Maintenance is necessary to make anything last. The average computer lifespan is 5-8 years. In contrast, unmaintained devices have a much shorter life. Device maintenance is important to ensuring ease o fuse on all of your electronics. Computers or devices that aren’t kept up tend to slow down, freeze or glitch with frequency. When this happens, many users have no idea what to do. Because we hear these stories with frequency, here are some quick tips to keep all of your devices functioning with ease and extend their usable life.
Do your updates
Just like an oil change for your car or a good multivitamin, updates keep you running smoothly. In the same vein, updates help keep your computer, tablet or other electronics working well. Devices that are out of date tend to drag, glitch or freeze…or all of these. It’s important to keep everything from operating systems to applications up to date. Why?? Because as users use applications, they uncover bugs and/or vulnerabilities in the program that need to be fixed. Additionally, developers are constantly finding better ways to do things. Consequently with each new update you get a more secure and feature rich application. After you finish off your update be sure to reboot. This ensures that all of your updates are in place.
Close out programs you aren’t using right now
When you close a program on most devices, many times the program will minimize and not close completely. Since the program is only minimized and not closed, the device you are using works hard to refresh the application and keep it ready for you to access whenever you need the program again. If too many applications are running, the device has to work overtime refreshing data. This slows down the processing ability on the apps you are actually trying to use. If your app is acting funny, take a look at what you have open and close out the apps you aren’t actively using. You’re likely to see a quick improvement because of it.
Clear your cache
Cache are pieces of information that are stored on your computer and are designed to make applications work faster. For instance, if you have logged into a particular website lately, your browser will remember and auto populate the screen with the most recent information you viewed. The trouble with cache is that it requires storage space to keep all of this information. If you notice that things are running slowly, clearing your cache is a quick and easy way to free up storage and speed up your processing ability. For a more proactive approach to device maintenance, try clearing out your cache regularly.
Delete unused applications
Devices you purchase today come with as bloatware. Bloatware is a group of applications that are loaded on your device that are generally free, but you don’t need. For example, you purchase a laptop for work but it’s auto loaded with pc cleaners, games, and other applications that you will likely never use. While most bloatware is not harmful, it takes up space on your device. Other things to consider are applications that you downloaded that you haven’t used in a certain time frame. If you haven’t used an app in a time frame that you choose, then uninstall it. That number could be 3 months, 6, 9 or even 12 months. Regardless of the term you choose, it’s important to do this regularly. This will keep things running efficiently.
Stop auto syncing.
Another thing to consider is auto syncing. If you are using cloud-based applications like One Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. you are likely sending your data to “the cloud” with frequency. By storing your information in applications like these, you are ensuring that you have access to these documents wherever you are and from whatever device you are on. The trade off to this ease of access is that you are constantly needing to send your information to the place where it’s being stored. Sometimes, auto syncing your data causes your device to slow down while it’s sending your information to be saved. If this is the case, you can pause the sync and restart it at a time when you won’t be using the device such. For instance, after you log off for the evening.
In conclusion
In conclusion, with proper device maintenance you can keep things running efficiently for the life of your pc, laptop, tablet or other device. While this isn’t an exhaustive list of things you can do to help, it is a great starting point.
Be sure to contact us
If you have workstations, or mobile devices that are giving you a hard time, be sure to contact us. We would certainly love to help you figure it out. If you’d like to see more from us, follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn.