Windows 10 and Windows 11 both have system methods for recovering disk space. I use a program called CCleaner that does some of that cleaning, but Windows makes it pretty simple. You just need to know where to look. I have an article you can use as a guide for Windows 10 HERE. 

Windows 11 is fairly similar.
Basically, you go into System, Storage, and then choose what you want to do. Read the above article first if you aren’t sure or aren’t comfortable with this sort of thing. If you’ve had your computer several years, or you have never done a cleaning, you will likely have some serious space to recover. Even if you have plenty of free space on your drive, cleaning can help with performance.
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It’s worth doing.

For 15 years I worked from home. This began when we moved to Abiquiu. Carol kept her Chicago job also. It was great.

Nowadays, working from home is in the news like it never happened before. We started in 1999, and it was on dial-up. It was sometimes miserably slow, but I was a text based programmer, so it worked OK. When there was a change to a GUI, Graphical User Interface, then it became a problem. It flat out did not work. That was the middle of 2006 and I was worried. That project fell through though and I was spared, plus, in January 2007, Abiquiu got DSL.

I found this fun article on the DO’s and DON’Ts of working from home and I thought it was timely. I don’t agree with everything. I did get dressed to go to work. It was part of the discipline of taking the work seriously. On the other hand, my desk is a MESS, and we never did video calls. Not once.

If you are working from home or you have a kid schooling from home, then this may be a useful READ.

If you are thinking about buying a new MacBook, I say “Go for it!” There are some considerations though.

The newer MacBooks, say from 2015 on, are not necessarily upgradable. This is important because Apple sells MacBooks with pretty small hard drives and ram. If you are somebody that keeps a MacBook for more than a few years, say 3 years, then you might consider upgrading your choice on the HD and ram. Make sure whatever you get is at least as big as the computer you are replacing. Upgrading older MacBooks, when possible, is fairly straightforward. The bottom cover comes off with about 10 tiny screws and you generally have access to the battery, ram, and hard drive. The three things a user might want to replace.

iMacs are different. Older iMacs had a magnetic screen cover, then the display screen to unscrew, and then general access. It can be a bit of an ordeal to replace the HD. Newer iMac screens are glued in and I find that quite a bit more problematic.

I haven’t seen a Mac Mini in years, so I can’t speak for the newer ones, other than that I have read they are really good computers and priced nicely.

An article to reference on upgrading MacBooks is HERE. 

​Older MacBooks,  prior to 2015, can really benefit from an SSD drive, if it doesn’t have one already. MacBooks prior to 2009 though, those are tough. There are patched versions of Catalina that will run on some Macs where Apple only allows El Capitan, so that’s something to consider. If you have a path to Catalina on an older Mac, then upgrading to an SSD and adding memory would also make sense. Ultimately though, if you are using a 2009 MacBook still, then you got way more than your moneys worth. I say, “Great job and well done!”.

If you are still on Windows 10, and many people still are, then c/net has published a useful article for helping to speed it up. Windows 10 itself can offer suggestions in the Settings app, however, some of those can be as drastic as resetting the PC. While a reset can be useful, especially if you are giving it away, the reset will get rid of your installed programs, though it can save the associated data.

A link to the article is HERE. 
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I also recommend uninstalling unwanted programs, removing documents and pictures you don’t really need, and cleaning up your email, if you use a local client like Outlook. Make a backup just in case you go overboard.