Welcome

OK, it has to be said, my computer and the way I use it is fairly unusual. Let us take Firefox (my browser).

I currently have 74 tabs, spread over 7 windows using a total of around 1GB of RAM.

It has to be said, my Firefox session is pretty huge. I have windows for groups of tabs based on subject plus one other main window for my main tabs like news sites, forums I use a lot, social networking (just because it says I’m logged into the Facebook doesn’t mean I have looked at that tab in hours).

I don’t remember the last time I restarted my session. I know it is less than 5months ago but it is defiantly since before the summer. You see, the Firefox session is everything, your browsing history, your current tabs and windows, your history within each page. This means I can go back to a tab I was working on months ago and hit back a couple of times and it will take me to maybe the Google search result page I was on to get there. It is kind of like bookmarks with state.

Many people think this way of doing things is a little nuts. This is in part because they restart their machine more often than me. I put my to sleep most of the time which gives it an almost instant on feature (sub 1 second).

OK, so next, drive letters. You see, these days everything is USB and everything is a mass storage device (it comes up as an effective harddrive).

I don’t think Microsoft ever thought we would start using as many devices as we do when they suggested using letters to identify drives. I put together a list of all the drives I would be using if I plugged in every device I use (note, not own, just the ones I actually use day to day).

1. Floppy drive
3. Main drive
4. Data drive
5. Temp drive
6. DVD drive
7. CD drive
8. Card reader slot 1
9. Card reader slot 2
10. Card reader slot 3
11. Card reader slot 4
12. Data backup drive
13. Backup drive
14. Linux drive
15. Virtual CD drive
16. Jump disk 1
17. Jump disk 2
18. Phone SD card slot
19. Camera
20. External drive 1
21. External drive 2
22. MP3 player main
23. MP3 player SD card slot
25. Public network share
26. Private network share

Yes, I know you can map folders to drives so I will never actually run out as such, and I also know some of these don’t need to be there like the network drives, but still, the point remains… scary. And yes, I have enough USB ports to plug all that in!