Technology can be pretty pricey nowadays and, surprisingly, few people do regular maintenance to protect their investments. By performing basic computer maintenance tasks regularly, you yourself can prolong the life of your computer, thus saving hundreds/thousands of dollars!

Physical maintenance

Many people set their computer tower under their desk and forget about it. You may not realize this, but although nothing else goes under your desk, dust bunnies will always find a way down there and into your computer (especially if you have pets like we do). A dusty fan can cause the computer to overheat and shut down. A computer that regularly overheats can eventually cause damage to critical components, such as your hard disk, and you could potentially lose your data.

This article outlines some of our favorite ways to clean out your machine.

Be very careful when taking your computer apart to clean it out. If you make one wrong move, you could damage the system. If you aren’t confident that you can get in and out without hurting any of the internal hardware, have a computer technician take care of it for you.

Don’t forget to clean your keyboard, mouse, and monitor as well!

If you are one of our Managed Services clients, you already benefit from our workstation maintenance services. If you are experiencing any problems, please contact us by calling (386) 238-1692.

Clean out the hard drive

We talked about physically cleaning your computer. Now we will talk about virtually cleaning it.

If you consistently organize and delete files, you will increase your productivity and save a lot of time in the future. If you don’t stay on top of your files, you will one day run out of disk space.

Popular places where old files can be hiding are your downloads folder and your recycle bin. Make sure you also periodically re-evaluate the programs you have installed. If you haven’t used it in a while, uninstall it. Also, try to keep your desktop as clean as possible. Cluttered desktops can be the cause of slow boot times.

System and software updates

As you know, updates are released frequently. This can be annoying, but you should know each and every update is crucial. One of the biggest reasons an update is created and released is for security reasons. Malware is constantly evolving and software developers release updates to protect you and your business’ information.

This list is just the beginning. There are many more tasks you can do regularly to maintain your machine and increase its life. It can be time consuming, but in the end, you work productively, dodge disasters, and save hundreds of dollars.