Betty by Gary Delainey and Gerry Rasmussen for August 30, 2021

Built-in obsolescence – happened to my perfectly good old laptop a few weeks ago, so full of ‘windows update’ files I couldn’t throw away that I had to get a new one }:-(

Other is all the bloatware you can’t remove and will never use.

My wife got a new phone recently. Her old phone was on its third battery and that was failing.

CCleaner, does a nice job removing ‘other’.

Then there is online photo storage, that seemed so unfillable until they start sending notices “you are 71 % full. Want to buy more storage?”

Can’t you just erase those files?

I was forced to upgrade my phone when I couldn’t have more than 2 apps on it because of the updates over time taking increasingly more of my space. I tried everything from adding an SD card (only worked part of the time) to deleting everything I didn’t need and even then, I could only fit 2 small apps on my phone. All the company bloatware and large software updates made my phone unusable.

I upgraded to a newer phone in 2020, now let’s see how many years it will take them to do the same with this one. It’s frustrating to me as I’m not the kind of person who wants the newest phone on the market. I’m happy keeping it for as many years as I can but the fact that these companies force you to upgrade because of their bloatware is frustrating.

Alternatively, one can unclog a phone by going to “Settings” and doing a “Factory data reset” (That’s how it’s done on Android phones — I don’t know how to do it on Apple phones). Of course, you have to save everything you want to keep first.