The Holidays Computing....!!!

I have written extensively about the best ways to speed up your computer and the perils of “online hoarding.” Once upon a time homes and offices were cluttered with stacks of papers, photos, video tapes and record albums and cassettes. As the digital revolution evolved, documents were then stored on computers, video tapes gave way to DVDs and records albums and cassettes were replaced with CDs. Fast forward to the new century, and most users began storing music and video files and digital photos on their computers.

The current trend gaining steam is ‘cloud computing,’ which allows you to store all your documents and files in a web storage service, eliminating the problem of a cluttered hard drive that is ready to burst at the seams. Especially during the holiday season when you're busy amassing hundreds of photos and numerous short videos of family and friends, you need a safe haven to store, organize and share all these files with your loved ones.

Problem of computer ‘overcrowding’
All those documents, files and photos that have been sitting in your documents folders for months or years and all the family photos and music downloads you have stored on your PC not only take up valuable disk space, but also slow down your system. If your computer is working at a much slower pace than usual, a likely culprit could be the overwhelming amount of files and photos you have saved on your hard drive. Simply deleting these will help speed up your PC. Computer crashes, which can happen at any time, can also eradicate all your stored content as well.

Cloud computing to the rescue
As the Guardian explains, “The ‘cloud’ is the Internet, and the term is fitting -- it's large, out there somewhere, and fuzzy at the edges. Cloud computing is about putting more of your material out there and less on PCs or servers that a business runs for itself.”

A number of tech experts predict that in the next few years, more users will move their content into the ‘cloud,’ and subscribe to web storage services instead.

Web storage services are cropping up everywhere, and they offer users the ability to store their photos, videos, documents and files safely on the web, which can be accessed from anywhere as long as you are connected to the Web.

Storing holiday photos and memories
Think of web storage services as a type of bank. Would you ever store your valuables under the mattress or in a drawer where they might run the risk of getting lost or stolen? No. The same rule applies to valuable photos, files and documents, which can live more securely on the web, free of your home computer's potential crashes and hard drive malfunctions.

According to the Pew Research Center, "By 2020 most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks, rather than depending primarily on tools and information housed on their individual, personal computers.” A good place to carve a niche in the great ‘cloud’ therefore, is to begin by storing your own personal digital valuables online.