Okay well...I figured the majority of questions here would be related to technology (as in computers mainly) in some shape or form, and quite a few people around here are great at that type of thing, and some of us around here (like me...) are completly technologically disadvantaged.

So here's a thread for you to ask little simple technology-related questions that you don't want to have to make an entirely new thread for each time. Ask a question, give an answer!

So here's mine:
I'm trying to free up some more space on my computer, because I'm completely and totally addicted to The Sims but don't have enough room for it. I noticed that iTunes takes up a ton of space on there. What I was wondering is if there's any way to make the program smaller? One thought was to delete the files off of the computer but keep them in the library (So it wouldn't be able to play through iTunes, and wouldn't be on my computer, but would still be on my iPod.) but I'm not sure what the effect of that would be, and thought I'd get a second opinion before I did it. Any thoughts on that idea, or other suggestions to free up space (I've already deleted all unessecery programs, and attempted to de-frag the C drive. Not much luck.)

If you use a program other than iTunes to get your music, or if you've for whatever reason created another iTunes library while you've had it, chances are that you've got duplicates of your songs. Run a quick test by searching (with the hard-drive search doohicky) for something you haven't bought with iTunes. If you let the search run and the file is only in one place, then go ahead with your drastic measures, but make sure you think about what you'll do if your iPod dies and your music dies with it.

You can also try setting the search buggy to only find files larger than, say, 10 MB. Deleting a few of these can make a significant difference in your free disk space. Or check to see if your music files are in MP3 or WAV format. You can shrink em with iTunes by converting to AAC, though that limits you a little as far as using other programs goes. If all else fails, dump podcasts and downloaded videos.

Good luck!

(Assuming your running a Windows system) Try running Disk Cleanup. [Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup]

You could try compressing your rarely used files if there is a chance of them becoming valueble in the future, if not delete them. If thee still isn't enough space, why don't you buy an external hard-drive. They are very cheap.

You can use a hard drive space analyser to see what's using up most of the space and then decide to keep it or bin it. I've used them in the past, but I can't remember which one so I can't make any recommendations, sorry!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hard+driv...lient=firefox-a

I've gotten rid of every program I possibly can - the only "luxery" programs left on the computer are Messenger, iTunes, and my photo editing program. All of which I use a ton.

The external Hardrive sounded interesting though. This may be a dumb question but - what exactly do they do/ how do they work?

Just how big is your current hard drive? Unless you've got absolutely gazillions of tunes on there then it doesn't sound like you should be having any problems.

External hard drives are quite cheap and can be run through a standard USB cable. You use them the same way as you would anything else that's saved on your computer, except instead of it being saved into C: it might be saved in D: (or some other letter).

The sticker on the side of the computer says 15.0 GB, I'd have to ask my father to see if that's right, though.

And I'll be looking into that, for sure.

15GB? Ah, well that would explain why you are having space issues. I'm by no means a huge collector of music, but I've got around 15GB of tracks on my machine, most of which came straight off of my CD collection. If you add in all the audio books then you're probably closer to 30 or 40GB!

My main hard drive has about 80GB, my secondary internal one (which I keep all my media on, music and films) is 120GB. In this age of digital media storage you really do need that amount of storage.

We got this computer when I was around six or seven years old, before iPods and such were a huge thing, which explains the abnormally small hard drive I guess. I'm really hoping to get my own this christmas!

It's that old? Wow... That was quite an enormous hard drive for back then!

Windows XP alone tends to take up about 4 gig and expands over time, so nowadays 15 gig doesn't go far. If you don't get your own PC it might be worth getting a new internal hard disk. It will probably be cheaper than an external drive and most shops should be able to fit it for you.

I currently have 160 gig on my laptop for day to day stuff, music and the like. Other stuff gets backed up to my fileserver which I've just had to upgrade to hold 450 gig.

I have two 20G hard drives in my computer which is still nowhere near enough; I'm constantly moving things, deleting and deciding what to get rid of to make space for something else. I've also thought about an external hard drive.

I have a 102GB hard drive on this laptop, and a stupidly small one on my other laptop (why the extra two GB?).
I think an external hard drive would be good, but only insofar as I would use it to save personal files and the like on, as this machine is meant to be for work.
A friend of mine has one that is shaped like a lego brick

Formatting the disk so that an operating system can use it (storing information on where files are and the like) will take up part of the disk. Disks normally come in nice round numbered sizes then end up with weird amounts of available space after formatting.

As an example I just put a 200gig disk into my server, partitioned into two 100gig slices. But after formatting each slice only has 92gig of usable space. As disks get bigger it takes a lot of space to store all the information on where files and directories are on the disk.

Ah see!
The OCD in me would still like a round number. Or a multiple of eight >_>

Whoo!

My dad's checking into an external harddrive at the moment but even better is this...

The chance of me actually getting my own computer for Christmas is nearing...

