Extra room to store, share your files
Are you running out of storage space? I'm not talking about your living room closet that contains 58 jackets, some of which haven't been worn since the Crusades, a vaccum cleaner, three bowling balls and dust bunnies bigger than apples. I'm talking about disk storage space.
If you are running out of storage space, or if you would like a place available online to store files accessible while both at work and home, then keep reading. If not, maybe do something more productive, like making toast or cleaning out that closet. From experience, I should mention those large dust bunnies could be used as excellent fake beards.
You have a certain amount of storage space available on your hard drive. To check this on the PC, click on My Computer and single-click on the local drive. In the left-hand panel you will see a pie chart showing the used and free disk space. For Mac users, you can view this by single-clicking on the hard drive and clicking apple-i. This will display information about your hard drive, including the capacity, the total used, the total remaining and the amount of toast you can consume in one sitting.
Unless you already know, this might be a good opportunity to explain the meaning of GB, which you probably saw behind a number if you were examining disk space. That does not stand for Green Bay, Golden Boy or Gray Beard. A gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes; one megabyte is 1,024 kilobytes; and one kilobyte is 1,024 bytes. An easier way to remember this, though, is that a kilobyte is 210 bytes, a megabyte is 220 bytes and a gigabyte is 230 bytes. Do you really need to know anything else? Now you can look at some of your files more closely to see how much room you really need for the files and your bowling balls.
This might be adequate space, but then again, you might be running short on space, with video clips, music, etc. (By the way, you still have time to vote your all-time favorite songs!) Or maybe you just need a more efficient way to use files from anywhere, not just work. Luckily, there are plenty of options, and none require you to clean skeltons out of your closet.
The most desirable option depends entirely on what type of files you will be storing. If you need a place to park photos, especially those of you wearing all of those crusty jackets, try Club Photo or Fotki. You can then establish albums to share with others, either publicly or privately. Or maybe you need a place to store mp3s. At Myplay, you can store over 2 gb of songs that can be downloaded by others. There's even a place to store and sell your files at Zden. You can start earning points if others purchase your files or if you refer additional members.
If you need a place to store different types of files — whether they be text files, images, databases, whatever — I would recommend Apple's iDisk or Yahoo's Briefcase. The iDisk gives you 100 mb of space, accessible virtually anywhere. You don't have to have a Mac to use it, either. Briefcase allows 30 mb of disk space. Both are upgradeable (by payment, of course) for additional capacity.
This is just a small sample; for more alternatives to file storage, check out the lists at Prospector and FreeWebspace.net. As you can see, there are plenty of places to keep copies of files in case you would ever need them. I would recommend that if you plan to keep copies of dust bunnies, to put them back in the closet.
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