How to take care of a new computer?

The Ultimate Laptop Maintenance Guide

Most first-time laptop owners are at a loss as to how to care for and protect the expensive thing they've spent so much money on. In fact, all aspects of laptop maintenance is not as complicated as some people think and describe, and the key to this problem

is whether you treat it as a tool or a newborn baby; if it is the former, usually as long as a more careful, less intentional, your machine

can be as well-protected; and if it is the latter

This is the first time that I have ever seen a laptop in my life, and I have never seen one. ...... you will certainly feel more pain than babysitting a real Baby, spent more than 10,000 dollars to please

back a small ancestor is naturally more than enough to lose things. So first of all, you need to be in the right frame of mind to use a laptop, which is a consumer product, not an ornamental one

!

One, shell

Machine out of the package, the first thing that comes to mind is naturally the shell part. The cleanliness and integrity of the casing also affects the user's

mood, and I don't think anyone is going to be too happy with a laptop that's covered in smudges and scratches. Some people compare the shell of the laptop

as a woman's face, with the migration of time will be slowly imprinted with the marks of the years, when one day your friends praise you for using the laptop for two years

brain is still intact as in the beginning of the time, I think you will be happy in the heart!

In order to get a beautiful visual effect, most manufacturers use plastic (or composite metal materials) with a coating shell, this shell has a bleached

bright appearance and a good sense of touch, but at the same time also to the user to bring some small trouble. If you're not careful, the shell,

especially the top part of the LCD, will soon be scratched and bruised, revealing the unsightly bottom layer of the material, which affects the overall look and feel of the device to a certain extent

.

For this kind of shell cleaning also need extra attention, you can use a soft cloth with some water and then wrung to wipe, if you encounter oil stains

and other stains are not easy to clean, you may want to try some wax cleaner (such as Bili beads and automotive cleaning cream wax), but do not use organic solvents such as alcohol

other than the surface of the shell coating is dissolved, then it will look good. dissolved and it won't look good.

For those hard-to-please laptops (such as Sony VAIO), the protection of the shell requires you to be more careful to avoid sharp objects and shell contact. If you have the means, give it a soft inner bag, which will prevent the shell from being damaged to some extent.

Saying the shell, we can't leave out the wrist rest part of the laptop, which is the part most often touched by the human body in use, and the wrist will be in

Working due to the heat generated by the machine and sweating, which will cause corrosion of the wrist rest coating over time. Fortunately, however, many manufacturers have already taken note of

of this problem, so you'll see some start to use uncoated, solid-colored plastic wrist rests or, as Sony does, stick some

description stickers on the wrist rests to protect them.

Lastly, don't forget to give your laptop a good, sturdy, durable outer shell, which not only protects the case, but more importantly

is an effective way to keep your laptop safe from the elements.

Two, LCD

As the face of the laptop, the LCD is the part of the computer we must always face. You'd prefer to see a clean and tidy LCD or

a dirty and battered one, but I think very few people would prefer the latter.

Because the panel material that makes up the LCD is very fragile and easily broken, once the outside world exerts too much force on it, it will cause irreparable damage to the LCD

Bad, such as display blurring, water ripples, and other phenomena, which affects the display output. If this causes the LCD to break, replacing the screen is the only

way to do it, and it's so expensive that it accounts for almost 1/3-1/2 of the price of the entire laptop, so usually avoid having the LCD hit by positive external forces, such as

such as pressure, smashing, beating, etc., and don't use the laptop as a pillow or a footrest, as some people say. ...... I think even IBM ThinkPad such

designed to be relatively strong shell can not withstand this toss; in addition to the usual use of more attention in addition to the protection of the mobile also appears to be particularly

important, the laptop in general is a delicate young lady to go to the crowded places it Fear of crowding, so even if you give it with a strong outsourcing still

is as little as possible to carry it appeared in the crowded places. The following picture is the crushed LCD screen ...... is not shocking?

Many people have the habit of pointing their fingertips on the screen, which will not only leave unsightly and difficult to clean fingerprints on the LCD, but also the LCD unfortunately

by your fingernails scratching out the irreparable road to the beautiful face can be hung up.

Because of the physical characteristics of the LCD, so that its service life compared to desktop CRT monitors to be a lot shorter, for example, in about two years due to the aging of the back

Lamps and LCD panels will appear to display the problem of dark and yellowing. This requires you to pay as much attention as possible during normal use, and not to set the

brightness too high. In fact, the screen quality of many machines nowadays is very good, so setting it too high can be harsh. You can also set the power management options to automatically turn off the LCD after a certain period of inactivity, which not only prolongs the life of the LCD, but also saves you some power when you're running on battery power

.

LCD in the cleaning method and the shell is relatively similar, in addition to not using organic solvents to wipe, but also can not use water directly to wipe, this is because

For liquid crystal has a strong water permeability, if you do not want to screen because of the water and color streaks, remember this point. You can wipe the screen with a damp

cloth dipped in water and wrung out, or buy an LCD-specific cleaner, which will generally remove stains from the screen in no time. Below is a comparison of the results before and after cleaning

at a glance.

