How to take care of the notebook??

Although I wanted to keep my notebook for couple of years, I am thinking abt selling it and getting a new one once Montevina and a better GPU is available for HP notebooks. But either first or second choice, I want to prolong the looks, feel and performance of my notebook. I read from some users commenting on this forum their notebooks still run smooth after 2-3 yrs of use and have good battery life and other things. If you have any experience on what to do and what not to do, plz share.

What should be the maintenance schedule?? How to clean keyboard, fans, screen and exterior?? How to keep it from getting too hot and tips to keep battery healthy for longer time.....

(There should be such a thread in sticky section. Probably if enough tips gets accumulated in this thread, it could be made one to help novice like me.....)

 

First off, go out and purchase a can of compressed air. You can get these any any store that sells computers and computer parts, such as Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Be sure to blow out your laptop fan ports on the bottom and sides of your laptop. Also use the can of air to blow out underneath the keys on your keyboard as well. NEVER tip the can upside down while you are spraying it or it will shoot out a freezing liquid.

You can also go out and purchase a special cleaning liquid and clothes to keep your monitor clean. Make sure that whatever you buy is specifically made for LCD screens, this is very important. If you use regular cleaner like you would on glass you will screen up your monitor. Also, never put too much of the cleaner on, because you don't want any excess liquid to get behind the LCD screen and screw up your monitor, you only need a little bit in the center, and then you can spread it around with the clothe to get the whole screen.

Another thing you should remember to keep your laptop cool, is to go out and purchase a laptop cooler pad. There are many of these available out there and they help to keep your laptop running cool by blowing air at the bottom of your laptop (this is where the CPU vents are). Also, remember that when you have your laptop on your laptop, a wooden surface, or carpet (or any material that blocks the vents) your laptop will get hotter than normal. This isn't a immediate threat, but the cooler your laptop is, the longer it will last and the better it will perform.

As far as the OS goes and all of that, you won't need to worry about it if you are going to sell the laptop because you can use the recovery disks or the recovery partition to reinstall everything. To keep if up for yourself though I recommend the following:

1. Run Disk Defragmentor once a month. When files are fragmented (1 file can be spread out all over the hard drive) it takes Windows longer to locate and load the file. When you run defragmentor, it will move all the parts of the file so they are contiguous and it takes Windows less time to find and load the file.

2. Run scandisk every couple of months. This will help to detect bad sectors on your HDD so Windows won't write to them. This will also detect any errors in the Windows OS and fix them.

3. Make sure you have anti-virus software!!!! I recommend Norton, I've been using it for 6 years and it works great!

4. Download anti-spyware and adaware programs. This helps to delete all the crap those internet sites download to your computer. Spyware and Ads will slow down your computer and possibly give information about you to other sources. You can go out and purchase a program like Spysweeper (Best Buy $30) or you can go out and get free programs like Adaware and Spybot. I use those two programs and they've worked fine for me, but I don't go to any sites that screw you over for browsing them.

Those are just a few of the measures you can take to help keep your computer running fast and strong.

*Also, if you haven't already, I would do a clean install. You'll notice the difference in speed, I guarantee it.

 

thanx....gr8 share....

 

@envision, Norton? why would you suggest that, its a garbage antivirus that eats away at your systems resources. Get Avira antivir, it works amazing plus it has a tiny footprint on the system. best thing? its free

 

I've noticed that most of the times people choose an anti-virus program based on personal opinions and experiences. I like Norton from past experiences, and I've never noticed a decrease in performance from using it. I'm not trying to tell people that it is the best application and all others fail behind it, I'm just saying that's what I use and its been working good for me.