Have you ever logged onto your Windows computer and wondered what all the icons on your desktop are for, and in fact are they really needed? Normally when you have a brand new Windows based computer system you will not have a lot of icons, just a few basic ones such as; My Computer, Control Panel, Network, Internet Explorer, etc. Naturally after a while your desktop will be loaded with icons.
Many of these icons do not need to be there, they are just set up to allow for quick access to folders, files and programs. One that can be important however, is the my computer window icon. This is one particular desktop icon you will want to leave in place. If you are wondering the importance of the ‘My Computer’ desktop image and if it is indeed essential, let’s go over a some examples and reasons.
If you have actually clicked on the icon you will have been taken to My Computer Window which will show quite a bit of things. You will notice within this window you see your disk drives, as well as links to networking areas of your computer. There will be links to your USB ports and also to removable hardware.
You will also notice from within my computer window section that there are links in the top navigation bar such as ‘system properties’, ‘uninstall or change a program’, ‘map a network drive’ as well as one that will take you to the Control Panel. By simply clicking on any of these links, it will take you to the correct section of the Control Panel.
One might ask is there really a need for this? We would answer that simply by saying yes and no. We find it very useful for being able to easily access our hard drives, removable hardware such as USB hard disk drives, SD memory cards and other removable media and so forth. As for some of the other areas of my computer window area, we do not find that it is overly important to us, and are more apt to actually use the start menu and go directly to the Control Panel if we need to do anything such as uninstall a program or other types of things.
As for the other icons, most can always be removed and added again at a later date by simply creating a new icon and dragging it to the desktop, however, never remove the ‘My Computer’ icon.