Taking stock

Once in a while, you should take stock of your personal computing environment. What is on your system? How did it get there? What do you actually use? How did you arrive at your hardware configuration, and does it still meet your needs? You may find that you can free up some disk space in the process; at the very least, you'll understand your situation better. The author goes through this exercise both as an example of what it can show and because full disclosure is important for this series of articles. You need to know the background for the advice that appears here. The author discloses his current computing environments, how they got that way, and what that may mean. He also points out the real limits within which he operates as a PC commentator. When you go through the software on your system, you should check to see whether it represents ethical computing. The author offers a few notes on ethical issues related to software. The author also provides notes from PC literature for January‐June 1992.