Information Spaghetti

This is the information age, that's for sure. Communication, however, where it has become an important role in between talks of the devices that we use, is being taken for granted, especially among home PC users. We don't necessarily pay attention to how the information we're processing daily, or, how ever often the case may be, is being handled as it zips around the hardware components that allow us to see things happen on our screens. A slight pause, delay, or break, makes us wonder what ever could there be behind the culprit of such sluggishness. There is, as most often is the case, an anticipation to see things get done, rather than investigating the process of how things actually happen.

Your home computer, believe it or not, can progressively get to a point of total confusion. How can that be, you might ask? Well, what happens is no different than a point at which a person experiences information overload. Except, that with a computer, it has more to do with the process of information that is constantly being put in, and taken out. Now, of course, we humans, don't have that to worry about.

What I'm talking about relates to the installing and uninstalling of computer software. In a normal state, the information on your hard-drive is neatly arranged so that things can be read in a cohesive manner. Once that same information gets other information installed on top, it gets jumbled around a bit. The same thing happens once the information is extracted, or, uninstalled.

To put it in simplier terms, imagine that you were using a word processing program, such as MicroSoft Word. You've type out a complete paragraph of, say, 15 lines. Now, you decide to add a few words to the paragraph, but, instead of you inserting words in accordance to the structure of the sentence, you insert them randomly. You read over what you have written and find that it is still understandable, with the exception that some things are out of place, no big deal. Now, you continue on with adding even more words, again, in random order. Once again, you read over it and find that the paragraph is getting more difficult to comprehend. Let's say now, that you add complete sentences at a time, randomly, to the paragraph. At this point, upon attempting to read the paragraph, you cant, as it's no longer understandable, words are just too jumbled about to even make out just one complete sentence. That's what happens to your hard-drive over a period of time when you install and uninstall programs without taking time out to perform a regular defragmentation of the hard-drive.

It's VITALLY important to keep up with a regular maintence of your PC, especially if you expect it to last for any good length of time. So, do yourself and your PC a favor, defrag the hard-drive from time to time, becuase, after all, it's working for you.......so, why not return the favor. :)