Three, the keyboard

The keyboard is the most likely to accumulate dust in the laptop components, look at a keycap to know that it is underneath the dust is the best place to hide.

Excessive dust accelerates the corrosion of the keyboard's conductive rubber, which can cause damage to the keyboard's printed circuitry. Imagine a keyboard that's been used as an ashtray by a smoker

What does it look like? It can only be described as miserable!

To clean your keyboard thoroughly, you'd have to remove the keycaps one by one, which is a huge hassle, so to keep yourself from making that move,

you should keep your computer from being exposed to excessive smoke and dust as much as possible. It's also best not to eat in front of your computer, especially if it's going to be messy with residue and juicy

food that's hard to clean, not to mention that, if you're not careful one day, and the juice spills over on your keyboard, it could seep inside the mainframe and damage the main

board, and since that kind of damage isn't covered by the free warranty, you'll just have to settle for a solution at your own expense. A friend of mine had a bowl of instant noodles spilled

on his Toshiba Satellite 5100 which subsequently cost him 5,000 yen.

Additionally the habit of cutting our nails, which was taught to us by our teachers since we were young, has paid off here, as if you were to tap the keyboard all day long with long, long fingernailed

hands, I'd imagine that the imprints on the keycaps, which you often tap on, would soon be gone. I'm ashamed to say that I myself once had a

notebook keyboard on a few keycaps bare as well, fortunately I was blind typing, sweat!

Four, the pointer positioning device

Now commonly used in notebook computers on the pointer positioning device has a pointing stick and touchpad two kinds of, the former is mainly by IBM's full range of models and the early

Toshiba, Dell and other models to use, and the latter is one of the most common to a laptop pointer positioning device.

For these two different mice, naturally, the way of maintenance and complexity is also different. Pointing stick in the maintenance of the most simple, basic do not need

To pay attention to too many problems, if dirty can be removed and cleaned, is really incorrigible to the maintenance center to buy a replacement to the.

The touchpad is fully enclosed, so the possibility of dust entering the interior is very small, usually pay more attention to clean the surface dust can be.

In addition, in order to allow users to get a better feel for the surface of the touchpad has a layer of abrasive sand, with frequent friction and fingers, the coating will slowly recede, in addition to sharp

sharp objects will also be the coating cut off, so usually try to be more careful when you use it. For users of touchpad models, it is essential to clean

the hands before each use and wipe them clean of moisture.

Fifth, the external interface

To say that the external interface is most afraid of what? It's just dust and incorrect plugging and unplugging.

In fact, dust is a terrible enemy for every electronic component, some thoughtful manufacturers will design rubber

coat for the machine's ports, usually do not use the time can be used to cover the ports to resist the invasion of foreign enemies. For those who don't,

it's up to the user to clean it.

Improper plugging and unplugging can be said to be the main culprit of port obsolescence, the following provides my 2-2-3 (smooth, fixed, do not frequent) experience

test to you to see your usual plugging and unplugging of external devices is not the opposite of the way they appear to operate. One of the smooth refers to the insertion and removal of the connector

head of the time to avoid shaking, in fact, I've seen many users for those inserted into the tighter interface will be used in this kind of violence, so

not only cause the connector to loosen, but also if it is a pin-type connector may also cause the needle to break; and the fixed mainly for the bolted interface, such as

Serial and VGA OUT connector, if fixed, the connector will not be able to be used. VGA OUT connector, if the fixation is not firm, loose in use is likely to be the danger of burning off the port; the last point do not

frequent, is that for those who use the frequency of high external devices, such as PC card network cards, if not what special circumstances, then try to avoid frequent

plugging, which may be due to interface loosening lead to poor contact or short-circuit.

Frequent plugging and unplugging is a good idea.

Sixth, the battery

For laptop computers, the battery can be said to be a more important part of the state of the laptop directly related to the lack of power

Source of the laptop's ability to work in the environment. The battery is a consumable part of a laptop, so the maintenance and proper use of a laptop's

battery is a topic that is often discussed.

Because it's hard to find models with NiMH batteries these days, I'm going to focus on lithium-ion batteries in this section, which are commonly used.

The average lithium-ion battery has a life cycle of 300 to 500 charge/discharge cycles. But that doesn't mean it will last as long as you rarely use it.

Batteries as physical components are susceptible to a variety of factors in the operating environment, and the main cause of battery loss is the oxidation of the internal resistance of the battery increases

This is why many users complain that their fully-charged batteries are suddenly dead when in use.

The problem is that as soon as a battery is assembled and taken off the production line, its internal life clock starts ticking, and even if you leave the battery unused,

that only slows it down to a certain extent. But then again, where's the

mobility in a laptop when you're always setting the battery aside?

But proper maintenance isn't unnecessary, and many people talk about how to protect a battery so that it doesn't retire early in its lifespan. Since the life of a battery is determined by the number of times it is charged, avoiding frequent use of the battery should be one of the most fundamental

that is, try not to use the battery to power the environment where the power is used.

