Changing My Computer Ways

 There was a time when I would have assigned certain tasks to each of my computer devices.     Some would be done on PC. Others on the tablet. Yet others on the smartphone.

As time went by I disciplined myself to do more and more on the smartphone so I wouldn't have to save up a group of tasks for later.     I could get them done, off my to-do list, and out of mind now.

The end result of this progress was that I realized recently that I needed to be able to do all tasks on all devices.     

That final step took a bit of doing.

I reformatted my old PC and put only a few applications on it.     These included the browser, a DVD writer, windirstat, and Audacity.     These handled a few tasks I couldn't do elsewhere.

The main function left to my PC was then to be able to handle files, which it does better than any other device.

To get at these files from anywhere,  I installed the number of cloud storage apps.     These included iCloud, Drive, Google photos, Dropbox. OneDrive,  Amazon music and photos.     

For safety I allowed some duplication.      For example, my music appears in several different drives.     

Also, I saved everything on a $24 200gb SanDisk Drive in place of my PC's hard drive.     I also added such drives to smartphone and Walmart’s new $64 ONN 8” tablet.      

Eventually the PC, which takes up too much space, will be discarded.      I have an Intel Windows PC stick which will replace it. My display is actually also a TV, though all I really need for TV is a display with YouTube TV and no cable.

I also downloaded all my Amazon purchased music and put it on the 200gb drive.

To ease the process of getting at information on various devices, I used aggregator apps, such as CloudBeats for music.    I only need to go to one place to get access to music anywhere in the cloud.

As for books and documents, I access them from Kindle and Google Books.    These can also be downloaded for backup, but the process is more complicated.    For safety I simply duplicate uploading my own documents to each.

The iPad presented a somewhat challenging a problem.     Its weak point is file handling, but that is about to change.     I bought the newest iPad to be able to run iOS 13 for that reason.       I could simply have relied on Bluetooth access to WiFi drives. Or I could have bought an iPad was a lot more memory.

Done,