5 simple steps for How to clean your laptop computer

"Your computer could fry if you don't keep it clean,"

I have a dirty secret. I've never cleaned my computer. Sure, I've dusted my monitor, but I haven't taken off the cover or tried to reach the crumbs lurking inside my keyboard. And I honestly don't know the difference between pressurized air dusters and compressed air cleaners.

In reality, whether it's a desktop or laptop/notebook computer, dust and lint can clog the cooling vents. This can cause your computer's brain—the central processing unit (CPU)—to heat up. And heat is the biggest cause of component failure in computers. Regular cleaning could save you costly maintenance fees down the road.

Follow the five simple steps in the cleanup and maintenance routine below to keep your computer and accessories looking shiny and new. It's an easy, do-it-yourself solution to help them run smoothly and last longer.


Preparation  
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You'll need:
Standard (flat-tip) and/or Phillips screwdriver
Can of compressed air (available from computer dealers or office-supply stores)
Cotton swabs (do not use a cotton ball)
Rubbing alcohol
Soft, lint-free cloths, paper towels, or anti-static cloths
Water
Safety glasses (optional)

Important:
Always turn your computer off and disconnect it from the power source before you begin any of these steps.


Step 1: Inside the case
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If you see dust or other debris accumulating around the vents of your desktop or laptop, you can bet there's more inside—and it's only going to cause trouble. To remove it, you'll need to open the case. That may sound more intimidating than it really is. Before you begin, of course, make sure the computer is turned off and disconnected from the power source.

One more consideration: Manufacturers' policies vary, but, in some cases, opening your computer case may void your warranty. You may even encounter a warning sticker on the case. Review your warranty terms before continuing.

For desktop computers. Desktop computer manufacturers employ a variety of fastening mechanisms to secure the case. Face the back panel: Modern cases typically use two or more small knobs that you can turn by hand, or buttons that you press in, to release a side panel or the entire shell of the case. Others may require you to remove two or more slotted or Phillips screws. If in doubt, consult your owner's manual for specific instructions.

For laptop and notebook computers. Set the computer upside down on a table or other stable surface. (You may want to place a towel or paper under the computer to prevent scratches and scuffs.) Remove the battery. On most laptops, the vents on the underside will be grouped on a removable panel, secured to the case with several screws. Typically, these are very small Phillips-type screws, which may be of different lengths. Remove them, and be sure to keep track of which goes where.

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After you're inside either your desktop or laptop, touch as little as possible inside the computer—keep your fingers away from cards and cords. Look for any dust bunnies or other bits of fluff in the nooks and crannies. Pick these out carefully with tweezers or a cotton swab. Blow compressed air around all of the components and along the bottom of the case, keeping the nozzle at least four inches away from the machine. Blow air into the power supply box and into the fan.

Try to aim the stream of pressurized air in such a way that it blows debris out of and away from crevices and recesses, rather than driving it deeper in. Safety glasses are a good idea, too, to keep the flying dust out of your eyes.

Take particular care when blowing the delicate fans. Overspinning them with excessive pressure can crack a blade or damage the bearings. Position the compressed air can well away, and use short bursts of air rather than a steady blast. As a precaution, you might also carefully immobilize the fan blades with your fingertip or a cotton swab while using the air can.

Lastly, blow air into the floppy disk, CD or DVD drives, and I/O ports—but again, not too aggressively. Wipe the inside of the cover with a lightly moistened cloth, and dry it before replacing it.

Millman recommends doing this every three months if your case sits on the floor, if you have pets that shed, or if you smoke. Otherwise, every six to eight months is fine.


Step 2: Outside the case
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Run a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol around all of the openings on the outside of your case. Give them one swipe with the damp end of the swab and one swipe with the dry end. Do this as often as you clean the inside of your computer.


Step 3: Keyboard
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Turn the keyboard upside down and gently shake it. Most of the crumbs and dust will fall out. Take a can of compressed air and blow into and around the keys. Next, take a cotton swab and dip it in rubbing alcohol. It should be damp, but not dripping wet. Run the cotton swab around the outside of each key. Rub the tops of the keys. Don't be stingy with the swabs. Discard them when they start to get dirty, and switch to a fresh one. If you have a laptop, follow the same procedure but take extra care with your machine—treat it as gently as you would a carton of fresh eggs. If your laptop has a touchpad, use the damp swap to wipe it clean, as well. Do this keyboard cleanup monthly.

It's tempting to use a vacuum cleaner to suck the debris out of the keyboard and other parts of the computer, but technicians warn that it can create a static electrical charge that can actually damage the computer's sensitive electronics.
Worried about spills?

