When you pick up a new tech device, your first days are filled with wonder and excitement. Like bringing a new baby home from the hospital, you cradle your device like its a fragile mystery soon to be discovered. As a toddler would with a new toy, you protect it closely guarding it against any damage and keeping it in its container.
You promise yourself that you will keep it this new forever. Then one day, unexpectedly, your dream is shattered.
Usually it starts with a busy day, in which you just happen to handle your phone to quickly… and it falls on the floor. Your schedule being what it is, you tend to also throw it in your backpack with your headphones (you’re really busy!). You forget to turn it off for months at a time. These are all tech crimes we are guilty of.
To those of us looking to make a change, or at least prolong the (already short) life spans of our tech devices, here are some helpful tips on how to make it happen.
1. Resting your laptop on your bed, carpet, or bare skin.
Without a cool surface beneath them, your laptop will overheat and the its cooling motor will die. No matter how tempting it may be, do not wrap your laptop in the blankets with you to watch movies or stream television programs. Overheating kills your battery life, and causes serious long-term damage to your computer. Did I mention it can also set it on fire?
2. Transporting tech without a proper case.
We often want to bring tech with us no matter where we are – whether that’s a classroom, an airport, or even to work. If you are carrying your tablet or other electronic without its protective case, however, it is likely getting damaged. If not largely, then minutely. Cases are designed to protect your electronics, why not use them? Small little jostles eventually amount to exposed inside content, which can eventually cause long-term damage which is either expensive to fix or irreparable.
3. Improper cord maintenance
We all need chargers – they keep our devices going. Sadly, we do not tend to treat them with great care, in fact we tend to throw them around and put them wherever they will fit in our bag. This leads to them fraying. They also easily tangle (isn’t this frustrating?!), and for this reason we tend to yank or pull them tightly. Over time, this leads to damage. This rule also applies to your headphones as well- don’t wrap them too tightly around your iPad/iPod. Protect them if you want them to last.
4. Never powering off
This is a big issue, which most of us are guilty of. When was the last time that you let your laptop actually stay off for more than 30 minutes? Many of us keep our electronics in a constant state of “sleep” without ever turning them off. To improve your battery life, you should periodically power cycle it. To do this, run your battery all the way to zero, charge it, while off, until full again.
5. Using household cleaners on electronics
Have you ever used Windex to clean your laptop screen? Don’t. Windex’s chemicals eat away at the coating on your skin. It was made for cleaning windows, not laptop screens.
6. Improperly ejecting drives
USB hard drives and thumb drives should always be ejected properly before you rip them out. Especially with hard drives, if your disc is spinning when you remove it you could experience data loss.
7. Never Backing Up
Right, right – you’re getting around to it. Backing up your data is not something you can wait on though- because you never know when a major problem could arise. Frequently backing up your data to a hard drive or onto the cloud will save you enormous trouble in the future.
Source: Mashable.com
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