I'm thinking I have an even better chance if I were able to give them some soild facts about which computer I want, exactly. So help me out, here?

I want one with a decent amount of storage. For example, able to hold iTunes, A photoediting program, and maybe two normal-sized games without hassel.
Size of memory is really the only important bit - the only hobby I would need it for is storing my photography, so that's good.
Cheap as possible while not being crappy, please?

Any suggestions for what brand/ where to look, ect?

I'd say that there are two things that are important in a PC at the moment: the amount of RAM (you want at least 2GB, preferably 3GB if you can get it) and the size of the hard-drive.

I've got two drives in my machine, which gives me 220GB (I think). That's a huge amount of space, but it does mean that I can have one drive dedicated to holding my media files (films, TV, music). I've got around 20GB of music, 10GB+ of audio books, and then another 50GB of films and TV series. My main drive is kept mostly for programs that I've installed and currently is about 50GB full of stuff.

You can get single drives that go up to 200GB+, but even 120GB would probably keep you happy for quite a while if you stick with the tasks that you've described.

If you want to play games on it then a decent graphics card would be useful, but I'm no help on that kind of thing.

I actually DID get a computer for christmas.

the harddrive is 250 Gigs or something around that, don't know about the RAM though.

It came pre-installed with Windows Vista too, which I'm pretty impressed with. Then again, I'm also extremely impressed with the fact that it has a flat-screen so I doubt my opinion on OS's counts for much.

Once we manage to get it hooked up to the internet (currently I'm just playing the Sims on it. ) My parents may not see me that much anymore. Hell, if I got a mini-fridge in my room they'd NEVER see me again.

Thanks, though. I'll pass that info on to my dad, because he's going to get an external harddrive for the old computer. (And when I say old..I mean old.)

He'd probably be better off buying a new machine!

If your PC can run Vista then it's probably got lots of RAM because that OS eats memory as fast as it can. With the tasks you're looking for then it shouldn't cause any problems, but if you have really big memory or slowdown issues then it might be worth thinking about 'downgrading' to Windows XP - a lot of IT professionals have done this. It's not very easy though, and Vista will probably be fine for you.

What large applications you have, sir . Perhaps it is just me, but I wouldn't have thought most people would be likely to actually need more than one. Certainly I can run several applications on vista at once (including oblivion) without hitting the 1 gig mark - not sure I could get near 3 if I tried. Mind if I ask what's so big?

It just speeds everything up. I originally bought 2GB for some fairly heavyweight 3D graphics rendering which was taking forever, but it improved the general speed of the computer. Even simple stuff like grabbing an image and moving it around in Photoshop goes more smoothly it seems.

It will be faster for most apps because it can deal with a lot more in memory which is accessed a lot faster then the HDD which is what it falls back on if it runs out of physical memory.

Vista (*shudder*) in particular will cache as much as it can into RAM to try to speed things up, with the idea that unused ram is pointless.

3GB is currently the limit for 32bit OS's afaik.

You can get much larger drives then 200GB, 1TB drive are not unknown, if costly, 500GB are farily common.

Internal drives are almost exclusively better then external drives, with a much greater MTBF.

4gb is the maximum for a 32 bit system (2 to the power of 32 is 4,294,967,296 addressable bytes).

However, if you have 4gb on Windows only 2gb is available to applications and the rest is reserved for the operating system. There is an option that you can set (by manually editing your boot.ini, definitely not to be taken lightly) to change this to 3gb for applications and 1gb reserved for the system.

We've had to fiddle with this at work recently due to the amount of memory used when exporting some next gen (current gen now?) levels.

I'm guessing there's no chance you'd like to help me out with this one Or possibly point me to a nice shiny guide or some sort?

Linky

I was looking for some networking help if possible. I think the problem actualy lies within my computer, but it is network related.

Anywayz; the problem is that I'm using an old computer at the moment and I just formatted it, so it's running quite fast and all, but, I've been using for a couple of days and the networking was all fine. Now just today, whenever I try to access another computer on the network (to access shared media, etc.) it connects fine and I can browse the folders etc. but after about ten seconds, my computer just reboots. It just sort of instantly turns off, it doesnt shut down or anything.

But I can still use the internet fine, and this happens connecting to all computers. And also the other computers interconnect fine. Mine is the only one that is messed up.

I would greatly appreciate any help and also, ask me all the questions you need about our setup. (My brother doesn't know what's wrong either.)

Thankzees.

If you've only just reformatted it, had you considered doing it again?

Sorry, I've not really got much of an idea about this one. Windows and networking seem to be bitter enemies with a dislike that has lasted centuries. Now, whenever they start fighting, no-one can remember why it started, it just seems to happen.

Thanks for the concern and suggestion, but I think I will just leave it as it is for now. Because I don't really need to access the other computers desperately, and I've sort of "settled in" with the computer now. That is, changed the settings, get my old files, install programs, etc.