward it to Gmail and roll-on. The next step... Get all your pictures off your computer. 2 options: **** They should probably be used in conjunction with each other. 1. Go get an external hard drive. Click here for a good one that Office Max right here in Hutch carries if you don't want to order online. Then take all your pics and put them on this baby and get them off your computer and from here on out take them off the digital camera straight to the external hard drive. Quit using your computers assets to store a million pics. Oh and again think about when you do have to get a new computer... no need to transfer all those pics over right? Awesome!!! 2. Get a online photo album account. Lot's of places offer free space on their servers to store your pictures and they make it insanely easy to share with anyone you want to... and only people you want to. I know people are saying... "You want me to put my pictures of my precious baby out there and hope that somebody I never met doesn'tdelete them?" No, I want you to get an external Hard Drive to store them on so you know you can't lose them and then put the best ones out on an online photo album and share them with the people you want or share them with the world instead of trying to email them. If you put them in an online photo gallery there are many benefits. A. Again, you are not storing them on your computer and using hard drive space. B. You can easily share them without trying to figure out whom all you need to email. C. You can access them to look at them or add to them from any internet connected computer in the world. Here are a few online photo services you can try. 1. Picasa web -you do not need to download the desktop application unless you want to. If you have a gmail account... You already have a Picasa web account just click on photos in the top left of your gmail inbox. 2. Flickr - if you have a yahoo account you can use the same username and password. 3. My Photo Album - Never tried it. 4. Photobucket - Never tried it. Oh yeah - same thing with video all these sites will store your videos for you as well and you can share them or not. Speaking of pictures have you seen these from this last weekend around town. Final thought - would anyone be interested if Whatsuphutch.com staff put on little informal tech classes at various locations around town?? We don't have any details, just want to know if there is interest?? Didn't your momma teach you to share? Share us.   
  
1. 07-23-2008 10:20 Snapfish is also a good one. www.snapfish.com They partner with HP and you can order online then pick them up in an hour at Walgreens. I'm a last minute kind of person so I don't like to have to remember to order my pictures a week in advance if I want to go scrapbook. Walmart also offers you the ability to upload, order and pick up at the store but I'm not sure of their storage capabilities. Photobucket and flickr are great for sharing online like on MySpace and have easy to create albums with a clickable load to myspace so it is really easy. www.slide.com is another fun one for making slide shows. You can make them for your desktop too. I like Picasa too since it works with your gmail and you can save photos that people send to you with just a click. If you are a mac junkie like I am it also works really easy to upload from iphoto using the export/web feature. Personal advice? make sure your password protect your accounts and only share them with whom you want to, especially photos of your kids. Too many creepy people out there. Maybe I'm just paranoid or watch too many Dateline specials. Maybe it's my celebrity status...lol. 2. 07-23-2008 10:21 Oh, I forgot to mention that most of these sites also let you edit your photos (crop, fix red eye, adjust color) before you order. Pretty user friendly unless you are high-tech and prefer Adobe Photoshop. 3. 07-23-2008 10:23 Oh, one more thing. Bill gates is evil - like the fru-its of the de-vil (quote from So I Married An Axe Murderer). MAC THE PLANET! 4. 07-23-2008 17:16 Good advice, that. External hard drives also offer the chance for your digital photos to survive a disaster. In addition to an external hard drive at home, you can back your photos up every few weeks to a unit at a friend's house or your safety deposit box. I have one out-of-state that I back up every few weeks. These can be password-protected so nobody can snoop around in them. When the sirens go off, you may lose a lot of things, but your digital pictures don't have to be among them. And in addition to not being that expensive, these things are getting more convenient all the time. I picked up a USB-powered 320 Gig portable hard drive for my laptop just a few weeks ago on sale at Office Max for $129. It'll take me 'til the end of the year to fill that. AC-powered home units are even less expensive. It's not uncommon to see a 500 Gig unit on sale for about $100, and terabyte units are now being made. Say it with me now: "ter-a-byte...ter-a-byte" (*now fanning myself from the excitement*) 5. 07-23-2008 23:14 yes on the tech classes please:) 6. 07-24-2008 10:13 I have been toying around with getting an external hard drive for my thousands of pics. If it will speed up my computer to take them off of here - now I'm definitely going to get one! 7. 09-17-2008 12:39 I like the advise of getting your personal photos off of your main hard disk, but more from a recoverability stand-point than speed. I recommend having at least two copies of data, and getting one of them out of the house, like at a relative's house or a safe-deposit box. DVD's and external drives are great for this. Generally speaking, unless your disk drive gets extremely full (98%+ of capacity), it doesn't tend to affect speed that much. When I work on PC's that are slowly but surely bogging down, it's because of either a virus/spyware, or just a collection of add-ins that are running. Various instant messengers and video programs (Real Audio and Quicktime come to mind) like to start when the computer boots and sit in the background doing basically nothing. Uninstalling these, or at least configuring them not to run at boot time usually makes a significant difference. Just my two cents... 8. 09-19-2008 11:14 Zack, Thanks for a great comment.... I see you said you work on computers??? Are you interested in contributing to the whatsuphutch.com tech tip column? If so send email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Write Comment
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