In today’s life, a computer is a near necessity, and every individual, be them a school student, small businessmen, or a professional in a large company, depends on one for their day-to-day tasks. According to a study by Pew Research, nearly 80 percent of American households contain at least one desktop or laptop computer.

Daniel is a retired Marine Corps officer, who spent a major chunk of his life serving the country overseas. After his retirement, he decides to give technology a chance and got his first personal computer to keep him occupied with online stock trading and keeping up with old friends. However, he’s doing several things that could compromise his favorite new gadget’s integrity and even make himself vulnerable to outside harm.

Here is a list of things that novice user should not do their computers to ensure enhanced shelf life of their devices:

1. Forget to Clean It

Every now and then, we eat or drink near our computers making the keyboard dirty.  All these crumbs, dust, and dirt particles get stuck and obstruct the airflow inside the computer, which leads to overheating.

It is important to ensure unobstructed airflow for the performance and longevity of the computer. You should schedule a fortnightly reminder for the cleaning of your computer.

2. Forget to Use a Surge Protector

It is important to use a surge protector while plugging the computer as it protects it from power surges that could permanently damage it. The surge protector regulates the voltage supply by blocking voltage over a safer threshold.

3. Not Installing Anti-Virus Software

Every now and then we hear news about cybercrimes happening where companies and people lose important data. With rising cybersecurity crimes every year, it is important to install good anti-virus software. The software will help to reduce the threat of cybercrimes and protect the confidential information you have on your computer.

4. Ignoring Software Updates

How many times have you received a software update notification only to reschedule it or cancel it? Everyone’s done it on the number of occasions due to confusion about what it does or simple laziness.

It is important to take these updates seriously as these generally carry fixes for bugs and glitches or enhanced security features.

5. Improper Shutdown

You can count on one hand the days in the month when you shut down your computer correctly. The majority of times, you just casually decide to shut down the computer by pressing the power button for a few seconds or by pulling the plug. Don’t do this! Turning off your system without shutting it down can result in severe data loss and corruption

6. Not Backing Up of Your Data

You must have heard of horror stories of your friends losing important documents in a computer crash. In order to avoid a situation like this, you should always keep z back-up of all the important data on a regular basis. Many computers have this option built-in, and there are many third-party services that can do it, too.

7. Abruptly Removing External Devices

When you tend to abruptly remove any external devices (like an external hard drive or thumb drive) connected to your computer, both computer and the external devices are susceptible to data corruption. It is advisable to eject the external device before removing it physically.

8. Hoarding Unwanted Apps and Programs

If you have downloaded an app once and have not used it since the last few years, it’s time to uninstall it. Unnecessarily hoarding unwanted programs and apps eats up your hard drive space, thus creating a strain on the hard drive. You need to take some time out every quarter and uninstall programs that are not being used.

9. Support from The Experts

Even after maintaining the system on a regular basis, if your computer is still very slow, you need to seek out the support of home computer repaired services to help you figure out the issue and help you in resolving it.

TLC for Your PC

Maintaining your computer on a regular basis is imperative. Dedicating some time every month or so towards showing some TLC to your computer will reap the rewards in the long run. Don’t be like Daniel, the Marine. If you follow the tips shared above, you can certainly enhance the longevity of your hardware and reduce the cost of replacing the computer system.