This leads to the question of whether or not the battery should be removed from the machine when it is being used, which is a real headache

. To illustrate this, let's look at a table that shows the change in battery capacity after keeping a battery for a certain amount of time under different charging habits and ambient temperatures

.

Ambient temperature Charge 40% and keep it like this Charge 100% and keep it like this

Actual usable capacity after one year

0 degrees Celsius 98% 94%

25 degrees Celsius 96% 80%

40 degrees Celsius 85% 65%

60 degrees Celsius 75% 60% (after 3 months) % 60% (after 3 months)

As you can see from the table, high state of charge and high temperature accelerate the decline of battery capacity. So now imagine what the battery would be like if it were

not removed. At this point, the laptop's charge protection circuitry maintains the battery at a high state of charge of 95-100%

and the ambient temperature at this point is at least 30°C, and even higher if it's a hot day, returning to the table above

This is a good example of a battery that is not being charged at the same time. /p>

What do you conclude?

So try to remove the battery and use the computer as long as the AC supply is stable. If you intend not to use the battery for a long period of time, you should charge it to 40% and then

store it in a cool place, whereas if you leave the battery at high temperatures after fully charging it, this will cause great damage to the battery. As you can see from the table

, a battery that is charged to 100% and stored at 60°C loses 40% of its capacity after 3 months. For batteries that have been stored on the shelf, it is important to put them in use at least once a month and charge them to avoid the loss of ionic activity.

Also, dust and moisture are acting as battery killers, damaging the circuitry and accelerating oxidation inside the battery, so for long-term storage batteries, you can put a film over them to minimize the effects of dust and moisture.

The last issue worth mentioning is how to properly charge and discharge lithium-ion batteries. Because the electric memory effect of lithium-ion batteries

is negligible, charging halfway is not very damaging to them, and what they fear most is over-discharge (complete discharge).

Frequently over-discharging a lithium-ion battery can only result in premature destruction of the battery, and it's best not to try things like discharging the BIOS, discharging a program, or even discharging a small light bulb when it's connected to the battery. So for lithium-ion batteries, you don't have to wait until 0% to charge them.

Seven, optical drive

People eat bad will be uncomfortable, optical drive is the same, so try not to use those low-quality CD-ROMs, due to such CD-ROMs are more crude

some are not round or even uneven, often read such CD-ROMs, your CD-ROM drive will not take long because of the loss of the optical head of the end of life.

Because laptop CD-ROM drives are not auto-retracting like desktop CD-ROM drives, you should be careful not to skew the tray when pulling it out and pushing it in on a regular basis, and

don't push too hard.

The optical drive, like the battery, is a consumable part that is not only a hassle to replace, but also 3-4 times more expensive than a desktop drive, so you should try to

use it as little as possible to play video games or watch video games, and instead use a virtual drive or a program such as DVDidle to read CD-ROM files onto your hard drive.

You can also use a program like Nero Driver Speed to force the drive to work at a certain speed, which can more or less

lengthen the life of the drive.

Hard drive

Laptop computers are naturally mobile, so laptop hard drives are much better than desktop hard drives in terms of shock resistance, and many laptop

manufacturers also use protective pads and reinforced bays to minimize the impact that the hard drive may receive. But that doesn't mean you can just move around with a laptop that's reading and writing

Try to move the computer when the hard drive isn't working hard, and be gentle with it. So those

laptop jockeys who enjoy watching movies and playing games on a bumpy ride are asking for trouble.

Like LCDs, you can set your hard drive to shut down after a certain amount of inactivity by using the power management options,

This saves battery power and reduces mechanical wear and tear on the hard drive when it's spinning for long periods of time.

With the increase in speed of other components, the hard disk has become the biggest bottleneck in restricting the performance of laptop computers. Desktop hard disks have entered the 10,000-rpm era, while

notebook hard disks are still in the mainstream 4200 rpm to play around with (a few high-end models are configured with 5400 rpm hard disks, and 7200 rpm hard disks are already available, but have not yet entered the put

stage). So in order to effectively reduce this speed bottleneck on the user's application, in addition to good system software performance optimization settings,

as far as possible, the commonly used programs installed in the system partition, because the harder the hard drive partition, the slower the read disk speed will become, if you also put the program like Photos

hop on the very back of the partition, no doubt is the This is the first time I've seen a program like Photos on a partition. In addition, you may want to dedicate a small partition to point the operating system and

program cache to that partition to reduce the speed impact of excessive system partition fragmentation.

The reader will recognize that I often use the words "as much as possible" and "as far as possible" when giving advice. The reason for this is that a laptop is a tool to make it work as well as possible for your work and play needs, which is the most important

therefore when it comes to maintenance some people feel that they are buying a computer to use, not to maintain. Indeed, some people's machines are not

how to take care of, after 2-3 years, as well as the use of very good, as for the visual to other people what feeling that is another story. Suffice it to say that my article

isn't really for the super-utility-obsessed. And for those who want to protect their machines a little better

it doesn't have to be a deliberate wholesale copy, so it's just a matter of being a little more careful and a little less intentional about what you're trying to do.