Staying organized on your computer

[Roknrol]

So how does everyone stay organised on their computer?

With unemployment has come a plethora of computer-related work while I try to find various different ways of earning an income. Of course, being a geek I have way more crap to keep track of than is probably healthy and I'm finding myself missing simple shit just because there's so much that I need to keep track of.

So what do you guys use to stay organised? Do you keep a notepad at your desk to manually write stuff down? Text files? Software? Or (like me) are you just a fuckin' slob on your machine?

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Oh Rok, you're a terrible tease.... I read the heading and thought you were going to show me how to stay organised on my computer...

[DanieMarie]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Sticky notes (the Mac program kind), actual notes on a bulletin board, a Word file I always keep open and save the "good" stuff every so often, and also I keep everything on my computer and in my externals in neat little files (which are due for a good "Spring Cleaning" at the moment...some stuff needs to be put away and some stuff needs to go...computers need it too!) I do so much of my life online that I just can't afford to have it be a disaster. It's actually more vital than my actual space.

[Roknrol]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Oh Rok, you're a terrible tease.... I read the heading and thought you were going to show me how to stay organised on my computer...

Well, to be perfectly honest, I'd talk about all of the applications that I currently use, but most of them wouldn't be available for your particular computers (I run Linux, not Windows)

But that's why I wanted to start the thread If people talk about what works for them, that'll at least give us something to start Googling to narrow down for our own particular needs

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Fair enough Rok - my biggest problem with Windows 7 is that the search feature (when you search for a word or phrase in a document) isn't anywhere near as good as the Old Windows XP. So basically everything is a mess. Cannot seem to cope with searching for PDF files. Grrrrr.

Mr Penry is very organised, unlike me. He keeps everything on scraps of paper in his pipe smoking box. When it all gets to much he just sets fire to them....

[Roknrol]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Hrm, that sounds like your Windows Search may be configured to search a lot of areas where what you'd be looking for wouldn't be located.

Erm...lemme try again.

If you primarily search for documents that you download/edit/create/modify, then you should really only have to search your My Documents folder. Windows 7 attempts to be more useful by being far less efficient, in than it (if I remember correctly) tries to keep track of every damn thing on your computer all of the time, even shit you'll never use/need.

There should be a way to change that setting somewhere - but I don't have access to a Windows 7 computer to see where it would be at. I tend to not do very much searching (usually for system files - stuff that I wouldn't normally get in to) and I keep most of my Documents "organised" in a handful of easy-to-remember folders and subfolders

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Thanks Rok - I've tried all sorts of technical support for this problem, but it never really gets sorted. And from what I've searched online, it seems to be a common problem. The computer has two ways of searching, but neither works well especially for pdf documents. I think Windows 7 is a pile of poo personally - much preferred Windows XP. At least, it worked for me. Now, even when I set it to search only My Documents, it still can't find a word in a pdf. It's desperate stuff.

So.... back to my trusty notebook and pen. Makes you wonder why Microsoft spend all that money developing a new system and forget soemthing as basic as a bloody search, doesn't it?

[Roknrol]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Primarily, I think the problem is that they're attempting to push the hardware beyond it's particular capacity. The reason the search sucks is because they changed the way that the search is performed. With the right hardware and cleaning regimen, Windows 7 Search *can* be better than XP's, unfortunately the hardware is prohibitive for most people.

If you're talking about searching *within* a PDF file, I would try something like CutePDF and see if the Search function works any better. There are a few free PDF programs out there - CutePDF is one of the better ones.

Keep in mind that the typical development cycle for Windows (well, the cycle they try to stick to) is to come out with a new release every other year, and to be supported for something like 4-6 years. Windows XP was supported for over a decade, so had nearly 10 years of bugfixes and patches to support it. Of course, that actually ended up stifling the industry, because despite having a fairly stable platform to work with, developers were stuck working with pretty much the same capabilities. Like a fish won't outgrow it's tank (usually)

Like I said, I got into the habit (a long time ago) to just file things in places that make sense (to me). Windows comes with "My Documents" folders, "My Music", "My Videos", etc...and Linux boxes usually have similar directories set up. I've created some subfolders under "My Documents" for the different areas of my life where I have to store documents - business-related material in one folder, hobby and creative stuff in another, and so on. Filenames aren't very limited anymore (back in the day, you had an 8 character limit, and if you were on a Windows machine, case didn't matter, so you "NOTE.TXT" and "note.txt" were viewed as the same name, even more limiting). Filenames can be as descriptive as you like Of course, because I cut my milk teeth in those limited 8-bit days, I've still maintained some of the conventions...I tend to use very short filenames until I get frustrated and think, "Duh, I don't have to cram 'Porn collection growth for FY2010' into 8 characters or less <doh>"

So that helps me stay a bit organised. I tend to do the same thing with my email folder - I have something like 8 email accounts, 5 of which get quite a bit of traffic. For the most part, I don't care to keep all of my email separate, but I figure as long as there's a record of where the email was sent to (there is, in the header), it can be stored in the same damn place as all of the other email that I get, and if I need to find out where it was sent to then I have that information right there. That's really helped me with email clutter, and it allows me to have fairly broad categories. Of course, email is one place that I use the "Search" function a lot - I'm pretty pleased with the one incorporated into Mozilla Thunderbird.