If a spill happens, immediately turn off your computer, disconnect the keyboard, and flip it over. While the keyboard is upside down, blot the keys with a paper towel, blow compressed air between the keys, and leave it to air dry overnight. Check to ensure that all traces of moisture have evaporated before using the keyboard again. Laptop spills need more attention because liquid can easily penetrate the keyboard and damage internal parts. For laptop spills, immediately turn off the computer and remove any external power source and other items plugged into it. Turn the laptop over, remove the battery, and then bring it to your nearest repair center to check for internal damage. Simply blowing compressed air into the keyboard and letting your computer air dry upside down overnight aren't enough, because liquids can sit inside a laptop for days.

For all spills, be aware that anything other than plain water may cause severe damage, and never attempt to dry a keyboard or laptop in a microwave or conventional oven.


Step 4: Mouse
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Disconnect the mouse from your computer. Rub the top and bottom of your mouse with a paper towel dipped in rubbing alcohol. Scrape hard-to-remove grime with your fingernail. If you have an optical mouse, ensure that no lint or other debris obscures the light-emitting lens on the underside of the mouse.
If you use a mechanical mouse, open the underside of the mouse and remove the ball. (In most cases, you simply need to rotate the plastic ring encircling the ball one-quarter turn counterclockwise.) Wash the ball with water, and let it air dry. To clean inside a mechanical mouse, dip a cotton swab in rubbing alcohol and rub all of the interior components, paying particular attention to the little rollers, where gunk tends to collect. Finally, blow compressed air into the opening and ensure that the interior is dry. Replace the ball and the cover.
Clean your mouse monthly.



Step 5: Monitor
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 For liquid-crystal display (LCD) laptop and flat-panel monitor screens, slightly moisten a soft, lint-free cloth with plain water. Microfiber cloths are excellent for this purpose. Avoid using paper towels, which can scratch monitor surfaces. Don't spray liquid directly onto the screen—spray the cloth instead. Wipe the screen gently to remove dust and fingerprints. You can also buy monitor cleaning products at computer-supply stores.

For glass CRT (television-style) monitors, use an ordinary household glass cleaning solution. Unless your manufacturer recommends differently, don't use alcohol or ammonia-based cleaners on your monitor, as these can damage anti-glare coatings. And never try to open the housing of a CRT monitor. Capacitors within can hold a dangerous electrical charge—even after the monitor has been unplugged.

Clean the monitor weekly. Finally, make sure that everything is dry before you plug your computer back in.

questions & answers： about laptop battery

Question:
How long a laptop battery should last after each charge?

Answer:
After the laptop has gone through a full single charge and the power plug is unplugged the average life of a laptop battery can be anywhere between one and six hours. This time is dependent on the battery, its capacity (mAH), what's being done on the laptop, and how old the battery is. Over time the laptop battery total capacity decreases, which means the battery will not last as long as it did when you first got the laptop and will continue to decrease over time.

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Optimise Your Power Settings to Increase Laptop Battery Life

Modern laptops are much better at conserving their power than older computers. Many are equipped with green hard drives or even solid state drives designed to minimize power consumption and most laptops have special green settings that cut down on power usage while extending laptop battery life.

Even so, laptop computer users can often extend the battery life of laptops by changing a few key settings. Here's a quick guide to ecologically friendly laptop batteries power settings that can extend battery life significantly.


Laptop Settings In Windows

Laptops that use Windows 7*, XP* or Vista* have a few predetermined power plans for users to choose from as well as a Custom option. To view these plans, open Control Panel from your computer's Start menu. Choose Power Options from either the System and Maintenance (Windows 7 and Vista) or Performance and Maintenance (XP) menus.

The Power Options menu offers both simple and advanced settings. Some laptops have a special eco-friendly plan which limits screen brightness while lowering the time it takes for a computer to go to sleep or hibernate. Choosing custom options will allow you to choose each setting separately, so sleep and hibernate times can be manually set.

To get really great laptop battery life, laptop users should lower their screen brightness through the Display menu in the Control Panel. Some laptops also have special graphics card programs which can be used to minimize power consumption while a computer's unplugged.


Mac OS* Laptops

Apple laptops have similar power settings, although changing them is a bit different. Go to your computer's Apple menu and select System Preferences. The Hardware tab has several power-related settings that can be changed by computer users. Sleep settings can be changed under the Energy Saver tab. Processor performance can also be changed. Lower processor speeds mean a slower computer, but can also mean better battery life.

