Often times many of us are confronted with the aging of our notebooks and the decreased system performance that comes along with it. Typically these issues are most noteable at the most inconvienent times – cash is low, you havn’t been following the market lately and dont know which notebook model would be reasonable to purchase. Well here a re a few tips that just might keep your old notebook around for a few more months without having to invest a $1k or two, whether you own a simple machine or high end notebook.
1. Keep It Cool!
The hotter your notebook runs, the more likely it is to suffer some kind of component failure. Try avoiding plopping down your notebook on soft surfaces, like a bed or pillow. This will typically block the air vents causing the machine to get even hotter. There isnt much you can do to cool the notebook from within but there are ways to keep it cool from the outside. The easiest and most cost effective solution would be a cooling pad which run around as low as 10 Euros ($15ish dollars) A cooling pad draws heat away from the system via at least 2 USB powered fans. The upside to this is that your internal fans wont have to work as often or as hard extending their life span. Do keep in mind to use a compressed air can (once a month or so) to blow off the dust on your fans so they can work at peak performance.
2. SSD
SSD stands for solid state drive, and are typically built with nonvolatile flash memory, having no moving parts, which in turn means they produce less heat. SSD’s are also less susceptible to shock, vibration and extreme temperatures. So the next time you do purchase a new notebook this would be a feature to look out for. Keep in mind though that currently SSD have a lower capacity and cost more per gigabyte. Now there isn’t much you can do with your standard HD and the read/write heads, moving platters, and what not. A single knock can also put the drive out.
3. Like an Egg
To avoid any kind of unneccessary damages make sure you use a bag that affords maximum protection. Whether business, simple or stylish always take a good look making sure that padding is sufficient in places it needs to be to securely protect your notebook (Size! -e.g. dont put a 15 inch in a 17 inch bag!). Also handle with care, avoid grabbing on the edges when putting it in our pulling out of the back. Take a hold of the sides or middle.
4. Battery
Sooner or later your battery will wear out. How long that time will be depends on how well you care for the battery. A typical battery lasts for approx. 500 charges. When pluged in, remove the battery as this can cause over heating and/or over charge. When you are running on battery, use up the entire power or as much as possible before recharging as this will save charges and memory loss. Another big battery eater is “Standby” modus. I must admit I love it too. It allows me to quickly turn on and get back to work and vice versa, yet what we dont realize is how many charges we waste overall as the battery slowly drains away in standby modus. My tip here would be to use hibernate mode. Just about the same thing, although it may take a few extra seconds but tests have shown that this is friendlier to your battery than standby.
5. Reformat Harddrive
With time it appears that our notebooks become slower as if they are aging along rapidly. The reason for this is that windows gets bogged down with the digital equivalent of cholesterol: unneccessary files, Registry keys with no purpose, all the way to spyware and viruses. Reformatting and reinstalling windows is a time consuming step, yet this will help to unclog the arteries leaving you with a fresh drive, not as fast as when you first unpacked it, but noticably quicker.
These are just a few things that you should keep in mind to savor your notebook for a longer period of time. Other things to do on a regular basis are to defragement your drive, scan for viruses, dusting it, etc.