One of the most oft overlooked practices in computer care is preventative maintenance. Oddly, consumers have adopted the pricey break-fix attitude toward their computers (which most would confess is their lifeline to the digital world) instead of a preventative strategy that would seek to avoid catostrophic system failure altogether.

To give an analogy, imagine that you own a car which is your only means of travel. Without your car, you’re stuck at home with no ride to or from work and all your friends hang out accross town–way beyond walking distance (especially in this Texas heat). Obviously, your car is important to you–but you don’t want to take care of the annoying things like oil changes, tire rotations and brake jobs.

This seems to be an ingenious strategy for a while, but eventually things begin to go wrong. Your engine starts making a knocking noise, your tire blows out on the freeway and your wheels grind when you brake. The diagnosis? A busted engine block, badly worn tires and a ruined braking system. Suddenly, the few hundred dollars in yearly maintenance on your precious car pale in comparison to the several thousand dollar bill the mechanic just put in your hand.

This is a bad long-term strategy with a vehicle, with your health, relationships, home maintenance, and with a computer. Minor things can be done on a routine basis to extend the life of a computer and at the very least note potential problems before they result in something tragic like data corruption or loss.

One of the things I’ve seen a lot of is debis build-up inside of the computer. It doesn’t take long for dust to clog critical components, parts that can’t be accessed or cleaned from the outside. When this occurs, the system heats up and compensates by making more noise and slowing down to prevent overheating. Before long, due to the prolongued over usage of the cooling system and warm temperatures inside the computer, your system slows to a hault and components begin to break down. Soon a fan goes out, a power supply shorts or worse–a major component such as a hard drive or motherboard begins to malfunction.

This type of damage and build up can be avoided by dropping your system off at my shop or scheduling a convenient on-site service call (usually only an hour of labor). For a very affordable price, I can clean the debris and dust from your system and even make some tweaks and optimizations to your software that will cause your system to run smoother and more efficiently. Best of all, this is a much simpler way to spot potential hardware failure and prepare with data backup or a repair that can avoid a meltdown altogether.

There, of course, is another realm of concern when it comes to computer usage–security. I won’t go into great detail about this or make a clever analogy as I did above, since most people know how dangerous virus and malware infections can be. I will warn however that virus scanners are not perfect and malicious software can go completely undetected, putting your data and personal information at risk. This, too, can be avoided in many cases with proper application of operating system and application updates.

Thankfully, many people have begun keeping up with operating system updates but I find that one of the most glaring security vulnerabilities on my customers’ machines are in third-party applications that they use every day. Programs like Adobe Flash, when unpatched, can be exploited by the bad guys to wreak havvoc on users’ systems. What a large price to pay when such a thing could be avoided with a few tweaks at the hands of the local smiling technology solutions provider.

Please hear me, don’t neglect your computers. Yes, I’m trying to convince you to spend a few bucks with me, but you’ll be thankful you did. Just like the Joe Schmoe who changes your oil and helps you get 150,000 miles on your motor, I want to help you get the most out of your computer.

If you’d like to request an appointment or drop off your computer for a check-up or repair, contact me today!