You buy a computer and you’ve got manuals, program disks, program CD’s and quick setup instruction sheets that now take up 12-24 inches of shelf spaces somewhere in your office, garage or den.

You buy more software, printers, modems digital cameras and a scanner and you have 5 more CD’s.

You sign on to the Internet and start downloading the latest update, add-on or additional utility program. But in this case, you don’t have a CD or floppy disk, let alone an instruction manual.

If you ever need to reinstall software, you can use the existing CD or floppy disk, if it still exists and you can find it. If you need to reinstall anything else and you do not have a CD or floppy, you should still have the downloaded file somewhere on your hard drive.

When you download from an Internet web site, you are really copying a file from one computer to yours. The file or files that you copy are exact images of the one that exists on the first computer. Organize these downloads and they will act as virtual CD’s or floppy disks to reinstall software. Each of these downloads can be considered an installable image. When I say that a picture is worth a thousand words, I really mean it. The value of keeping and organizing these installable images has proven itself time and time again.

Organizational Tip # 1 referred to files and folders as the building blocks of your system. They really are. Take this concept one step further and you have an installable image.

If you have eve created a unique folder for each download, then run a program from that folder, you’ve used an installable image.

American Online’s installation program is one large program. This one program comes on the CD’s that they mail to you. It is also one file when you download AOL 5 from the Internet. Save it in its own folder called AOLinstall (or whatever you name you choose) and you can throw away all those CD’s.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 4 is downloaded as one file called ar40eng.exe. I save it in a folder called Adobeinstall that also contains the install image for Acrobat Reader 3

I bought a used printer and it did not come with the installation disks. No problem, I logged on to the company’s web site, downloaded the installation files and saved them to a folder called printerdrivers. Windows found the new printer when I rebooted and asked me for the installation disk. I clicked on "Have Disk", then browsed to the folder called printerdrivers as the location for the disk itself.

You see, the Have Disk question does not require that you have an actual disk or CD. In most cases you can indicate the location of the files to be a specific folder.

See the example below for adding the used printer that I bought.

After clicking on Have Disk, I type in or browse to c:\printerdrivers, then click on OK. The program information for my printer is located within the c:\printerdrivers folder

I try out dozens of programs and utilities every week. Many software developers websites offer a 30-day trial for their software. After 30 days the program will either stop functioning or you will be reminded to uninstall the program or pay for a legal copy.

I download the installation files and save them to a unique folder on my own computer. Then I run the install program from the installable image.

If I like the program, I will register and pay for it. If I find that I am not using the program or it does not suit my needs, I will do two things:

• Uninstall the program using the program’s uninstall routine or from control panel add/remove programs.
• Delete the installable image folder where I save the original download.