Achievement Unlocked: Installed CyanogenMod on my Samsung Galaxy SII phone

Two days ago I finally installed the popular CyanogenMod custom ROM on my Samsung Galaxy SII phone, effectively replacing the Samsung's aged stock ROM which was running Android 4.1.2. With this installation, now my old phone is running Android 4.3.1.

What I did was an entry-level approach, by simply following the steps given on the Cyanogen's website: http://beta.download.cyanogenmod.org/install

There are basically two ways:

1. You can either install the CyanogenMod Installer App on your Android-based phone; or
2. You can install CyanogenMod Windows Installer on your PC running Windows Vista/7/8.

I chose to install the CyanogenMod Windows Installer on my Windows 7 laptop. There's no particular reason why. During the installation process, I encountered a few times the installer got stuck half-way. I un-plugged my phone from the laptop, changed my USB cable and restarted the Windows. Finally I disabled the antivirus program on my laptop (a tip given by the installer app of which I had ignored it first :P) and only then it completed successfully.

The result? I got a (almost) brand new phone again! The CyanogenMod custom ROM gave me back plenty of free Internal Storage space at my disposal. This was one of the most annoying things I experienced with the Samsung's stock ROM as it was loaded with a lot of "bloatware" that came from the factory. I have now (after installed a few essentials apps of my choice) 1.33GB free space out of the 1.97GB total space while previously I only got around 400MB! Now my phone works smoother and faster and I'm loving my phone again!