Where else would we look for it?
Back in the days when I still used to teach basic computer and internet skills,
one of the skills that people most wanted to learn was how to paste a graphic
they'd saved from the internet into a Word document. Teaching this was quite easy
and almost everyone readily caught on. But perhaps the hardest part was locating
the graphic that they wanted to paste into the document. I would teach a sort-of
transitory step in the saving/pasting process which I'd repeat over and over -
remember where you've saved what you've saved so you can readily get to it when
you want it.
On networked computers in a training center this made sense. People were able
to save files in a folder with their name, and from a different computer the next
week still find those same files. But when they got home, they'd discover that
Windows would default their attempts to locate documents to "My Documents"
and pictures to "My Pictures", and they'd then ask me why they had to
remember where they'd saved something. Here again, the question of critical mass
(or lack of it) came into play. If both saving and opening defaulted to "My
something or other" (many years ago I linked to a
good article that questioned whether we should really be so possessive about our
stuff, and I'm pleased to report that it's still available) why would they need
that "remember where you saved it" step. My attempts to explain that
somewhere along the line they'd want to organize their photo
collections into clearer and better defined folders or sub-folders were usually
met with the same reaction that my similar suggestions about saving text files
were met - "I'll never have a need for more than this folder".
Go to: Don't count on it, or
Go to: But you can, you can!