How much of a surprise it is to hear that 80% of the repairs that are turned into Staples are reported simple things that could have been avoided by routine maintenance? Well its true most do not keep up with the simple little things that can keep your computer running at its optimum performance. So what are the routine maintenace that you should be doing?

Routine Maintenance

• dust your computer.
• Make sure your anti-virus is up to date
• make sure your computer is in a well ventilated area
• defragment your hard drive to keep it running at its best
• Check regularly for updates to your OS, whether it be Windows, Mac, Linux or other, and make sure you download any security patches

Dust your computer
if you r have a tower then simply slide off the one side panel (generally two thumb screws in the back hold it on) and then use some can air. Now here are some tips. Make sure the computer is turned OFF and its a good idea to unplug it. Do not tilt the can air as that could case moisture to come out. Spray from the top down and when once at the bottom simply spray the dust right out. If you have a laptop then make sure its off and unplugged then simply stray the can air into the vents.

You can see how nasty this is

Anti-Virus up to date?
Simply click on your anti-virus and you should see a button to update it. Its hard to tell you exactly what to do here since there are so many different AV's out there. If you can't find your update then comment below and I'm sure one of our friendly users who is running the same one will help you here on what to do.

Well ventilated area
Heat is a killer point blank. Computers also put out alot of heat so as you can imagine if you place your computer in one of those desks with the tower compartment that you might be looking at some issues down the road. Make sure your computer gets air. If you have a laptop then you need to make sure it is ventilated. If your one that tends to sit in a chair with your laptop on your lap you could be covering the vents. For laptops they make laptop coolers that work wonderful in keeping the heat away.

Defragmenting
Fragmentation makes your hard disk do extra work that can slow down your computer. Disk Defragmenter rearranges fragmented data so your hard disk can work more efficiently. If your on Vista you can set it up to run at a certain time on a regular basis, you can see that is what I do

Disk Defragmenter might take from several minutes to a few hours to finish, depending on the size and degree of fragmentation of your hard disk. You can still use your computer during the defragmentation process.

Updates:
Depending on what your OS is will depend where you go to make sure you are up to date. Find it and make sure you are