Basic Maintenance to Increase Laptop Life

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Monday, December 28th, 2009 @ 2:48 pm | Misc

You may be one of those people who like to regularly maintain your laptop on your own rather than take it to a service center every few months to get checked. For those tech-savvy individuals who feel that they can do their own maintenance checks on their laptop units, this is an article that may just prove useful. Like any other great piece of equipment (like cars and boats), laptop units require the regular hardware and software maintenance to keep them running optimally and smoothly.

Many times, for many different laptop units, the first part to break down in the laptop fan which keeps the unit cool and functioning without it overheating. This is why it is vital that you keep the fan working in tip-top condition. The most basic maintenance check for the fan is to simply pay careful and close attention to little programs that will tell you your laptop’s fan status. You can install these programs, like Speed Fan or PC Wizard 2008, in your portable laptop and they will be the little voices that tell you the temperature of your central processing unit. Keeping an eye on this regularly, especially when you use your laptop for longer periods of time than usual, will keep you updated on whether you should give your unit a rest or not. In general, if the CPU temperature exceeds 158 degrees Fahrenheit, then you will probably have to run laptop maintenance that will address the heat problem which is usually a need to clean out your fan and heat sink of dust particles. This is easily remedied by using a vacuum or blowing out the clogging dust with a burst of compressed air.

Another thing you should pay attention to in laptop maintenance is the software part which will help in protecting the data on your laptop unit. It is critical that you run the regular antivirus scans on your laptop with updated antivirus software. Keep your firewalls updated as well to keep out potential and real threats to your computer system. When inserting external data cards or USB thumb drives, always make sure you thoroughly scan them before doing any file transfers or file opening of any kind. As for your personal data, always keep it backed-up regularly so that you never lose it all at once in any kind of laptop hard disk crash.

Other maintenance tips will include regular defragmenting of files and disk checks to make sure all systems are sunning properly and efficiently. Defragmenting files will optimize your computer use and will prevent any of your programs from freezing or your system from crashing at any time. For those who own a laptop with a touchscreen, avoid using any chemicals on the touchscreen surface. Instead, just use a damp cloth and gently rub the dirty surfaces and rub the wet areas again with a dry microfiber cloth. Avoid getting water in the edges of the touchscreen in case the water seeps down into more sensitive parts of the screen. For your keyboard, use a soft brush to brush away any dirt that lodges in between the keys, and rub other surfaces with soft microfiber cloth.