Did you just buy a laptop? If you did, it probably cost you a pretty penny.
As a result, you’re going to want to go above and beyond to maintain your laptop. By pushing laptop maintenance to the top of your to-do list, you’ll ensure that you’re able to keep your laptop around for as long as possible.
But, what exactly does it mean to maintain a laptop? If you’re not sure, that’s what we’re going to break down for you today. We’ll provide you with some laptop maintenance and laptop cleaning tips that will help you have a better laptop experience overall.
As a laptop user, you’re often going to have to do more maintenance to your computer than a desktop user. You’ll be carrying your laptop around a lot, which will require you to do extra maintenance to get the best laptop performance.
But at the end of the day, maintaining your laptop shouldn’t be too difficult to do. Here are some of the steps that you’ll need to take.
Start by Sticking a Protective Case on Your Laptop
When you buy a laptop, it doesn’t matter if you buy an extremely expensive one or one of these cheap laptops. You should always, always, always kick things off by sticking a protective case on it as soon as you pull it out of the box.
Every single time you carry your laptop around, there is a chance that you might drop it to the ground. There is also a chance that you might accidentally knock it right off of a desk or table.
If you do one of these things and your laptop doesn’t have a protective case on it, it’s probably going to get damaged in some way when you drop it. You might even end up breaking it altogether if it falls far enough to the ground.
Buying a protective case for a laptop is going to add to the price of the laptop just slightly. But it’ll be a fantastic investment for anyone who wants to keep a laptop safe.
Keep the Cords for Your Laptop Organized From the Beginning
In addition to putting a protective case on a laptop when you take it out of its box, you should also plug in all the different cords for it and work to keep them organized from the beginning. This might not seem like it would be a vital step, but you might be able to provide your laptop with even more protection than it would have otherwise by doing it.
Far too often, people put little to no thought into where they’re going to run the cords for their laptops. Because of this, they often end up tripping over these cords and pulling their laptops off desks and tables in the process.
You might injure yourself if you trip over the disorganized cords for a laptop. You might also put your laptop at risk. It’s why you should be strategic about where you plug in the cords for a laptop and how you organize them.
Avoid Drinking Water, Coffee, Beer, Etc. While Using Your Laptop
If you’re someone who is going to be spending a lot of long days on your laptop, there might not be any getting around drinking water, coffee, beer, etc. at your laptop. You should just try your best to be careful when you’re doing it.
You should also try to avoid drinking anything in the general vicinity of your laptop unless you absolutely have to. If you do drink liquids near your laptop, there will always be a chance that you might knock them over and spill something on your laptop as a result.
If you only spill a small amount of liquid on a laptop, you may be able to salvage it. But if you spill a whole drink on a laptop, it could ruin it for good. So you should steer clear of drinking anything while you’re using your laptop if you can.
Clean the Keyboard and Case for Your Laptop on a Regular Basis
Did you know that the keyboard for your computer might be 20,000 times—yes, 20,000 (!) times—dirtier than a toilet seat? Yuck! If that doesn’t make you want to take laptop maintenance more seriously, nothing will.
Since you’re going to be touching the keyboard for your laptop early and often, it’s going to be almost impossible to ever keep it 100% clean. But you should be able to keep it on the cleaner side by wiping it down on a regular basis.
Most experts recommend cleaning a keyboard with cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. But there are also all kinds of special cleaning wipes that you can use to wipe down a keyboard these days.
You should also make sure that you wipe down the rest of your laptop while you’re at it, too. It’ll prevent germs and gunk from building up on your laptop and wreaking havoc on it.
Update the Operating System on Your Laptop as Necessary
So far, we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the different ways in which you can maintain the exterior of your laptop. But it’s worth noting that there are also quite a few things that you’ll want to do to maintain everything on your laptop as well.
One of the first things that you should do to maintain this aspect of your laptop is get into the habit of updating your laptop’s operating system. All of the different types of laptops use operating systems that make them go.
You shouldn’t have to update your laptop’s operating system too often. But the operating system itself should let you know when you need to do an update. You should take advantage of this and update your operating system so that there aren’t any security holes in it.
