Unclutter your desktop- part 1
As I mentioned in a recent post, many PC users seem to clutter up their computer desktop with dozens and dozens of icons. Although the desktop is a convenient place for shortcuts to frequently used programs and services, the convenience is diminished when your eye has to roam over rows and rows of icons to find the one you are looking for. A desktop littered with icons is no convenience at all.
The first step to uncluttering your desktop is to remove the icons for useless or unwanted services. To some extent, this is caused by the practice of almost every program to stick a shortcut on the desktop when it is installed. Polite programs will ask first but not all give you an option. Some programs even stick multiple icons on the desktop. Intuit is an example of a prime offender. Install Quicken and you get icons touting banks, brokers, and what have you. For some reason, many people just leave these useless icons to sit there and consume space. Also, when you get a new computer, the manufacturer is very likely to have stuck a lot of junk icons on your computer. Do you really want that AOL or MSN sign-up? One of the first things to do with a new computer is to delete all the stuff that the OEM is trying to sell. Yet, I see three-year old PCs whose owners have no interest whatever in AOL but who have an AOL sign-up icon still sitting on the desktop.
In fact, there is really no need for you to have shortcuts to most programs on the desktop. Reserve this prime real estate for those programs and folders that you use all the time. Anything that is a once-in-a-while application can be opened from the All Programs menu or in other ways. Remember that removing the desktop shortcut for a program has no effect on the availability of the actual program.
I’ll continue this topic with some future posts giving more tips on keeping the desktop organized.
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