Laptop Maintenance Tips

At present, Laptops are very much popular among various groups of people like students, working professionals, businessman even top executive of companies. It is very much handy and can be transported to any place to work with unlike the desktops. Due to this reason, the laptop users also face more problems than desktop users. Improper handling, maintenance, battery charging causes lot of problems and in some cases in becomes to much expensive to repair for a small mistake. Here are few maintenance tips or guidelines for laptop users, which I think will be beneficiary if followed regularly.

01. Clean your Laptop: Dust particles can enter inside your laptop through the cooling fan area and exposed ports causing overheating and other problems. Also dust on keypad may damage the key membrane and on screen cause problem while reading. So, always keep a clean soft cloth in your laptop bag and clean your laptop when you get some free time. You can use a small soft brush to clean the keypad, ports and fan ventilation area. Don't use any home cleaner liquid to clean laptop.

02. Clean Your Hard Disk: You can check for unnecessary/temporary files in your hard disk in weekly/monthly basis and remove them. If you download and install new programs in regular basis for checking purpose it is better to uninstall if don't require them any more. A disk cleaner utility like CCleaner can be useful in this regard.

03. Full Data Backup: Laptop disks are vulnerable to high shocks. Keep full back up of your valuable data in monthly basis at least. You can take backup using external storage media, Pen Drives, CD/DVD media or network drive (if your laptop is part of a network).

04. Software Update: Always keeps your security programs like antivirus, spyware remover, firewall upto date. Even update your OS (Windows) to latest patches or service packs to avoid future threats.

05. Defrag Hard Drive: Defragging your hard drive is another step to ensuring your laptop will run more efficiently. Taking the time to defrag once a month will allow your programs to run more quickly and make better use of the space on your hard drive. It may solve solve also problems like software crash or system freeze up while loading a program.

06. Avoid Magnetic Field Area: When you are using a laptop be careful enough to keep it in safe distance from other electrical gadgets which generates strong magnetic field. Strong magnetic field can cause severe damage to hard disk causing hardware problems as well as data loss.

07. Don't Restart Quickly: A laptop must not be started up immediately after it is shut down. Give minimum 30 secs time before you restart it again.

08. Caution while using Accessories: Inserting accessories(Pen drive, USB modem, PCMCIA cards, phone or Ethernet jack etc) in wrong port or direction can permanently damage the port or slot which can not be repaired easily. So, be careful while using those devices.

09. Take care of Power Adapter: Don't pull or twist the Ac adapter and power cord or put anything on them which may damage them. Normally these items are not covered in laptop warranty in so many models.

10. Recharge Battery Properly: To increase the life span of the battery always use the original charger and charge the battery after it automatically powers off , then full charge the battery. Overcharge and over-discharge can reduce the life of laptop battery. Again most models provide only 6 month warranty on battery.

11. Don't Eat or Drink near Laptop: There is always a chance of you spilling your drink or meal on your laptop. If that happens by mistake, unplug your laptop, remove the batteries and turn your laptop upside down as it takes some time for the liquid to enter your laptop chassis from the keyboard side. Clean & dry it properly before you restart it. Never use dirty hands while using the laptop. The food particles between the keys on keypad can invite small bugs, thus increasing the risk of the circuitry abnormality.

12. Warranty & Invoice: Keep your Laptop invoice and Warranty papers in safe place. This will make sure that the seller would replace or repair your laptop without no excuse. Even if laptop are shipped with national and international warranty which will be helpful if you travel regularly. So, check for such facility before purchasing and even query for extended warranty availability option after the main warranty expires.

13. External Keyboard & Mouse: If you want to type a lot of data it better to connect an external USB keyboard and even a wireless mouse which indirectly protect your laptop keypad & mouse navigation area and moreover it will be comfortable to work.

Besides those steps if you want to use your laptop for longer duration it is better to keep it on a flat object like a book or wooden plate or glass sheet preventing overheating. Use laptop bag as per the size of the laptop and never keep it in a place where there is chance of falling down.

Hope these tips will be helpful to make your laptop healthy in long run.