Your Computer Screen’s Real Estate

The first thing that we see once our computers finish booting is our computer desktops. And because it’s the first thing we see, we personalize it, often place inspiring wallpapers to help us get through our daily tasks.

Aside from the ubiquitous personalized wallpaper, though, there are more ways to optimize the real estate of your computer screen. Yes, real estate it is, that needs to be managed in order to give us the best returns in productivity.  For instance, filling your desktop with all those shortcut icons is one, annoying because you can hardly find what you need with all of those icons that fill up virtually half your desktop, and two, inefficient, because it may eat up more of your computer’s memory.

Desktop icons take two types: shortcuts and actual files. The icons with an arrow on the lower right hand corner are the shortcuts. This means that the actual files of the applications are stored elsewhere. The ones that don’t have the arrow, however, are the actual files. Now, these files on your desktop take up more space, and slow down your PC. So, take those files out and place them inside a folder on your hard disk, external memory, or network drive.

But more important than taking out the files from your desktop and just leaving the shortcuts is actually decluttering your desktop and optimizing that small space you have on the screen. For instance, check out which of those desktop icons you hardly ever use, and delete them from your desktop. Applying the pack-rat mentality for your desktop icons never works, you know. So, just keep the desktop icons that you regularly use. Your eyes can relax with fewer desktop icons. Besides, you’ll see more of that great wallpaper of yours.

But what if you have a set of documents that you often need or use, and you keep them on your desktop for easy access? Well, take them out from your desktop and place them in your hard drive, then add an extra toolbar to your taskbar.

Now, let’s say you have a set of six documents that you have to work on for the next two weeks. You can make them accessible by creating a toolbar for them. Just place all six documents in one folder in your hard drive and give it a name, like “Required Documents.” Then, mouse over the taskbar and right click. A menu should open, and the first item is Toolbars. Mouse over Toolbars to see the drop-down menu. Then click New Toolbar at the very bottom. It’ll open a window where you can choose a folder from your computer. Simply choose your “Required Documents” folder, and you’ll always be able to access that folder from your taskbar. If you want to see the individual files from that folder, just click the outside border of the icon area and pull it out. You’ll see all of the files inside and be able to click them directly.

Finally, in the quest to optimize your desktop real estate, you need to think about what kind of work it is that you do on your computer. Various types of tasks need different kinds of set-ups. For instance:

• If you mostly do graphic design tasks, you’ll want to make your workspace visually attractive. You can put your design programs in the desktop or toolbar. And you can use of the fun slideshow icon provided to stimulate you visually.

• If you write mostly, then you’ll want a clear work area and easier access to the applications for your blogging, web research, social media, etc. You can set custom toolbars, depending on your writing assignment deadlines. Plus, you can set bookmarks on your browser for the internet-based applications that you’ll need.

• If you mostly do programming, you’ll want wide windows and very little clutter, since you have to read and type code at eye-level.

So, figure out what kind of computer lifestyle you have. That’ll go a long way to help you determine how to manage that very prime real-estate that you have—your computer desktop.

ABOUT MY TECH TEAM:
My Tech Team is a leading online tech support company based in the U.S, providing nationwide on demand enterprise level computer support and protection 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

 
Would you be so kind to share this post? Use the buttons below.

You Might Also Like...

• Manage your files better