Tips for Maintaining Your Laptop

Nowadays, many people are using laptops for their school work, business or leisure. However, laptops can lose their efficiency if not well-maintained. The following are some tips which will help enhance your laptop usage.

1. Watch out for dust

To ensure your laptop remains effective for a long time, you need to protect it from dust. An accumulation of dust in your laptop could block the ventilation areas and result in overheating. It is therefore very important to keep your laptop from being exposed to dust.

2. Keep it cool

Besides dust, it is also very important to protect your laptop from excessive heat. A laptop used in a cool, dry area will work more effectively and faster than if it was exposed to heat. To protect your laptop from overheating, avoid using it on your lap, bed or cushion since this will block the vents underneath which help in cooling. The best solution for this is to use a lap tray as a base for your laptop. Alternatively, you can invest in any of the laptop coolers which are sold in most computer stores.

3. Install a firewall and antivirus software

If you don’t use any antivirus, your laptop remains vulnerable to being infected by a virus. Make sure you use proper antivirus software to protect your laptop and keep it effective for longer. You should also install a firewall so as to restrict access to your laptop. A firewall will alert you anytime an external entity tries to access your laptop. You will then have the option of either blocking or allowing access. In addition, you need to be cautious about using external hard disks and flash disks with your laptop.

4. Eliminate unused programs

At times, you might have some programs in your laptop that you don’t really need. It is advisable to uninstall them so as to create more space in your hard drive. This will enable you to install other important applications and programs. Eliminating unused programs will also improve your laptop’s performance and make it easier to locate important files.

5. De-fragment hard drives

When you have many programs in your laptop, it will take time to locate your important files. It is therefore very vital to DE-fragment your drives frequently. De-fragmenting will arrange your files in a way which makes them much easier to access.

6. Clean your registry

Once in a while, registry files might get corrupted thus resulting in a drastic and sudden change in your laptop’s performance. Make sure you run your registry cleaners frequently to find out if there are any corrupt files or errors.

7. Minimize programs to run during start-up

Whenever you start your laptop, it will load all the system files, as well as the programs which have been selected to run during start-up. The more programs you run, the longer it takes to start-up. You should therefore minimize the number of programs that will run during the booting process.

8. Delete temporary internet files

Slow browsing speeds are often as a result of poor internet connection. However, in some cases, it might be due to too many temporary internet files saved in your laptop. You should therefore take time to delete such files from your laptop.

9. Empty the recycle bin

When files are deleted from your laptop, they end up in the recycle bin. This means that they are not actually deleted from the laptop; they have just been transferred to a different location. Thus, they still take up space in your hard drive. It is therefore important to empty your recycle bin as often as possible.

10. Power surge protection

Power surge protection is as important for laptops as it is for desktop computers. Replacing a laptop power supply is very costly compared to investing in a power surge protection device. Make sure you get one so as to protect the laptop itself, as well as your laptop power supply.