I think one could debate the merits and faults of almost any organization of
programs and data till the cows come home. To my mind, I'd first like to see
everyone who uses a pc at least have some basic "plan" rather than what I do
see which is everything almost everywhere. Cluttered desktop, cluttered
root of C: and data files of all sorts scattered almost anywhere else, e.g.
sub-folders of apps etc. etc. My experience also leads me to believe that
the vast majority of users never ever even think of "backup" even when they
have the means (e.g. burner) or if they do, they have no idea of what to
back up or where to find it, e.g. so long as "Open" in the app works, they
don't care.

"Susan Sharm" <susanshaarm@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1131602645.509461.288770@g14g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> Morten Skarstad wrote:
>> It is still better than the C:\ flat directory structure of pre-95
>> Windows.
>> Except that in english (and probably other) versions of Windows "Program
>> files" includes a whitespace in the directory name.</offtopic>
>> Personally I prefer to direct them to "D:\Program files".
>
> Hi Morten,
>
> I agree. Prior to Windows 95, Windows 2.1 and 3.1 (if I remember
> correctly the numbers) were a mess. Even with Windows 95 & Win98, there
> wasn't the concept of a separate data hierarchy from the documentation
> hierarchy. Then, when the latest incarnation of 2K/NT/XP-based Windows
> software arose, the separation of data from program files became
> accepted but Microsoft made such a mess of both directories that I
> still use the well organized system I learned off the Internet.
>
> C:\My Archivers (for PGP, PDF, ZIP, RAR, COA32, INCTRL5, etc.)
> C:\My Browsers (for Firefox, Netscape, etc.)
> C:\My Calendars (for TaskMaster, CalendarManger, etc.)
> C:\My Databases (for map programs, address book managers, etc.)
> C:\My Editors (for picture editors, video editors, etc.)
> C:\My Finances (for Quicken, TurboTax, TaxCut, etc.)
> C:\My Games (for games)
> C:\My Hardware (for dvd burners, telephony SKYPE, etc.)
> C:\My ISP (for NetZero, SBCGlobal, VPN, etc.)
> etc.
>
> And, that having been said, I agree that saving these important
> programs onto a separate partition is also commonplace practice.
>
> Likewise, it goes without saying too much that the DATA files for each
> of these applications goes into the same directory tree in C:\My Data.
> For example, PGP keys would go in C:\My Data\My Archivers\PGP Data;
> browser bookmarks would go in C:\My Data\My Browsers\Firefox Data, etc.
>
> To those others who say you can't organize your PC by task, well, I
> can't say much to them as they wouldn't even understand the point.
>
> Respectfully yours,
> Susan
>