Computer maintenance is a crucial part of keeping your computer up and running. So when was the last time you gave your computer some TLC?
These days, nearly everyone has a computer – desktop, laptop or perhaps even both. Computers give us the flexibility to work from anywhere, at any time, and entire businesses have been built around and thrive, thanks to the personal computer. Okay….the personal computer and the internet.
But have things started to slow down recently? Is your computer being a bit glitchy? Is everything taking just a little bit longer than it used to? If any of these things are happening, ask yourself how long it’s been since you carried out any computer maintenance.
Here’s five reasons why regular computer maintenance should be a priority.
Find issues early
As the old saying goes, ‘an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure’, and that’s particularly relevant when it comes to computer maintenance. When you detect small issues early, you can prevent them from becoming big, and possibly expensive, problems down the track. Even if you’ve got a shiny new computer or laptop, you should be making computer maintenance a priority.
Scheduling regular IT maintenance, or even better, outsourcing it to the professionals, means the prevention, or early detection, of issues that could have a potentially devastating impact on your business.
Maximise efficiency
It doesn’t matter how careful or organised you are, over time your computer files will become fragmented, resulting in slower loading and response times and there’s nothing more frustrating than a slow computer. Also, a slow computer means lots of unproductive minutes – which can soon add up to lots of unproductive hours – spent waiting for the most basic of digital tasks to be performed.
Running scheduled speed checks can speed up loading times, eliminating those minutes spent waiting for something to happen as your computer sifts through unnecessary gaps trying to access files and software.
You won’t lose everything
Have you ever experienced the heart stopping moment when you ask your computer to find an important file you’ve been working on and it responds with ‘what file’? Of course the actual conversation takes place via computer strokes or mouse clicks, but you know the one we mean. Files can go missing for any number of reasons, including being renamed or accidently deleted. It never hurts to check your computer’s recycle bin for missing files.
Other than a renaming issue, missing files are likely due to a virus or malware. And it doesn’t matter how often we scan our computers, they’re still vulnerable because new viruses are created everyday with increasingly clever ways to access our computer systems. Some will be immediately obvious, designed to cause instant chaos and disruption. While others lay in wait to infect and corrupt your entire system slowly, maybe even infecting other operating systems or programs before you even realise it’s there. An infected computer can cause irreparable damage not only to the device but to your network. Not to mention the downtime while the issue is being investigated and then repaired.
Using a reputable anti-virus software – with reminders and updates set to yes – is a great place to start. However, if something does happen and a nasty bug gets into your system, please don’t try and fix things yourself, contact the professionals.
Crashed systems
If you’ve neglected to maintain your computers or computer network properly, your people and business may experience more system crashes and computer downtime. Until one day, nothing you do will make those computers boot into life and while rare these days will access to the cloud, you could lose all your data. And what about the business costs both actual and reputational?
Protecting your business network
Keeping up with regular computer maintenance, and ensuring your people are doing the same, is just part of protecting your business’s computer network. In fact, it’s even more important now with so many people working from home and using their personal computers or laptops outside their work environment.
What would happen if your employees couldn’t access their computers, due to their own lack of maintenance of yours? Or if a nasty virus managed to slip through the cracks not through negligence, but just a lack of understanding. It’s a scary thought.
How can you perform regular computer maintenance?
While it’s a good idea to let the professionals handle your computer maintenance, especially if there’s been a significant breakdown or technical problem, there’s some small things you can do to prevent major problems happening in the first place.
- Allow those updates – use the recommended update settings
- Anti-virus – don’t forget to install reputable anti-virus software.
- Cleaning (physical) – buy a small vacuum to make sure computers and laptops and free from debris and dust.
- Cleaning – uninstall unwanted programs and software. Don’t forget to clean up your email inbox(es) too!
- Rebooting – seems simple because it is. Reboot at least once a week.
- Back up – don’t forget to back up your data using whatever external method you prefer.
Whether or not your people are using computers you’ve supplied, or their own, to work, computer maintenance should be a priority. If you’re not sure what your business should be doing to prioritise this, contact us and we can get you sorted.
