Your PC loves you. It puts up with your heavy typing on its keyboard and the 25+ browser tabs of cat videos you keep open at one time. It doesn’t complain when you spill coffee on it and doesn’t tell anyone about your habit of loudly singing along to Taylor Swift songs after stressful meetings. It’s time that we show our PCs a little love in return!
Regular care and maintenance are of the utmost importance if you want your system to perform at its optimal state for a long time. We all have that one friend or colleague working with an older computer that performs better than the one you purchased less than a year ago. That person takes good care of their PC - and with the tips below, you can too:
Keep things clean!
As part of your PC maintenance routine, you should physically clean the computer itself, as well as any peripheral equipment such as mice and keyboards. Keeping your PC clean will help extend its lifespan and minimize the possibility of small particles sneaking inside your system where they can wreak havoc. Here are a few tips for cleaning your PC and devices:
- Use compressed air to blast dirt from the keyboard, fans, and ports
- Use rubbing alcohol to clean any remaining dust and grime
- Use specialized screen cleaner on your displays
Power Down Regularly
You wouldn’t leave your car running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – and the same is true for your computer. In many cases, people will simply walk away from their PC at the end of the day and allow it to go into sleep mode overnight. While this does allow your computer to preserve some energy, you need to provide your computer the opportunity fully rest on a regular basis. Shutting down your computer completely at the end of each workday is a good habit that will preserve your system and battery.
For laptops, get a padded case
Let’s face it: You’re going to drop your laptop. No matter how hard you try, it’s likely going to happen at some point while you go from one place to another, so protect it as best you can. A padded laptop case is incredibly important to protect against drops, but also against the bumps and bangs that come from everyday life.
Unplug to Avoid Overcharging Battery
Again, for a laptop, the goal is to keep the battery holding as much charge as it can for as long as possible. One tip that very few people are aware of here is that you should avoid overcharging your battery. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should not keep your computer plugged in when using it, but if you keep it plugged in for days at a time while shut down, you may run the risk of damaging the battery over time. For this tip, just make sure to keep your battery as close to 100% without going too far over unless you’re working on it.
Keep software up to date
Over time, software developers will update their product, release new versions, and discontinue support for the previous versions. This is no surprise to anyone, but it is surprising how many people still refuse to regularly update the software on their PC. In addition to always keeping your PCs operating system up to date, update your software to avoid risks to your security, productivity, and performance. Generally, updates are free, so grab a cup of coffee and take a break while you accomplish this crucial task.
Prioritize security
Failing to keep your business data secure can have catastrophic consequences, so you need to be confident that your business security mechanisms are not only effective, but also current. Updating your software is a good way to accomplish this, but you should always stay aware of any current security risks that your tech stack may face.
If your cloud storage provider has a data leak, you should be aware of it and adjust accordingly.
Further, and this is one that you hear all the time: Your entire staff must update passwords 3-4 times per year (at least). Yes, it’s a pain to manage passwords, especially when they change often, but having a moving target makes it harder for hackers to hit you. Here’s a tip for secure and memorable passwords: Use phrases. Generally, we’re taught that passwords should consist of random characters or derivatives of a single word, but short phrases can be tougher to crack and easier for you to remember.
Hard Drive Health
When it comes to your PC, your hard drive is where your data lives, so if it becomes corrupted, you risk losing everything on it. While it’s important to always have backups on external systems (these days, the cloud is recommended so no one single piece of physical tech can doom your business if lost), but keeping your hard drive operating at its best will prevent obnoxious interruptions to your activities, and data loss – even if it may be only short-term data loss of the unsaved items since your last backup.
To keep your hard drive healthy, focus on these three steps:
Defragment your hard drive
Over time, data on your hard drive becomes fragmented and this means that certain related pieces of data become separated for each other. Thus, when you attempt to retrieve this information, the PC must look all over the hard drive rather than a single spot which can cause performance issues. If you’re experiencing long load times and slow performance, disk defragmentation might solve your issues. Click here for details on defragmentation from a Windows 10 PC.
When you install software on your computer, a lot may be installed along with it, and many of those files end up not being used and becoming overall superfluous - but they do take up space. If you’re getting to the limit of your hard drive’s space and need to clean some things up, Windows has a Disk Cleanup tool that can get rid of a lot of these files for you. Click here for details on completing Disk Cleanup on Windows 10.
Uninstall unused programs and software
Similarly, if there are software or programs on your hard drive that you’re not using, they’re still taking up space. Further, if this software is outdated, we’ve seen that it can bring about security issues, so you should be sure to delete all unused software whenever you have the chance. Every once in a while, look through the programs on your PC and ask yourself if they are still needed; If not, run uninstall to safely delete them.
What do you do to care for your PC? We want to hear what you’re doing to maximize your PC investment in the comments!
Additional Spotlight ROI resources
Don’t forget to checkout our full week of extra coverage on how your small business can maximize its investments.
- Welcome to Spotlight ROI: Calendar of events
- Best Tools – LenovoPRO Staff Picks
- Do you really need that?
- Small Business Tech Buying Guide (2021)
- Best Financial Advice from the Community
- ROI - Advice from the Community
- What to consider before financing your tech
- How to Make the Most of Collaboration Software
- Small Business Holiday Buying Guide
What do you do to care for your PC? We want to hear what you’re doing to maximize your PC investment in the comments!