Computer 101: Maintaining and keeping your laptop from unwanted Abuse.

Hello again, wow this is my second article for this month. Pardon me, I'm just happy to be back blogging. As i mention on my previous blog, last year i just acquire my very first laptop. I've been using it to monitor and manage this blogs site. Having  my own laptop is very handy indeed. Whenever I am able to use it, I'd take the chance. Also i  have to keep in mind that having a laptop also comes with responsibility of maintaining and keeping it safe from un-wanted abuse and mis-use as I go about me daily routine. Yup if i want to make my very first laptop in top condition for a long time then i have to always keep in minds several ways to make that happen. I have come up with some very basic rule on how to maintain and keep my laptop in top form. I have come to develop this simple rule based on years of experience of talking and observing other real life people who have their own laptop.

Okay here we go my number one (1) rule is When in use always make sure that the battery does not run out of charge. In the past some of my friends and a lot of other people would ask me to check there computer there desktop computer. While doing it then they would ask me to also do a check on there laptop and based on this most the time the problem i encountered is battery failure, especially if the laptop is more than a year old. Now how come this is always the problem with laptop. This is also the problem with mobile phone, I don't care how advance your mobile phone is, If it has a battery then chances are that battery will be one of the most abuse part of your mobile phone. Why well the main way to abuse a cellphone over charging. Keeping plug-in the whole day or night when two to three hours should be enough. In laptop if over charging is also possible but the main causes of battery abused is under charging. 

Image via Wikipedia

Since the laptop is supposed to be a mobile computer a lot of people really take it the hilt that they tend to forget that the battery of most laptop when not connected to an electrical outlet has a limited charge. They keep om using it and ignoring warning that it's about time to charge the battery. I know how busy we are, but that is not an excuse to just abused the battery of our very handy mobile computer. Always keep in mind to monitor the electrical charge percentage of you battery to make sure it does not run-out on you when you will need it the most let's say during office meeting with your boss and co-worker. Take time to watch the charge percentage and do a little calculation on your own.

I mean you know your own schedule make sure that before it start, charge the battery of your laptop or better still plug it to the nearest electrical outlet the whole duration your meeting. Always under-chr\arging the battery of your laptop will using will shorten the life-span of the battery. Another unseen cause of laptop not functioning properly is the heat generated by the battery is it not plug in while in use. Since the battery is functioning and giving out its stored electrical supply to the laptop then more heat heat is generated as it is being use compare to that when the laptop is plug on an electrical outlet while also in use. Notice also that some major application needs more power than others. This will really lessen the staying power of your battery when not plug-in.

Image by Ivo Sandoval via Flickr

The heat generated by the battery when in used can affect those micro-circuit inside the laptop. This will cause them to wear faster by over-heating and in the long run this will cause the affected circuit not to function properly and in the long run will affect the performance of your laptop. It's better to take the necessary measures now or to see yourself always in the service center and paying the technician for service which in the first should have been avoided if did the right thing of taking care of the battery and using it properly.

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Self Computer Maintenance: Part 3 Using the Defragmentation Tools

Greeting to all, to continue on this series another way of accessing the scan disk tool is by pointing your mouse on the my computer picture or icon then double click to access the item of the icon, then select the hard disk drive you want to be fixed. After selecting the hard disk point the mouse on the disk and press the mouse right button or just press the right click button. From here a menu will appear from that menu select the properties tab at the bottom of the menu and the dialog box for the my computer icon will appear. Then select the TOOLS tab which contain the Scan-disk, Defragmentation and Back-up tools. Then select Scan-disk and press start. Again if it needs to be scheduled then just followed the instruction on the screen.

Now after finishing the repair and diagnostic of the scan-disk, your hard disk is now ready for the defragmentation tools. Now you may ask, what the heck is that tool and what does it do. First of all your hard disk files tend to be fragmented from all those usage day in and day out. You sometimes notice that the response time of your computer has become increasing slow this past days, weeks and months. And your wondering what is going on with this computer, it seems fine, it boot-up well there was no error or problems encounter in its operations. But when i try to access my files they seems a bit slow and yes it boot up well but its a little bit slower compare last week or last months.

So what is going on inside there. Remember your hard needs to spin in order to work and to access data, during that operation sometime your file tend tend to be separated from its component. What????, well actually your file is compose of several parts which i not go into to detail because it will become to technical and will defeat the purpose of this blog. Just know that a file store on the hard disk has many parts okay, and this part seems to be separated from the whole because when where using our computer, some other files is also being used. And there are plenty of them. The job of the defragmentation tool is to correct this error so that you can access your files much faster or same as before. Its put the file most used in the hard disk location where is can be accessed easily and can be loaded mush faster, the other files that is not being used much is put on the farthest part, well something like that. The fragmentation of the hard disk as a whole and your files as well is also fix.

Image by jmehre via Flickr

Well anyhow before is actually begins the fixing of the problem, it first analysis your computer hard disk drive to see how large is the fragmentation. After doing this it will display a report about this in percent like telling you that your hard drive is 50% fragmented and its recommendation of proceeding with the used of the tool to correct this error. Oh i need to mentioned that when your going to this, you cannot used your computer while deffragging is going on. So this one need to be scheduled as well. Now how long will it take to do this stuff. Primarily it defends on your hard disk size and how much files is there to check. If you have a very large amount of files to check.

Image via Wikipedia

You can do this before you go home, set-it up and start the tools, of course leave it alone once it has begun to work. Just turn off the monitor of you computer and let it be. Another thing If this is your scheduled you report this to you Tech Support Staff so that they will now what your doing and can monitor your machine first thing in the morning. If  your going to do this on your home computer then scheduled it before you go to sleep. Just do as mentioned above and check it the next day to see if its done. I hope i was able to help you in this little way on how to used this tool which is available to you. You don't need buy other tool and software for maintenance purposes. This two will suffice. But again for a more serious problem you need to consult a qualified technician to help you out on your computer problem.