Five Essential Tips To Maintaining Your Computer

We’re all guilty of it. When our computers slow down, we blame the manufacturers. However, a computer is just another machine; and like any other machine, maintaining it is essential. Every family gathering, someone will say “Ask Steve to remove the virus, he does his work with computers.” More often than not, it wasn’t even a virus, but mere computer illiteracy. Most people believe that because most of what they do on their computers uses software, so it is beyond their means to do anything about it. We have collected our top five tips to help.

Empty Your Bins

Just like your kitchen, after a long day or two of work, you will have some waste to throw away or delete. Both Windows and Macs have Recycle Bins and Trash cans, which will store all the “unwanted files”. It is a good habit to clear your trash at the end of each day, helping to keep your desktop tidy. The added bonus is that it clears up a bit more space in your computer’s memory. Remember that when you permanently remove something from the recycle bin, it is gone forever.

Defragment

 Imagine your computer is a room, and every time you save or make a new file you put a box into that room. Bigger files are represented by bigger boxes. You might delete some files over time, so you may remove some of these boxes. Some of these boxes were put in a while ago, are at the back, and will leave gaps between boxes. Finding the right file means having to move boxes around till you find the right one. After a while, the arrangement of these boxes will appear haphazard and disorganized. This is called “fragmenting”. Find out how to defragment your computer, and make files loads a little faster. Note that this does not apply to “Solid State Drives” (SSDs).

Change Your Power Plan

Laptops were invented to be mobile, making it easy for us to bring it with us, and work wherever we want to. Even though most laptops do not pack the same processing power as desktop computers, that does not mean we have to be content with a seemingly sluggish performance. Both Windows and Macs actually purposely “slow down” when they are not plugged into a power supply. Windows have three primary “power plans”:

• Balanced
  • Default for most laptops when plugged into a power supply
  • Sets your screen’s brightness to medium
  • Only allows an average processing capacity which results in a battery that will be more fully charged when unplugged
• Power saver
  • Most laptops will switch to this when unplugged from a power supply.
  • Reduces your screen brightness to low because bright screens actually consume a lot of power.
  • Only allows a very low processing capacity, forcing your laptop to only consume a low amount of power, allowing the laptop to “last” for many hours.
• High performance
  • This setting usually requires the user (you) to enable it manually. You can do this whether you are plugged in or not.
  • Maximizes screen brightness and will increase PC performance. This plan uses a lot more energy, so your laptop battery won’t last as long between charges.

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