Anything that fills up your harddrive will eventually slow down your computer somewhat. Once there enough pics to fill a CD/DVD, you should burn them to whatever media you can.
Periodic checks to get rid of programs etc that are no longer being used is also a good idea. Keeping your harddrive lean and mean always helps in slowdown matters

every single thing you save to your disc takes up space. Pictures and music and video files are large and tend to take up a lot of space. To see how much space you have left available on your hard drive go to My Computer and click on the C drive to highlight it then right click and choose properties there you can see exactly how much is used and how much is available. You can find some tools to help you clean up some of the stuff that is on there that can be eliminated, there is the disc cleanup button on that area or if you click on the tools tab you will find the de-frag which you can run to help organize your disc better.

IF you have a lot of pictures on your pc you should definitely consider saving them onto cd or dvd so that should something happen to your pc you do not loose them.
Once you do that then you can delete them from your pc and gain back all that space. Remember to empty your recycle bin.

this link to one of the MVP's blogs(Miekiemoes) is a great place to start in finding out why your pc is slow and how to help clean it up.
Help! My computer is slow!

I have a question also about saving pictures can you save them to a "stick" instead of a cd/dv? I have a place on my tower to put 3 different sticks in I know one of them take my camera stick.
CF SM/xD-Picture Card
SD
PRO

Wow, you wouldn't believe what I have on mine.

gillian if you mean a thumb drive or usb flash drive yes you sure can put them on there, just drag and drop them if you want to do it that way.

always remember anytime you plug anything into those ports on your pc before you pull them out to click on the remove safely icon in the systray by the clock and tell it which one you are removing and wait till it says you can remove it safely! Not doing so can harm your pc, the flash drive or whatever you had plugged into the port.

ok stargazzer I,ll take the bait "what do you have on your stick" LOL, taking another look there is also 2usb plugs and a iLink, will have to go buy some whatever I need and get all the pictures off this thing.
Thank for the info have printed it up is it Scandisk the brand to buy.

I personally usually buy Kingston usb flash drives I have had good luck with them. I usually buy them from buy.com they have good prices and often free shipping. If you were talking about SanDisk then yes those are a good name brand also.

This is one I just ordered it is an awesome deal it is a 4 Gig Kingston for $14.95 with free shipping. 4 gig will hold a LOT
Kingston 4GB DataTraveler

just do a search for usb flash drive to find them.

If you have photos or data that is important to you then in my opinion it needs to be saved in at least 2 different locations. What if your single storage unit goes bad? All is lost.

Blank CDs, DVDs, portable drives of any kind are all relatively cheap so that is not a reason to throw caution to the wind.

Be safe, create 2 sets of backups for your 'stuff'.

Think I have got it, the slots are for putting stuff in the computer and the USB are for making a copy for storage, what would I do without all the help I get from this forum, also have a DVD+RW draw, is this what you mean by making a back-up? other than pictures and address book what other things do you back up?
Thank you.

OK, let's see if we can explain this for you Gillian.

The 'slots' are to insert memory cards in, these are usually associated with digital cameras so you would indeed download onto the computer that way. However you can also use these as storage devices the same as any other medium can be used. Most people do not do this as they keep these cards for the camera, a good idea really.

USB ports are for connecting many different items to the computer. Speakers, scanners, mice, thumb drives, external drives and the list goes on. Data can be transferred into the computer from a device connected by a USB port or transferred from the computer to a device connected. Both uses are totally acceptable.

What to back up? Address book, Favourites/Bookmarks, photos or funny gif or jpg images you have found. Save any data you have created like poems, stories, artwork. In fact any things you would not like to lose if the hard drive failed tomorrow.

Your DVD-RW drawer can accept blank DVDs or CDs for you to use as a storage for your data. Personally I prefer the CD over all other forms of storage because it is simple, safe (so far) and blank CDs are not expensive. A DVD tends to hold too much data for my liking making finding an item more of a chore, but that is purely a personal preference. We all do things to suit ourselves and you will find the best method for yourself too as time passes.

these links may be helpful for understanding how to use a usb flash thumb drive.
Flash Drive
Flash Drive Tutorial

Thank you all for the help given have printed up all the info feel confident now as regards saving pictures ect.

Gillian

gillian, hundreds and hundreds of pictures and music, music, music. duplicates of some of them. Plus the usual soft ware you need to maintain a puter. And it is not slow at all considering I have the slowest cable connection I can get.