A modern laptop endures an average life span of between 3 to 5 years, but you can make it live longer with appropriate care and regular maintenance.
Modern laptops are fantastic pieces of kit, but they are thin, flimsy and highly susceptible to being damaged due to not having dedicated screen protectors and cases, like the ones you can use for mobile phones while playing on them.
Here are some essential tips and tricks to ensure you don't have to worry about saving up to replace your current laptop, and to make your current laptop longer lasting and more worthwhile...
1. Stop Putting Your Laptop To Sleep!
How To Make Your Laptop Last Longer
Almost all laptop users are probably guilty of making this mistake, unaware of the lasting damage it may have on your laptop. If you don't shut down your laptop at least once a week, you will ultimately stop your laptop from carrying out vital updates and patch fixes, which can save you memory space and keep you protected from malware and viruses.
There is an alternative to just shutting the lid and leaving your laptop running, putting it into hibernation mode instead will use up less battery and RAM, and there will be much less damaging long term effects from doing this on a consistent basis. The best part is you will be able to load up your desktop interface instantly, as opposed to having to fully start up your laptop, win-win!
We do, however, recommend carrying out a full shut down process once or twice a week, at least, just so your laptop can be given the time to automatically update and fix patches and updates in the background.
2. Keep Your Laptop Up To Date With Any Available Updates
How To Make Your Laptop Last Longer
This step is vitally important, as there can be some updates that are essential to protect your laptop from viruses, malware and hackers. So ensure your Windows or Mac OS operating system is kept up to date.
For Mac OS users, select System Preferences from your Apple menu. Next, click Software Update, to see if any updates are available. If there are updates outstanding, select update now, you can find out the purpose of the updates by selecting More info.
For Windows 10 users, use the Windows search bar and type in Check for updates, if any are available, make sure to click on Download and Install.
Associate these updates as essential, and part of your routine to maintain your laptop's health - It will protect it against an army of problems, which should be the last thing you'd want on an already aged laptop.
3. Keep It Clean (On The Outside and Inside!)
How To Make Your Laptop Last Longer
Keeping your laptop clean isn't just about giving it a wipe here and there, you have to worry about the exterior and the interior, as they are equally important to extending your laptop's life span.
Where taking the exterior design into consideration, ensure to keep your keyboard unclogged of any food bits and dust, and ensure your screen, fan and ports aren't clogged up either - The last thing you want is to be unable to plug your laptop charger in, or connect USB cables.
For the interior, it's best to have a good virus protection software. Some great providers to consider are McAfee and Kaspersky Internet Security, your own operating system will also have a built-in virus protection which is just as, if not, more effective. You're going to be downloading from unsafe websites, sometimes without realising, so it is especially important to monitor the safety of your PC.
Some other great tricks to extend your laptop's life include removing unwanted or non essential files, and upgrading your RAM (Depending on what you use you laptop for). I
Increasing storage can help your laptop massively, as it won't end up running at over 80% utilisation all the time. By ensuring your laptop has more free space, less energy is used up, the power supply (internal battery) lasts longer, and your laptop will operate faster, leading to less crashes and avoiding internal damage to your hard drive or SSD drive (Solid State Drive).
4. Keep Your Laptop Fans Nice And Cool
How To Make Your Laptop Last Longer
Ever wondered why your laptop overheats so often when you have it sat on your lap? You're blocking the fan from sucking in air to help it cool down. If the surface is uneven, such as the case for a person's lap or a blanket, any cool air is blocked off, resulting in the laptop's internal temperature to heat up.
Sometimes when a laptop overheats too much, it will automatically shut off, so it can avoid creating any lasting damage to the internal components such as the motherboard and the RAM. We suggest to always use a hard surface for using you laptop on, such as a desk, table or counter.
Thank you for reading 'IT Support 101 - How To Make Your Laptop Last Longer' by IT Block. IT Block is an IT support services provider based in Singapore and we enjoy sharing our IT expertise with the world.
Comments