Maintaining your computer, tidying your desktop, and doing a number of other digital chores requires a lot of effort—or at least time—on your part. It doesn't have to. This weekend, set up your computer to do the tedious all by itself.
Automate Cleaning Tasks
If you've been reading us for awhile, you know you can automate just about anything on Windows or OS X. One of the best tasks to automate is cleaning your desktop, as sometimes you just don't have the energy or desire to take care of things yourself. Apps like Belvedere (Windows) and Hazel (OS X) can be set up to automatically clean up and organize your desktop. While nothing is going to beat a specialized, manual organization system you can at least use automation to take care of the busy work and do the rest yourself—if you want.
Make Backing Up an Afterthought
Few of us manually backup our hard drives anymore as there are many great automatic backup apps for all platforms, but unless you have a hard drive hooked up to your machine 24/7 you might not be backing up your computer as often as you should. It's also best to have multiple backups, one of which is off-site, so you can still retrieve your data if the physical copies you have are destroyed. Cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive are good starting points, and may be enough to backup the things you care about, but if you want a comprehensive solution that targets both local and remote drives you should check out Crashplan. If you need help setting it up, we've got a guide.
Keep Your Computer Running in Top Shape
Your operating system likely runs maintenance tasks on a schedule, so there's only so much you really need to do in the first place. That said, your machine may end up running slow because it isn't maintained as well as it could be. If you just set up a schedule to keep things in top shape, you won't have to worry. We have guides to help you out for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Create an Automatic Security System
Security is important, but it's also tedious and frustrating at times. If you've got a Bluetooth device, however, you can have added computer security without any of the hassle. Apps like Proximity (OS X), BlueProximity (Linux), and Blue Lock (Windows) can detect the proximity of a Bluetooth device and lock/unlock your computer when its far/near. While Bluetooth isn't the most secure and IDs can be copied by someone who knows how, it's likely sufficient for your home computer or laptop (unless you've got a few top secret documents inside).
Automate Virtually Anything Else
As previously mentioned, you can automate just about anything on Windows or OS X without any programming skills. This post contains just a few examples of what you can do, so if you've got specific needs be sure to explore your options. Chances are you're doing more work than you need to, and your computer can handle it for you.
Have a great weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment