3 Helpful Google Products That Save Computer Space

I don’t know about you, but two of my ongoing issues with computers are storage and access. Either I run out of storage on my mobile device, tablet, and laptop, or I don’t have access to the files I want when I need them. In this piece, we’re going to look at three online software products from Google that alleviate these two problems. Even better, all of these products are completely free.

Google Calendar

If you’re still keeping events on a physical calendar attached to your fridge, you’re probably running into some serious limitations. Even daily planners have their weaknesses. Here are a few reasons to fall in love with Google Calendar.

• It’s always with you. Whether you’re sitting at your computer or you’re out and about with your smartphone, your calendar is never far away.
• Move events around with ease. I tend to like to schedule out most waking moments of my day on my calendar (easy with Google Calendar’s “repeating events” feature). Still, what’s the old expression, “We make plans and God laughs”? With Google Calendar, you can easily move events to any time period with a drag-and-drop feature, or with their “Find a Time” feature.
• Share your calendar with others. Whether you need to coordinate with a spouse when to pick up your child from baseball practice or share your daily work schedule with your boss, you can easily do so. Shared parties can see updates in real-time. Don’t want to share everything? You can also set up different color-coded calendars for certain styles of activities and sharing permissions. Personally, I have two different work calendars — one for tasks that are less time-sensitive and others for “rocks” — or items that cannot be moved. I have other calendars for my morning routine, evening routine, and appointments.
• Be reminded of things you need to do before you need to do them. Want to make sure to pick up your son from cub scouts or to take your elderly mother to the doctor? You can set a reminder for any event any amount of time before the event to keep you on schedule.

Google Drive

I recently purchased a new laptop. Unfortunately, the model I wanted only had 128gig hard drive. This is pretty tiny in comparison to many with a standard a terabyte hard drive — nearly 100 times as big. Still, how do I justify this? Because I don’t keep much of anything on the physical hard drive of my computer thanks to Google Drive.

• 15 gigs per Google Account. If you have a Google account, you have automatically have 15 gigs of online storage in Google Drive for free. This may fill up quickly if you have larger files, but if you’re mostly storaging images and word documents, that may last you quite a while.
• Saved as you go. Let me know if this sounds familiar: you’re writing a word document or building a spreadsheet and due to your laptop battery draining or a power surge, you lose everything. What a pain! With Google Docs and Google Sheets, near every single letter, every action is saved to Google Drive in real-time.
• Access all of your files from anywhere. Whether you use several different computers or you just want to be able to see your files from anywhere, all of your files are available anywhere you can have access to your Google account. Start writing a word document at work and finish it at home on a separate computer — no need to email any documents to yourself.

Google Keep

It sure can be nice to have a notepad with you to jot items down. Whether ideas, shopping lists, or contact details, a good pad and pen can come in handy. What if you could have access to every note you’ve ever jotted down in an instance — even being able to search through them? Well, with Google Keep, that’s a reality.

• Simple, but robust. Google Keep is a very simple application, but bells-and-whistles are probably not what you’re looking for in a note-taking program. Think of it like a giant wall of sticky notes you can access anytime.
• Ok, so it has some bells. Some of the features are tick-boxes (great for shopping lists), note sharing, image uploads, a drawing feature, reminders, and the ability to back up any note to Google Drive. There is also a Chrome browser extension that allows you to save any website to your Google Keep account for later viewing — a kind of universal bookmarking.
• Never let an idea slip through your fingers. The biggest appeal of Google Keep is that you can jot down an idea, message, contact information, or other note at a moment’s notice. Once jotted down, you can then access notes from any device that has access to your Google account.

In Summary

• Google Calendar helps you schedule and coordinate your busy life.
• Google Drive helps you save and access your files from absolutely anywhere.
• Google Keep makes sure that you never let a great idea get by you.

These Google products can reduce the amount of space on your computer’s hard drive and required power of your computer’s processor. However, any time your computer requires repair, look no further than Tulsa’s own computer repair experts at Geek Rescue. Call us today with any problems you may be experiencing.