How to Keep Your Computer Out of Landfill by Taking Better Care of It

We all want to take care of ourselves and our environment. One of the ways to avoid the environment getting worse is to make better use of what we currently own so it endures. That way, the landfills don’t get full as quickly and require more land for discarded junk and we preserve the resources we already own. Also, because we must go out to work to earn the money for new technology purchases, maintaining our computer for longer means we live cheaper too.

Here are some effective ways to make your computer last longer. 

Laptop Protection

With laptops, you must be gentle with them. They need a padded carry bag to protect it from accidental knocks. It only takes one big shake or knock to damage a hard drive and prevent it from working. This can cause the data to become unreadable or files lost. A company like Secure Data Recovery will be needed to reconstruct the data on the hard drive to get as many of the files back as possible if this happens.

You should charge the battery to 100% reserves and then unplug the power to stop charging it. Repeatedly charging the battery when it’s already at full charge can potentially damage it. In many cases, the internal laptop battery is one of the first parts to fail and is expensive to replace. 

Clean the Computer

Buying a can of compressed air is useful to clean accumulated dust and debris from inside the PC. These items can heat up and cause problems with older computers. While removing the components to clean them separately and re-installing them is the best cleaning method, it’s not for the faint of heart!

You’re better off removing the lid or taking out the screws from the laptop case to remove part of the case and using compressed air to clean dust out best you can. Be sure not to spray dust that resettles back inside the case. Maneuver the case so that the compressed air pushes the dust away from itself and onto a prepared floor covering (you may wish to wear a face mask too).

Reinstalling or Replacing Windows O/S

The Windows operating system tends to get slower the longer it has been used. If you’ve got a PC that’s 3-5 years old, then Windows is going to be suffering. The best thing to do in that case is to create a couple of separately stored backups of your data files, sync all your apps to the cloud so they’re updated, and then reinstall Windows. You have the choice whether to wipe the hard drive first and install from scratch or to reinstall over the top of the existing version. The former gets better results, but the latter is less worrisome.

For people with computers that are 4+ years old and are finding that Windows just cannot cut it anymore, then you’ll want to consider upgrading your RAM memory to get a bit of a speed boost. If that’s not on the cards either or you don’t think it will help, then the only other good option is to switch to a low-resource hungry operating system like Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu and Lubuntu, a lower-resource variant, are Linux-based operating systems but they have all the usual apps you’d recognize like Firefox browser, VLC media player, Chrome, and others. Even an older PC with just 2GB’s of RAM will run on Lubuntu while 4GB’s of RAM is recommended with Ubuntu.

Keeping a computer running longer requires some TLC to ensure it doesn’t quit on you. It’s important to keep it cool always to avoid overheating. The internal battery or power brick are the most susceptible to heat issues. Not overworking the components by using a lower-resource operating system also helps to not push an older PC beyond its true capabilities.
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