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Computer Tune up Awareness Month June 2008
Facing an uncertain economic outlook, many businesses and consumers have become more focused on maintaining the health of their computers, rather than replacing them. Your computer accumulates a lot of junk in a lot of ways, and it can eventually slow your machine to a crawl. As we approach the midpoint of the year, we want to remind you to take a few minutes to tune up your computer. Doing so will extend the life of your computers and address performance issues - like viruses, spyware and other maintenance issues - that can slow PCs down and affect performance. It’s easy to understand why so many people neglect regular maintenance of their computers. Most PCs are purchased from the same place many of us buy our refrigerators, toasters, washers and dryers. Appliances don't need maintenance; they just work. Why should a computer need maintenance? Despite a lot of advances, computers do need regular maintenance, and that's especially true if you browse the Web a lot, download this and that, or create and delete a lot of files. There are a number of things that you should do regularly and to help you, we have provided a 365 day program. Following this program will ensure your computer will give you faithful service for a long, long time, or at least until it becomes obsolete to you. Daily Backup your computer. Set your computer to automatically backup your critical files. Currently the best program to use for automatic backups is SyncBack (www.snapfiles.com/get/Syncback.html). This free backup utility will allow you to schedule backups which will copy your data to a USB Flash Drive, an external hard drive or even an FTP site. If you want to store your important data off-site, consider Mozy Remote Backup (www.mozy.com) which offers 2 Gigabytes of free automatic backup or Carbonite Computer Backup (www.carbonite.com). For unlimited file backups, both services will charge you less than $60. Weekly At least once a week you should scan your computer for ad-ware and spyware. Ad-Aware 2008 (www.lavasoft.com) is currently the most popular program to perform this task. It’s free and easy to use. We also recommend Spybot Search and Destroy1.5.2 (www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html) and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com). Both of these products are free as well. Virsues aren’t the threat they were a few years ago, but it’s always a good idea to set your anti-virus software to scan your computer once a week. Double-check and make sure it’s up to date before you perform your weekly scan. If you have a high speed access and your antivirus program is set to check automatically this may not be an issue for you. In any case, you should run your virus program weekly to check to see if any viruses have slipped through. This will help ensure that you are safe from those nasty things. Keep in mind that this takes may take a while, so it is best to do it when you are not planning to use your computer. Monthly Another source of protection is to ensure that your windows program has all the latest updates. Many of these updates have fixes that eliminate the holes that hackers use to infect your computer. Your Windows based computer should be set to download critical Windows Updates, but visit Windows Update (www.update.microsoft.com) to verify that you have downloaded all of the Critical and Recommend updates. Take this time to check to see if there are any updates to your application software such as QuickBooks, Microsoft Office (which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access). Software manufactures release updates to their programs periodically. Quarterly Run the Disk Defragmenter utility. It can also be found by clicking on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. This program can maintain optimum hard disk performance and stability by putting each file’s sectors in the proper sequence, permitting more efficient access. You need at least 15% of your disk space free to enable the Defrag program to perform at maximum efficiency. Run Disk Cleanup. This Windows utility program removes temporary Internet files, clears the Recycle Bin and dumps other disk trash. This is particularly useful for smaller disks that are running low on free space. This can be found under Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. Annually The cooling fans inside your computer pull air into the computer to keep it cool. They also suck in dust which can be deadly to a computer. When dust settles on computer components, it will cause them to overheat and damage the computer. Carefully remove the dust from inside your computer. Use canned compressed air (with the straw) to clear the dust from the inside of your computer. Don’t blast air into floppy, CD-ROM or other removable media drives. The heads and other internal components are easier to damage that you might think. Take this time to turn your keyboard upside down and rap it a few times. You'll be surprised. Quite possibly disgusted as well. Doing this stuff does not, of course, guarantee a smooth-running machine any more than a tune up guarantees a trouble-free car. But, like that tune up, it's an important step to keeping things running well.
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