Computers are much like cars, in as much as they require regular ongoing maintenance in order to maintain them in an effective working order. Maintaining your computer will save you money in the long term, because parts will be less likely to fail, and it will maintain optimum performance, reducing the likelihood of wanting to upgrade due to frustration with your PC.
You can perform certain maintenance tasks yourself, but there are some tasks that are best left to a technician, such as opening the box, unless you are a confident hobbyist who has built your own PC.
Effect of Environment on the PC Lifetime
It is best to keep your computer in a fairly moderate environment year round, that is free of temperature fluctuations, as PCs do not like to operate in temperature extremes. Temperature extremes, such as extreme cold, and extreme heat can cause internal parts to fail. Heat damage can cause motherboard failure, or cause very strange random problems when operating your computer. It may appear that you have a virus, when in fact a problem could be due to a failing part on your computer.
It is best to keep the environment as free of dust as possible, because the internal parts of PCs are electrostatic-sensitive devices, and dust flying around, after having been sucked in by the cooling fans and building up in a PC can cause both heat damage and static damage potential.
It is best to not have beverages near your computer, or food, as spillages can cause irreparable damage to computers.
External Care of Your PC and Peripherals
You can use a can of compressed air (available from electronics shops) to gently clean dust from around the external parts of your PC, and also the keyboard. Keep moisture away from the computer; use a dry microfiber cloth to wipe over the screen of your computer, and the external parts such as mouse, keyboard, external hard drive and printer.
Regularly check the stock of your paper and ink levels. To help keep your printer in excellent condition, keep the paper tray free of dust, as paper can carry dust through it, coating the rollers in the printer, and ruining the print heads. This may cause the paper to end up seizing up the roller mechanism and causing costly damage.
It is recommended to also have your PC power supply plugged into a good quality surge protector, as PCs are sensitive to power surges, and power spikes can cause severe damage to computers.
Protecting Your Data
Many people do not understand the need for an external hard drive, or of backing up their photographs, documents and media collections. Hard drives can fail within computers, and it is very expensive, and sometimes cost prohibitive to retrieve data off a failed hard drive, so an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A simple external hard drive to outlay would cost around $80 to $120 (AU Dollar), but to look up the cost of data retrieval one may receive a shock. There is sometimes no guarantee also that the data would be still intact.
Backing up is quite straightforward, and there are many books that explain how to perform backing up in a very simple way, and also how to connect an external hard drive. A quick visit to the local library will provide an opportunity to examine these.
Anti-virus programs are another essential – these can either be purchased – or there are several programs that are available such as Avast or AVG that the basic virus protections are available for free. A site such as download.CNET has these available to download from and trial for yourself.
Having several passwords for different things such as banking, E-bay, and email accounts makes it increasingly difficult for people to hijack your information, because you don’t have one blanket password for all things. Be sure that you remember them however.
It is also essential to ensure that you have security set (such as a WEP key) on your wireless network if you have one in your home, so that it significantly reduces the ability of people to hack your network.
Other Straightforward Maintenance Tools
Operating systems come equipped with various system and maintenance tools such as hard drive maintenance and updates. Perform regular maintenance on your hard drive using the built in system tools of your operating system in order to prolong the life of and improve the performance of the hard drive. Defragging the hard drive will also make the computer run more efficiently.
There are other tools available, which help in maintaining the computer such as privacy (for example cookies) and spyware cleaners, and registry cleaners. A look on CNET will provide access to trials of programs such as 360Amigo.
Jobs for the Technician
Performing hardware upgrades, or anything that involves opening the box requires a great degree of confidence and knowledge, and your PC may be under a manufacturer’s warranty that stipulates that your PC only be opened by a licensed technician.
You can however, request a technician to perform regular maintenance such as dusting out the fans and the motherboard and all of the internals of the PC, as this will remove all the dust that does inevitably cause heat build up on sensitive and expensive equipment.
It is not overly expensive to maintain your PC on a regular basis, it just requires a degree of commitment to do it regularly, and carefully, and to leave the things that you are not confident to, or not permitted to under a warranty to a technician. It will however, save you a great degree of frustration and ultimately expense.
For Microsoft Operating Systems (Windows) technical support information go to Microsoft Support. Help is also available for users of Apple Macs (OSX) - go to Apple Support for this. Help for users of Linux can go to places such as community support forums for Linux.
Peace of Mind and Savings that Can Be Put to Other Good Uses:
Your PC has cost you a lot of money, regardless of how much you paid for it, it is therefore worthwhile of your time to keep it maintained. Consider the small investment of your time in maintaining it as a way of saving, so that you can put money towards other things such as a holiday. A small amount of maintenance - keeping the environment clean around your PC; protecting your data; performing routine scheduled maintenance such as performing a defrag of the hard drive and wiping away dust -will extend its life, and you will be less likely to have to call the technician and pay out expensive call out fees and repairs. Your PC will be less likely to your PC blow up while you are in the middle of working on an important document. Instead - you may be kicking back on a beach somewhere relaxing because you saved money on not having to replace a dead junker PC.
Disclaimer: If you are unsure of anything to do with your computer please seek advice from your local professional computer technician. Links to antivirus software or to download sites is provided for the sources of information only, and not as a professional recommendation, as your situation is specific and general information is provided only as a basic general information source and not as a technical or professional advice.
Lori Woodward - Lori is a freelance journalist who seeks to help people enjoy life through informative and entertaining practical information.
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