by Christine Betterton-Jones – Knowledge junkie
1. Take care of it !
Food, drink and fingernail cuttings can be lethal to keyboards. There have been several cases of members spilling drinks over their laptops. If you are unlucky his can be terminal – if lucky you’ll have to change the keyboard. I’ve seen some perfectly usable second hand laptops which no-one will buy because one or two keys do not work. To clean a keyboard, brush off the dust then gently wipe with a clean cloth “dampened “ with a little alcohol.
Dirty screens are are problem for the eyes, and dirty touch-screens don’t work properly
To clean a screen, wipe genttly with a cloth dampened with very dilute washing up liquid.
No -nos – Do not leave your laptop in full sun
Do not tuck it away in its case when in “sleep mode” …it may be doing stuff in its sleep.
Do not leave it on charge when its fully charged. This may shorten the life of the battery.
Clean out dust bunnies. Many laptops especially older and high powered ones have cooling fans inside. Use compressed air canisters to blow the dust out through the air vents
Keep it away from dust and pets
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/dont-buy-a-new-laptop-yet-make-your-old-one-last-longer/
2. Toooo slow!?
It may not be too old and creaky, just overburdened:
- De-clutter it: tidy up and get rid of software you never use (or have forgotten how to use!)
- Get rid of stuff you don’t need running in the background
- Use Windows own antivirus – Windows Defender, instead of a third party anti virus which often slow the system down.
- Use Windows’ Disk Cleanup or an app like Ccleaner to get rid of unwanted junk files.
- Clear Browser caches and browser history
- Think about removing “bloatware” – software which came with windows which you don’t want. e.g. use Windows10Debloater (this is a bit techie, so you may need help at the club to use it!)
It was young and beautiful once!
If it was a high spec laptop when you bought it and is now struggling…
- Upgrade the RAM and hard drive – if spares are available
- But check if the laptop’s brain (processor) is still up to it! e.g a 2009 Windows 7 netbook has a 32 bit processor which cannot manage as much RAM as modern 64 bit processors. Modern processors also have several “cores” – i.e. they have more than one “brain” and can use 64 bit software which is beyond the capabilities of a 32 bit processor.
3. If disk space is short and /or disk is slow:
- Uninstall unnecessary programs
- Use small programs which do the same thing – e.g. in Windows: Sumatra PDF reader is 4MB vs Adobe reader which is 500 MB
- Clear disk space – keep photos and videos on an external drive
- Upgrade the hard drive – The Club offers a “try before you buy” hard drive upgrade service to members. Try out a modern Solid State Drive (SSD) in your laptop. This can be up to 10 times faster than a traditional mechanical drive.
4. If it really is a pensionista – dump Windows
If it had a marginal spec when you bought it, or it really is an old banger and you use it mainly for e-mails, simple office work and web browsing … think of dumping Windows.
Best Linux Distributions For Everyone in 2021
Linux – has some low spec, some very low spec versions – e.g. 256MB RAM and 5GB storage
You might like to Convert your laptop into a sort of Chromebook
CloudReady: Home Edition is the free, easy way to transform your old PC or Mac into a high-performing Chrome device. https://www.neverware.com/freedownload#intro-text
Ubuntu Web is similar and can use Android apps https://ubuntu-web.org