With all modern laptops, it's a good idea to set power settings as soon as possible after buying a computer. When a computer is unplugged, running down its battery completely before recharging may extend battery life. Check your computer's manual to find out if this is the case.

Making these simple adjustments to a laptop's power settings is a great way to keep a battery running for longer and to reduce your power bill. With a slightly dimmer screen and manually adjusted sleep settings, a computer can often get 20 percent or more battery life. It's well worth the time to make a few key adjustments, especially if you frequently use your laptop on battery power.

Defragmenting your laptop：Why & How?

Over time and with regular use, files and folders on a computer's hard drive break down or become fragmented. When computer files are fragmented, they are typically disorganized and in the wrong place. This can cause the system to run slowly and to experience processing problems. Defragmenting the computer gathers and organizes the files, which usually improves retrieval time and the computer's overall performance.

For example, a computer program must access various files on the hard drive every time it is run. If those files are spread out on opposite sides of the hard drive instead of gathered and organized neatly, as they are supposed to be, the computer will have to work extra hard and take extra time to access the information it needs. In some cases, severe defragmenting may even cause a program to stop running entirely.

Defragmenting, also referred to as "defragging," reorganizes the hard drive by putting pieces of related data back together so that files are organized in a contiguous fashion. As a result, the computer system can access files more efficiently. By efficiently organizing files and folders, defragmenting will leave the computer's free space in one big chunk. This will allow new files to be saved in an orderly fashion, thereby reducing the need for future defragmentation.


What's the Benefits of Defragging

As the overall size of disk drives keeps increasing, defragmenting a computer regularly may even help to increase its life-span. A system needs to work quite hard in order to collect fragmented information across larger and larger disks. Considering the amount of work this takes, it seems likely that defragmenting can help a hard drive last significantly longer.

Though some computer experts argue that today's operating systems are efficient enough to eliminate the need for defragmenting altogether, it is generally recommended that computer users defrag their systems on a regular basis. Average users will probably find that bimonthly defragmenting produces sufficient results. Users who notice a frequent loss of efficiency and speed may choose to defrag more often.

It's sure that defragging your laptop daily with extend laptop battery life


How to Defragment

All computer systems come with some type of defragmenter tool, commonly found under the "System Tools" option in Windows-based PC environments. Such tools typically come with an analysis feature that will actually tell users if their computers need defragging or not. You can also defragment disks from a "C prompt" command line using the "defrag" command. Additional information on how to defragment a computer should also be available on the Internet.


Links

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Ultimate Guide：How to Improve, Increase & Extend Laptop Battery Life

Modern laptops are much better at conserving their laptop battery power than older computers. Many are equipped with green hard drives or even solid state drives designed to minimize power consumption and most laptops have special green settings that cut down on power usage while extending battery life.

Even so, laptop computer users can often extend the battery life of laptops by some easy tips & ways. If you don't want to look ongoing for the nearest power outlet to charge up your laptop everyday, you should read the ultimate guide - learn 16 ways to keep your battery going for as long as possible：


1. Laptop Power Settings

Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect).
Click to learn details about the best laptop power settings both in Windows & Mac OS

2. Defrag regularly

The faster your hard drive does its work – less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery. Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems.

3. Dim your screen

Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen. Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance. Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

4. Cut down on programs running in the background.

Itunes, Desktop Search, etc. All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life. Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.

5. Cut down external devices

USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery. Remove or shut them down when not in use. It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.

6. Add more RAM

This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.

7. Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD

As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse. Even having one in the drive can be power consuming. They spin, taking power, even when they?re not actively being used. Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical ones.

8. Keep the battery contacts clean

Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.

9. Take care of your battery
Exercise the Battery. Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time. Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory effects)

10. Hibernate not standby

Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.

11. Keep operating temperature down

Your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s cooler. Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner, or refer to some extra tips by LapTopMag.com.

12. Don’t multitask

Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery. Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3′s, set your mind to one thing only. If you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!

13. Go easy on the PC demands

The more you demand from your PC. Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD. If you’ve got a single battery charge – pick your priorities wisely.

14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop

Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to the point where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries. Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a quick fix.

15. Prevent the Memory Effect
If you’re using a very old laptop, you’ll want to prevent the ‘memory effect’ – Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect.


Bonus Tips

16. Turn off the autosave function.

MS-Word’s and Excel’s autosave functions are great but because they keep saving regular intervals, they work your hard driver harder than it may have to. If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning, you will want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies.

17. Lower the graphics use

You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disks


Shopping Tips

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