Laptops are probably an essential part of your home and work life, being used for both educational and business endeavors as well as free time for entertainment and movie streaming.
As a result, you will invest in the model best suited for your needs and probably do a lot of research before buying or checking out laptop repair in Australia. When you choose a refurbished laptop, you can often buy a higher spec model for less than buying a new laptop. Either way, you always want them to work well and last a few years so that you get good value for money. Then there’s the push to move many services to the cloud which contributes to older PCs pulling less on productivity.
While upgrades like installing additional RAM or increasing hard drive capacity are great ways to improve performance immediately, there are some simple ways to help you extend the useful life of your PC.
Keeping your system physically free of dirt, following some basic preventive measures, and applying common sense in daily use can add years to the life of your computer:
Treat It Carefully
Laptops are built to be portable and lightweight, which means they can also be fragile if not taken care of. Avoid ‘wear and tear’, deep marks and scratches, or even more serious issues such as a broken screen by gently moving it around and not leaving it in dangerous places where it could be knocked off a counter or sit. If you leave it on long enough, the dirt will eventually suffocate the hardware inside your computer, creating heat and thus stressing the components. This is a major cause of low performance and can even contribute to the premature death of an element.
Check for Regular Software and Operating System Updates
No operating system or program is perfect. But with every upgrade, problems are solved and new features are added. So you need to run Windows Update and also make sure that your installed software is up to date. Getting behind isn’t that easy as some software updaters support every program available.
Two other programs that should be run regularly are Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter. Disk Cleanup discreetly removes useless files that take up space on your hard drive. This can include Recycle Bin contents, temporary Internet files, and memory dump files. Disk Defragmenter identifies files on your hard drive and compiles “fragmented” files to help them run more expeditiously.
Customize Your Storage
Reduce the amount of work your hard drive has to do by removing junk files, removing unwanted applications, and emptying your Recycle Bin files to free up space. You can also defragment your drive to free up space. This process repositions the files on your machine so that they can be retrieved faster. It is also important to take care of the battery.
The battery is an essential part of your laptop’s hardware and it does a lot of work when it comes to running the machine.
Don’t Always Leave the Laptop Plugged In
The ideal charge rate for a laptop battery as stated by Battery University is to charge it to 80%, then let it drain to 40%. This can extend the life of your battery up to four times. This is because each cell in a lithium-polymer battery is charged to a voltage level. The more voltage a cell has to store, the greater the stress it generates. That stress leads to a shorter discharge cycle. For example, Battery University states that “a battery charged to 100 percent will only have 300-500 discharge cycles, while a battery charged to 70 percent will get 1,200-2,000 discharge cycles.”
Don’t Turn Your Laptop on and off Frequently
Many people believe that they should turn off their laptops at night, and some feel that they should do so when they are leaving the office for a meeting or lunch. It’s almost always okay to leave your laptop running for a day. This reduces the stress and heating and cooling cycles the device goes through, which can help extend the lifespan of the laptop.
The Bottom Line
You can also invest in cases and protection to reduce the chances of your laptop getting marked and scratched, making it more appealing to keep for a longer period. When it comes to laptops, replacing a poorly maintained system isn’t cheap. Laptops are an investment, and like any investment, it’s important to protect them. Hope, the above easy-to-use tips will help in extending the life of your PC.