Thanks all… and a slightly strained analogy

Before we get into the main course (sorry, food on my brain… I mean “main topic”) for today, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who’s sent kind messages in after our announcement last week.

We’ve had so many people saying good luck, congratulations or how much our books have helped them – it’s lovely to hear.  Lots of people saying how good the staff are and how great they’ll be at running everything, which is good to hear too!

Oh, and a few people worried if the reason I’m stepping back is because of health.  Don’t worry – I’m fine!

Anyway, this is our first joint email before Julie takes over fully at the end of the month – and we decided to follow in a tradition and use a peculiar analogy to explain something…

Storage space on a tablet or smartphone

For my first Tech Tips email, I thought I’d talk to you about something that’s been on my mind a bit lately.

You see, I’ve had my phone for about a year and a half – it’s got a nice screen, a decent camera, it’s easy to use.  I like it. The one downside is that it really doesn’t come with a lot of storage space. I didn’t think I’d mind that when I bought it – I was just looking for something cheap – but actually it’s become a bit of a pain.

So I thought I’d tell you a bit about your options if you’re running out of space, and give you some tips on making the most of the storage space you’ve got.

Imagine that your phone or tablet is a house (bear with me on this one).  

Over time it gets filled up with gadgets, pictures, toys, books – lots of books if you’re anything like me – and every now and then you need to have a good clear-out.  Your phone or tablet’s the same. Over time it can fill up with apps that you’ve downloaded to do one specific thing and don’t need any more, old emails that you’ve read but not deleted, blurry photos and videos that didn’t come out very well…

So the first thing to do if you’re running short of space is to give your device a good clear out.  Delete any apps that you don’t use any more and get rid of old emails, videos, books etc that you’ve finished with.  It’s like if your house gets full – the first thing to do is clear out all the rubbish.

If you’ve done that and you’re still bursting at the seams, there are another few tricks you can try.

Going back to the house analogy (sorry)… 

Another option if you don’t want to actually get rid of stuff – say you’ve got a table from your Aunt Maud that’s just too big for your dining room – is to put some things in storage.  You can get them back when you need them, but they’re not cluttering up the back room.  

Cloud storage is a bit like that.  You can put all your photos and videos in a cloud service like Google Photos, and then you don’t need to keep the originals on your phone.  You can clear lots of space that way, but you can still get to your pictures as long as you’ve got an internet connection. Pretty nifty, I think.  Another option for storage is to move photos and videos to a PC (if you’ve got one). It’s not so easy to get at them when you want them, though.

Another way to deal with a full-to-bursting house is have an extension put on – and you can do the same with some tablets and smartphones.  A lot of lower end Android devices (like mine) only come with a little bit of in-built storage, and you can add more by putting in an SD card.  By putting one of those in your phone, you can add a huge amount of extra space, and they’re not that expensive to buy.  

I’ve had a bit of trouble with SD cards, though.  Some of them are better-made than others (like house extensions, to come back to my increasingly-strained analogy), and some apps don’t work very well with them.  If you decide to go the SD card route, I’d recommend only putting things like photos and music on it, rather than apps that need to be accessed quickly and spending a bit more to get a good quality card.

Not all phones and tablets let you add an SD card, though – iPhones and iPads certainly don’t.  So if you run out of space on one of those, you’ve got rid of all the rubbish and put what you don’t need every day into storage.  You’re only real option is to pack up and move to a bigger house… er… I mean tablet with a bit more storage space.

That’s all for this week – more next time.