Although tablet computers was predicted will replace the laptop (Read: Tablet Computer vs. Laptop), but until now most people still like using laptop as their work or business media. But unfortunately, not a few people who don’t care with their laptop. They just use it without make any attention with its maintenance.

There are a lot of tips that you can try to make your laptop keep looks good and in maximum performance. I will share one of them below. This method is based on my experience caring for my laptop. My laptop specs are black Acer Extensa 5620, 1.6 GHz processor, 1 Gb RAM and 160 Gb hard disk. I use it for more than 2 years.

I use it to play games, watch TV via TV Turner, Graphic Design and make money from online. 1 year lately, I use my laptop is almost more than 15 hours / day and still look good until now, as good as its performance

I divide its maintenance process into 2 parts, inside and outside. The inside includes programs, anti-virus and software, while the outside includes the screen, fans and keyboard.

First we will talk about outside

1.      Screen

Use a plastic screen protector for your laptop. It’ll prevent from scratches on the screen so that your laptop screen can be easily cleaned and durable.

2.      Keyboard Covers

Put lid on your laptop keyboard. This can prevent the dust get into your keyboard and also make letters or numbers in your laptop more durable

3.      The pedestal in bottom of Keyboard

Usually if someone was typing using laptop, their hands will stick to the bottom of the keyboard. This will result in the former on your laptop and will make the color become fade on the section. So Use a kind of cloth or the other to be used as the base of your hand.

4.      Additional Fan

If you use a laptop in a long time like me, you should use an additional fan, so that your laptop fan is not working too hard.

5.      Clean the fan and vents regularly.

Many people often forget about hygiene of the ventilation and fan on the laptop. Whereas, these section are the important parts in maintaining the durability of the laptop. It’s easy to clean it you just open the cover on the laptop then remove the small bolt attached to the fan. After that you clean the fan with a brush or cotton buts. I usually do it about 1.5 months once.

6.      Use the battery and AC power alternately.

If you stop using the laptop for a while (over 30 minutes), you can replace its power from AC power to your laptop battery.

7.      Do not use a laptop battery up to maximum

Try to not use your laptop until it battery completely discharged. Charge your laptop battery when its ability reaches 10 to 15 percent.

8.      Clean the frame regularly.

If you want your laptop keep looking good and have a high reselling value (if you want to sell it), then clean it regularly with a special cleaning fluid for laptop.

Last, we talk about the inside.

1.      Antivirus

There are many anti viruses now, you can use it according to your choice. But the most important is you have to make sure that you always update your antivirus periodically, especially a free antivirus or known better as the Home Edition. I’m using Avast antivirus with updates every day.

2.      Defragment

Same like antivirus, there are also a lot of defragment software. One of them that I use until now is MyDefrag. I choose the software because there are periodically optimize choices in there such as optimize daily, optimize monthly and optimize weekly. I usually use optimize weekly.

3.      TuneUp Software

In addition to defrag regularly, you can also use TuneUp software to help optimize your laptop. I use TuneUp 2011.

4.      Dirver Software Update

This software will help you to find the update of driver that is used on your laptop. Use this software to update your drivers.

5.      Update Graphic Drivers

Especially for graphics drivers, you can update your graphic driver through the website directly (if you use an Intel processor in your laptop). Update graphics driver is needed to be able to play the latest games.

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