Nope, I’, not suggesting that you go cozy with your gadgets and do the “jiggy” with it. What I’m trying to talk about here is that in order to make your gadgets work better and last longer, you need to KISS it (KISS = Keep It Simply Simple, or sometimes Keep It Simple Stupid!). As a veteran gadgeteer, I understand the “need” to constantly update the software of your laptop or PDA. As a new gadget comes along, the temptation to “test” each and every new programs on it is very strong — only to have it un-installed after finding out that you don’t need the program at all or worse, when you run out of space on your gadget. This problem is more pronounced on Windows laptops and Windows Mobile-based PDA.

Windows (be it Windows Mobile or Windows XP) has a registry and 99% of the programs installed onto it puts an entry on this registry. Once the registry is filled up, or worse gets corrupted, bad things happen. This is the reason why over time, a Windows-based laptop (or desktop for that matter) slows down over time. The slowdown is more often than not caused by cluttered a cluttered registry. A similar thing happens to Windows Mobile-based PDAs. When a simple clearing of its memory is not enough to speed things up, a hard reset is the only solution when things start to slow down. This symptom — the slowdown of a system due to cluttered or corrupt registry is known as “bit rot” and to prevent “bit rot”, just KISS your gadget!

PalmOS-based PDAs and OS X-based computers are also prone to problems caused by *not* KISSing them. Program incompatibilities and poorly coded programs causes system slowdown on PalmOS and OS X but such things does not happen as often as it does with their Windows-based brethren. For PalmOS devices, installing applications from dubious sources may cause it to do a hard reset spontaneously. As for OS X, some programs (shareware or freeware) may interact with other programs causing slow response time. Again to prevent system slowdown on your Palm and Mac computers, *all together now*, KISS your gadget! In my own personal experience, my gadgets are at their best when I keep them simple. My PDA has only few programs installed in it — programs I really use and absolutely need — a book reader (iSilo), a check balancing program (PocketQuicken), a shopping list program (HandyShopper), a “wallet” program (KeyRing) and a backup program (Resco Backup). With these in my Palm, I have a lot of spare room in my memory and my device (a Treo 650) is as stable as an oak… no problems with spontaneous resets, no headaches. The same is true with my Mac. I only keep essential programs in it like an office suite (NeoOffice), a GTD helper (TiddlyWiki) and the built-in OS X apps. Now I have less problems because I KISS my gadgets.

How about you? Are you willing to KISS your gadgets?