I have *tried* to use "sticky note" type programs in the past. They don't seem to be nearly as "user-friendly" as the real thing for me. Of course, part of that is that there are fewer options for a Linux computer (not only that, if I didn't like what was available on a Windows machine I'd likely be able to build myself an application to do what I wanted) With a regular sticky note, you've got a pen, you scribble your note, and you're done. With the sticky note programs there's always the problem with unburying the program (or clicking on the icon and going into a menu to create a new note), then typing it up and clicking save...etc. I know it doesn't seem like much, but to me that's cumbersome as shit - I usually just open up a Notepad document and type my notes in there instead of using a sticky note thingy. Who knows - maybe I can find one with an interface that doesn't seem so clunky (the other problem, of course, is that graphic-intensive software doesn't run well on my computer. It's not that it's not powerful enough, but rather Linux wasn't designed to make it behave the way I'm making it behave)

[DanieMarie]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

In Mac OS you can just search individual folders when you open them (including the master folder that holds all other folders, like Documents)

[Roknrol]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Yup, Linux *can* have the same functionality, but it's not as easy as it is with OSX

Of course, my computer cost me a lot less :P

[Medusa]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

I have Win 7 and love it!
Let's see. On my desktop I use those sticky notes for quick reference and bill payments.
Other than that? I use google calender. Simply because it's synced to my Android. Which makes having everything in one place nice. I even have sticky notes on my cell phone! Also main stuff I use daily is just pinned to the task bar. I also like the new Firefox 4. Because I can have frequently used websites tabbed in the corner. So I never have to click to find them. I have it as FB,GMail,google calender and My Fitness Pal site. Also my homepage is igoogle. So I have my most used bookmarks on the front page instead of searching via bookmarks.

[Roknrol]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Yup, I've been *trying* to consolidate a lot of my stuff into Google as well, if only because I'm sick to death of doing technical support (even for myself). I've actually gotten to the point where my server is "too much beast" for what it's actually doing...I'll probably dumb it down sometime this summer (we'll see how the home business turns out).

For Firefox, I use the hell out of the Speed dial (I've got 7 4x5 dials, mostly full), and I've got my bookmarks toolbar on the left side all of the time.

Of course, the monitor layout helps me immensely - I've got my email opened on the lower-right monitor, my twitter, google chat, skype, Yahoo!, etc running on the top-right monitor, Firefox on the bottom-center and whatever I'm actively working on on the upper-center. The left side is usually reserved for video games and movies (although if GG is watching with me, the picture is stretched over the 4 right-most monitors).

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Medusa - it's so nice to find someone who likes Win 7. I still don't and I suspect it's probably because of the way I use my computer and the things I use it for. Basically I need it as a very capable word processor. It needs to be able to handle documents easily, sort and store and download journals etc., and it doesn't do any of this better than the old Windows XP. It probably does lots of other things better, but perhaps the reason I don't like it is because it's messy and trying to be 'fun' when actually using it in the way I want is about as much fun as watching paint dry. It has horrible habits of changing fonts when I don't want it to, the 'insert symbols' programme (for foreign language symbols such as ancient Greek or Anglo Saxon) is no better than before. It's claims to automatically reference are WAYYYYY overstated.
But what I can see now is that it was probably never intended to suit people like me. It's the all singing, all dancing Win 7 and maybe it will suit loads of other applications much better.... but it sure as hell annoys the c*** out of me!

[DanieMarie]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Yup, Linux *can* have the same functionality, but it's not as easy as it is with OSX

Of course, my computer cost me a lot less :P

Haha mine was a gift from my parents!

But yeah, isn't OS Unix based, which has a lot of similarities? I'm not a programmer so I'm not to savvy on this sort of stuff but that's what I'd heard. I think Linux sounds like it's really solid, but it's not for me because for what I do usability is a big deal. Macs are really great for the kind of stuff I play around with. I like to mess around with Music production, and this summer I want to expand my skills in web and graphic design and photo editing!
I'm happy with it too though, because I find it's not only really usable but even though I'm pretty good at the software end of computers and I only got a virus on Windows once (which wasn't even my fault), I have far fewer problems with Mac, it runs more efficiently and 3 years later I don't feel like I'm dying for a new computer. The graphics processor died last year, but Apple fixed that for free because it was a defect in this model.

---------- Post added at 10:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 AM ----------

Oh yeah consolidating stuff to Google/iTunes (if you use mac the latter is also useful) is great! Easy access, easy syncing.

[Roknrol]

Re: Staying organized on your computer

Yeah, OS X was based on BSD (which was based on Linux). When I had my Mac, I installed a ton of Linux software on it because I could, and because I do some "weird" crap on my computers and needed better than Mac software

If it wasn't for the prohibitive cost, and the fact that Steve Jobs is a douchbag, I'd probably be looking for one myself

Regarding your last thought - if anyone is planning on doing "cloud computing" or anything like that, my suggestion would be to not store anything sensitive on someone elses server, and to keep good backups before you transfer anything to the "cloud". A couple of companies that provide cloud computing have gone under recently, and some of them did so without warning (and without giving people the opportunity to retrieve their files)