Tomás:

First of all, thanks for your words of support concerning my recent romantic difficulites. You clearly know what you are talking about when you mention crash diets: I lost 15 pounds in one week, and another 5 the week after that! And I was thin to begin with!

You also asked a question which is becoming urgent to other Archipelagans as well: "Given the avalanche of files, which ones do I need to keep on my hard disk and which ones can I throw away or consign to diskette storage?"

The answer is basically that you can throw away the independent contributions, but that you should keep everything else. If you are desperate, you can expell early voice volumes, but it's fun to have the entire collection on the hard disk so that you can search through it at a moment's notice. The contributions and the voice volumes take up two thirds of a typical shipment, and the remaining files simply update existing files so that they don't add appreciably to your disk overflow.

I recommend that you throw away everything in the gift folder that you don't think you'll ever use, and store marginal gifts on diskette. I would also recommend that you toss or store installments of Mr. Wizard. Also, be aware that sounds take up an enormous amount of space; you may want to transfer or delete your sound collection (see manual for more details). If you throw something out that you later decide you want, send me a request card (I keep EVERTHING).

Here is a list of everything I have in MY Archipelago Folder:

• Archipelago
• Book Reviews
• Election Results
• HECK/ASK
• HPL (non-stackheads can toss this!)
• HyperPoetry
• Island Quiz
• Member List
• (My Contributions)
• Pelago Help Manual
• Pelago Notebook
• Quotationist
• Sound Club Archive (empty copy)
• Voices 0-6 and counting!

This adds up to roughly 2000K plus about 250K per voice volume. Everything else is optional.