Scan Your Laptop for Viruses and Malware Every So Often
The last thing that you want to have happen is for your laptop to be filled with viruses and malware. It’s going to become almost impossible for you to use your laptop over time if there are too many viruses and malware floating around on it.
First and foremost, you should avoid clicking on any links that you don’t recognize or downloading any email attachments that look suspicious since doing these things could invite viruses and malware onto your system. You should also perform routine scans so that you’re able to identify the presence of viruses and malware on your laptop.
If you ever find that your laptop has viruses or malware on it, you should then aim to get rid of them ASAP. If you don’t do this, these viruses and malware might be able to have a detrimental impact on your operating system and your laptop as a whole. You could even end up losing data because of them.
Remove Software, Documents, Etc. That You Don’t Need Anymore From Your Laptop
If a laptop comes equipped with plenty of storage space on its hard drive, you might not think twice about storing software, documents, etc. on it. There is nothing wrong with keeping the things that you actually need on your hard drive. But at the same time, you shouldn’t fill it up with things that you won’t ever look at it again.
Every few months, you should go through the things that you have stored on your laptop and delete anything that you don’t need anymore. This will prevent your laptop from getting filled to the brim with stuff that will start to slow it down over time.
You’ve probably gotten into the habit of conducting regular purges in your home and throwing out things that aren’t useful to you anymore. So why not take the same exact approach to cleaning up your computer’s hard drive? It’ll give your laptop performance a big boost.
Change the Passwords That You Use on Your Laptop Every Now and Then
When you’re using a laptop, you’re going to have to enter in passwords for almost everything. There will be one password that you’ll use to sign in to your laptop, another that you’ll use to access your email, and other passwords that you’ll utilize for things like banking accounts.
You might be tempted to use the same password for everything. But this is going to be a very, very bad idea! If you do this and someone is able to guess or steal the password, it’ll let them sign into pretty much all of your various accounts.
You should switch up the passwords that you use for your different accounts and make them as strong as you can. You should also change your passwords every now and then to reduce the chances of anyone being able to guess or steal them from you.
Back Up All of the Data on Your Computer as Often as You Can
If your laptop was to crash tomorrow, what would happen to all of the data that you have on it? Hopefully, you would be able to recover all of the data without a problem.
As long as you back up all of the data on your computer as often as you can, you won’t have any issues getting your data back. But if you don’t back your data up often or, worse, if you don’t ever do it, that’s going to be a serious problem. You might lose your data for good.
The good news is that backing up the data on your laptop is going to be easy. You can do it within just a few minutes and be on your way.
But you will have to make it a point to back up your data yourself to ensure that it gets done. Otherwise, you might put yourself into a position where you’re forced to part ways with your data simply because you don’t take the time to back it up properly.
Bring Your Laptop Into a Computer Repair Shop to Get It Fixed When It Isn’t Working
If you ever get the sense that there might be something wrong with your laptop, you might need to have a computer repair shop take a closer look at it. Fortunately, it should be easy enough to find one in your area since there are more than 40,000 of these shops in business today.
You should seriously consider bringing your laptop to one of these shops if:
- Your laptop is running so slow that you can’t even use it
- Your laptop is making strange sounds when you turn it on
- Your laptop seems to be overheating
- Your laptop shuts off without any warning at times
- Your laptop is unable to access the internet anymore
You should be able to stay out of these kinds of situations by doing laptop maintenance. But eventually, you might begin to run into problems with your laptop. You should have repairs made to it as soon as you can so that the problems with it don’t get even worse than they already are.
Begin Putting These Laptop Maintenance Tips to Good Use Today
Generally speaking, you should be able to get about three to five years of life out of a laptop. That’s how long most of today’s laptops are designed to last before needing to be replaced.
That being said, you should be able to extend the lifespan of a laptop by doing the right laptop maintenance to it. You should try to do everything that we’ve talked about here in order to make your laptop last for as long as it can.
Would you like to learn about some of the other things that you can do to maintain a laptop? Browse through the rest of the articles on our blog to get your hands on some useful tips.