Tag: laptop computer

TV Detox!

Lately I’ve gotten into a bad habit of turning the TV on early, and even though I don’t always look at it, it steels my attention and the result is that I’ve been spending way (and I mean waaaay) too much time in front of the tube. Yesterday I realized I need to give myself a detox. A TV detox.

Now, since there are a couple of programs that gives me immensely joy to watch, I’m giving myself a daily limit.

And my daily TV limit is – 1 hour.

I know for some this sounds like a lot, but from where I’ve been going lately, this is a severe restriction.

The same goes for my smartphone/iPad time. I tend to get a little engrossed when surfing the web, and before you know it, it’s been hours. So just for measures, I’m going to throw in some restrictions on this as well.

So here it is – no more than 1 hour combined Smartphone/iPad/PC use daily.

There might be one and only one exception to this rule! Sometimes preparing a post takes me longer than an hour. So should I run into that issue during my enforced detox, I have hereby granted myself permission to finish my post 🙂

Now, how long will this detox last? Hmmmmm, let’s see… Why don’t I start with two weeks and see how that goes.

So what if I fail? Then what?

Then! I get no TV whatsoever for a while….

When do I start? Well actually, I started today 😉

Why do I do it? Because I need to be more mindful on what I spend my time on…

And to steal a detail from my friend over at What I shed Today – Shedding style: reduce 😉

 

Bookmarks

I have a serious bookmark issue –

Having had pc’s both at home and at work, like forever, I have collected a few bookmarks to websites over the years. Throw a few smartphones and iPads to this mix, and you can see my problem 😉

How bad can it be, you might ask?

Between all my devices I have somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 bookmarks!!!

I found that the work pc alone have close to 1000 – whoa!!!

My new personal computer have around 300, and I have backup from old ones, with close to another 1000 – 949 to be exact.

Android phones/iPhone/iPad? Don’t have a clue – I can’t even think, to have to, manually count them – but it’s looking like at least 200+

Adding this to the email challenge I’ve started, it looks like I’m getting into a bit of digital clean ups these days.

So what did I do? Well – I’m proud to say, I got around 1900 of them deleted 🙂

It’s time…

You are the cutest little thing, and I love you dearly. You have served me well over the years, and I’m really sorry, my “little red one”, I think it’s time…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article “I’ve got my weekend cut out for me“, about setting up a computer, and some of the work involved in moving from an old to a new.  That weekend I spent my time swapping over from a computer I had borrowed, so I could get it out the door 🙂

Today (and the next days) it’s time to tackle my cute little red 13,3” laptop!

Copy everything off the old and start the hard work of sorting out what to put on the new. I’ll pretty much be following the same procedure I wrote about last time.

So far I have moved about 56 GB of data, and it’s still going strong. Turns out there is loads of photos, videos, oh yeah, and music…

I already have backups of most, but for the job at hand – I’m copying everything to a separate folder on the external hard-drive, just in case.

I can see my next task, of sorting my external hard-drives, looming in the horizon 😉 I’ll be needing at least a month, at some later time, sorting out my external hard-drives (I have several). I have to consolidate my backups and make sure I don’t have a zillion copies of everything. But, that’s another task, for another day 😉

So what am I doing with my “little red one” when I’m done? Well…

I could clean it up! It might be useful as a backup (if I could make it work properly) but it’s 7 years old, and setting it up with the latest updates and drivers, would take a bit of time.

Or, I could send it out-the-door as an items in my decluttered pile.

I haven’t really made up my mind yet, it’s a cute little computer, I really like it, and it’s hard to part with 😉

I might keep it a little longer, until I’m sure my new one works the way I want it to. I’ll let you know when I’ve had a think about it, and by the rate the backup is going… I have several days to mull it over 😉

Backup of data – is one enough?

One computer out-the-door 🙂 Remember I told you my weekend task was to clear out a computer, well it’s done and tomorrow morning it’s leaving the house with me.

