Beat Browser Bloat

You might think your browser is your best friend, but really, it's just a black hole for precious megabytes. Browser cache files are especially nasty, especially on drives that have not been converted to Windows 98's FAT32 file system. On old-style FAT16 drives, even seemingly small files can take up more space than you think because of the inefficient way data is stored.

Throw Your Cache Away
Typical savings: Tens of megabytes, and possibly more than a hundred megabytes

As you move from Web page to Web page, your browser throws files into a temporary storage area called a cache. This makes browsing faster, since the browser can access local copies of small files like graphics without having to pull them from the Web again. But it can also leave thousands of files on your disk. From time to time, it's a good idea to clear that cache out. With your browser running, you can do it by following these instructions.

IN INTERNET EXPLORER 3 AND 4, select View, Internet Options (or just Options), and under Temporary Internet Files, click the Delete Files button.

IN INTERNET EXPLORER 5, select Tools, Internet Options, and under Temporary Internet Files, click the Delete Files button.

IN NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 3.X, select Options, Network Preferences, and then click Clear Disk Cache Now.

IN NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR, select Edit, Preferences. Under Advanced, select Cache, and then click Clear Disk Cache.

Trash the Temporary Install Files
Typical savings: 16.4MB

If you upgraded to Internet Explorer 4.0 using the Active Setup option, you may have a mess of installation files in a folder called IE 4.0 Setup. But once IE4 is installed, you don't need anything in this folder, so use Windows Explorer to find and delete it.

Burn Your Bridges
Typical savings: 4MB for IE 4.0, 7MB for IE 5.0

If you're sure you don't want to uninstall your current version of IE, you can reclaim 4MB or more. When you installed the software, it left backup files to make it easy to restore the program's previous setup. To kill these backups, select Start, Settings, Control Panel, and click the Control Panel icon for Add/Remove Programs. In the program list, double-click the Internet Explorer option. Don't worry; you won't delete the whole program by doing this. In the dialog box that follows, click the Advanced button and check the radio button labeled "Delete the backup information for Internet Explorer."

Manage Your Mass of Mail
Typical savings: Kilobytes to megabytes

The more e-mail you save, the less disk space you have. Heck, that graphics-intensive "I'm your first message!" message in your Inbox takes up 22KB by itself; a couple hundred more messages and e-mail attachments really eat into your disk. Delete whatever you don't need and compact your mail database often. Select File, Compress Folders and you're all set.

Leave It to Netscape
Typical savings: Kilobytes to megabytes

Why clean up your mail when you can have someone else do it? Select Edit, Preferences, click the plus sign next to the Advanced option, and then click the Disk Space option. Once here, you'll be able to reject large messages or collaborative postings, set your software to compact your message database automatically, and set an expiration date for incoming discussion group messages.

Mail Call
Typical savings: Kilobytes to megabytes

E-mail may be free, but you pay for it in disk space, especially if your messages have file attachments or heavy graphics. Delete whatever you don't need and make sure your e-mail database is compacted often. Select File, Folder, Compact Folder (or preferably Compact All Folders). Periodically, open the Deleted Items folder, select all messages, and delete. Then select File, Folder, Compact Folder to take the air out of the database.