Maintaining your computer or laptop is part of being a responsible device owner. These pieces of technology can range thousands of dollars of investment for the latest tech gear. Like how a car requires annual maintenance and mechanic updates — so does your device! Protect your assets by adopting these 5 habits for healthy device maintenance:
- Clean your device
- Clean the environment
- Close unnecessary applications
- Perform regular software updates
- Delete old files
- Clean your device
Keeping your device clean will be key to ensuring its healthy shelf life. Similar to how a car needs car washes to avoid rust, your device requires a good clean to avoid dust fragments. These dust particles can enter your motherboard via your keyboard and impact your device’s overall performance.
Look into a good dust cleaner and microfiber cloth to clean your device regularly. If you use a regular kitchen towel to clean your device, you may just be pushing the dust around and potentially scratching your surface. If you want to kick it up a notch, invest in a keyboard skin and screen protector to increase your protection against dirt, dust and scratches.
- Clean the environment
As much as we love to multitask eating and drinking with working on our devices, try to limit it as much as possible. It only takes one accidental bump to cause thousands of dollars of damage. Protect your investment by keeping food and drinks away from your devices. Don’t forget to keep your hands clean too!
- Close unnecessary applications
It’s easy to get caught up in one thing and onto the next on your device. All of a sudden, you have several applications open that you’re no longer using. At this point, you may be noticing your device working slower and it could be due to having several applications open. It’s important to close these as you go because doing so will clear up your RAM space and keep your device working as fast as it should!
- Perform regular software updates
Just as your car needs an oil change to refresh its system, you need to stay on top of your device’s software update maintenance! Tech companies frequently release new updates as more bug fixes and security updates need to be performed. If you go too long without updating, you risk weakening your device’s protection against hackers and bugs. As annoying as it is to stop everything to install and update — it’ll save you a lot more grief in the long run to do so!
- Delete old files
Deleting old files off your device should be a regular activity just like daily housekeeping chores. It’s important to sort through old files and delete them when they’re no longer needed. Deleting these files will free up more storage and RAM space to keep your device operating at a proper speed. Don’t forget to periodically ‘empty’ your device trash bin to ensure it’s actually getting deleted!
Your investment into top-of-the-line technology deserves the utmost respect and attention to detail when it comes to the care and maintenance of your device. Protect it with a few good habits and it’ll reward you back with a good shelf life and superior performance!
Need more help managing your devices? Click here to see how Friendly PC can help.