I’ve removed all the software I installed, and all the documents I created. I used it for a video project of mine, and it turned out there was about 66 GB of data, to transfer. Since my new computer only have a 128 GB solid state disk, there wasn’t really room for all my video projects. So to make sure I have “redundancy”, I stored the files from the borrowed computer on two external hard-drives.

Why two? Well, I want to make sure, that if something happens with one of the hard-drives, I have one more chance 😉 I know this sounds excessive, but having been around computers for a few years, I know that hard-drives can go “belly up”. There are, after all, moving parts in most of them.

A lot of people, do save backups of pictures, video and documents, on a CD/DVD, memory stick or an external hard-drive. And this is a good thing to do, you never know what’s going to happen to you computer, and having a backup is great.

But if you have that picture, video or document you don’t want to loose, on only one device, I would recommend that you consider making one more copy, on a separate unit. Wouldn’t you just hate, if something happened to your device, and you no longer could access that priceless picture of a family member, that are no longer here, or that video, of your child walking for the first time…

I know I would!

What about you – do you have backup of your “would-hate-to-loose” documents?

My item out the door:
2014-02-09 11.35.58

I’ve got my weekend cut out for me.

You know how sometimes to get rid of one item, you need to do a lot off work first. Today’s item falls into that category.

I got a new laptop computer for Christmas. My old one do not function properly any more. In addition since I’m the designated computer help for my mum and step-mum, I need one that works. So what does this have to do with decluttering you might ask.

If any of you have ever changed over from one computer to another, you probably know there is some work involved. Like transferring stuff between the computers. That takes time. Well today I’m going to throw one more computer into this mix.

In addition to my old worn out one, I’ve borrowed a computer for one specific task that needed to be done a while ago. And that’s the computer I will “clean” out of my house during this weekend. My old one I will have to get back to after I’m done with this one 😉

This weekends’s task is – transfer my installed SW and documents from the borrowed computer to my new one. Clean up the borrowed one and get it out of the house. I know, it doesn’t sound much.. but I can promise you, it’s a bit of work, especially since it’s also two different operating systems and I might have to change some stuff around to make everything works as intended.

How do I go about this? 

I do a little preparation first:

  • I move all documents I want to keep so they are located in under the “My documents” folder structure
  • I make sure all my pictures, videos, music are located in their respective “My Pictures/Music/Video” folders. You’ll find all these under “Windows explorer/Desktop/Libraries….”
  • I put all downloaded software (SW) files into my “Downloads” folder
  • I go through the Start/All programs overview and write down the SW programs I use that I need, to make sure I install these on the new computer
  • If I use outlook or any other mail program that downloads the mails to the computer, I make sure I have a copy of the e-mail file, and the address book, so I can import it onto the new one
  • I make a copy of my “Favorites” folder, so I don’t have to recreate this later
  • When I have everything sorted and I’m sure I have everything I need, I use an external hard-drive as my transferring media. I use this type of transfer media because I think it’s easy. It gives me a copy of everything just in case. And it means I can choose what to install on the new one right now, and I still have everything on a drive, should I need it later.
  • When I’ve gotten a copy of everything I want to keep, on my external hard-drive, then I’m ready and

I start the work on my new one. 

  • Depending on how much space is available on my new computer, I transfer the most important stuff from the external hard-drive I just copied everything on to. I put the copied files into a similar folder structure to where I saved them (Documents/Pictures/Music etc.)
  • I install the programs I need, hopefully I can use the SW I already have, if not I try finding updates online.
  • After installation, I activate whatever needs to be activated, so that I can use the programs I’ve installed.
  • I add the old “Favorites” to the new “Favorites” folder
  • I set up my new email program and import my old emails and address book
  • Then, if there is any bits an pieces left that needs sorting. I’ll do this

And then I’m ready to go…. I hope!

As you can see.. there is a few things to do. So, I better get started 😉

Wish me luck will you…