While doing my regular routine clean-out of my computer hard-drive, I realised why I was losing so much hard-drive space so quickly.

I love new software programs and new gadgets and so I am often installing new programs and tools to test them out. But I have noticed more and more that when you install a program (even from a big well-established "name" on the internet), you often get a lot of crap that comes with it.

Take programs such as Skype. When you install Skype (or if you've installed it already), take a close look in the Skype folder on your hard-drive where the program is located. Apart from the actual program, you'll also find a multitude of Skype wallpapers and avatars - which you will probably never use. Just pick your best five and delete the rest. Or take a Google program such as Sketch-Up - upon installation, you'll find "README.txt" files, log files, and even PDF manuals.

Most software programs these days automatically add lots of "txt" files to your computer as well as PDF documents, weblinks, Word documents.....the list just goes on and on. So I recommend you do what I do and go through each folder carefully and delete all the dross. You may be surprised at how much hard-drive space you'll free up in the process. But be careful though not to delete anything that will crash the program. The old adage applies in this case - if in doubt, leave it alone.

Oh and if you uninstall a program, make sure that the hard-drive folder is actually deleted. I am also noticing that when I uninstall a software program, the original program folder is left in the C Drive along with some files that were not deleted. So it pays to keep a watch on that too.