How to Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly

Image by Alexandros_ via Flickr

Whether you use your business, for pleasure, or for both, it should be your best friend. If you are in business like I am, you need it to do your billing, design and prepare your reports, write your letters, design and upgrade your website, write and post your blogs, send and receive your emails, get news on your industry, check on your competition, as well as give you some moments of distraction and pleasure. It is therefore, important to keep your computer working smoothly.

Here are fourteen things to do to make sure your computer runs smooth with little or no glitches:

1. Make sure Microsoft Windows is kept fully up to date.

2. Make sure your internet security, antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall software programs are current, fully functional, properly configured, and totally up-to-date. Replace the programs before the subscription period expires, not afterwards.

3. Make sure your main applications Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Print Shop etc. are up-to-date.

4. Avoid redundant programs. Use one internet security software program at a time. The exception is spyware detection and removal programs. Sometimes two or three of these are helpful since no one package can find or remove all the spyware out there.

5. Remove unnecessary programs from your computer.

6. Defrag your hard drive every few weeks.

7. Backup all your work always. All of it. Be prepared to lose anything and everything that is not backed up.

8. Always remember your passwords, including your Windows logon password and especially your internet username and associated password.

9. Learn to love your computer if you haven't already. Get rid of any negative attitudes towards it. It is your best friend. Use it for work, but also have fun with it.

10. Don't keep your computer for ten years. Upgrade it or replace it every three years or so. Always make sure you have enough RAM, processor speed, free hard drive space, and internet speed to get your work done with reasonable efficiency.

11. Don't install a bunch of unnecessary programs on your computer. Keep your operating system clean and simple. Just say no to programs and utilities that you do not need, (especially those that start up every time you launch Windows), and therefore, consumes precious system resources whether or not you are actually using them. Run System Restore before and after every software installation whether its successful or unsuccessful.

12. Contact an experienced computing professional whenever you are faced with computing problems that you cannot resolve yourself. Establish a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship with this person.

13. Don't allow other people mess with your machine. Keep your machine to yourself. Let them buy their own.

14. Do not blow your entire computing budget on the machine itself. Allow room for other necessary or desirable or unavoidable computing expenses( both planned and unplanned), repairs, services, upgrades, additional computer programs, and gadgets.

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