This is information that I found in an article from the website Mashable.com entitled “7 Ways You’re Killing Your Technology.  It makes a lot of good points that we should all follow. 

1.   Resting Laptops on anything soft or flammable including beds, carpet or even your skin.  If you don’t use a cooling pad or proper ventilation you can overheat your laptop and cause damage to it, reduce the battery life or even cause a fire.

2.  Transporting you devices without a case.  These cases were created to protect your devices.  If you drop your device without the case it is more likely to get dented or broken.  Also don’t pick up your laptop by the screen, broken screens are very common but easy to avoid.

3.  Improper cord maintenance.  It is never a good idea to wrap the cord around your device while it is still plugged into your device.  This can cause the wires in the cord to break and also causes the jack on your device to fail.  You should also take care when removing the charger from the wall outlet.  Replacement cords can be expensive, especially laptop cords.

4.  Never powering off.  Most of us never let our laptops stay off for more than a couple of minutes.  We usually just let them sleep until needed.  It is recommended that you occasionally let the battery run to zero and then completely recharge it with the power turned off.

5.  Don’t use harsh household cleaners on your devices.  You should only use soft wipes and cleaners specifically made for electronics on your devices.  Using ordinary household cleaners can damage the coating on your screen.

6.  Ejecting devices.  Here is one that I am guilty of at times.  If you remove the device before properly ejecting it you can experience data loss especially if there is a spinning disc inside.  To properly eject, right click the icon in the system tray for the device that you want to remove.  It will give you the option to eject, click on that option and it will tell you when you can remove the device safely.

7.  Not having a backup of your data.  This is a lesson that is not fun to learn and can be costly for businesses.  You should always keep an updated copy of your important data (documents, pictures etc.)  There are many ways to do this.  You can purchase an external hard drive that comes with built in software to automatically backup your data or use an online service that will continually backup your data.  If you don’t have that much info you can even get a USB thumb drive that can hold 64GB of data, plenty for most people.

We spend a lot of hard earned money on our technology, it is important to keep them running properly by using these tips. 

If you need  help with any of these matters, Duane’s Reliable Computer Services will be happy to help.

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