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Preventive
maintenance Preventive maintenance is one of the most ignored aspects of PC ownership. Most people seem to think that the PC doesn’t need preventive maintenance, and so, you should just use it until it breaks, and then repair or replace it. These people generally find themselves repairing or replacing much sooner than those that take steps to avoid difficulties in the first place. Some types of preventive maintenance need to be performed more often than others. The frequency of preventive maintenance depends on the nature of the activity; some things just need to be addressed more often than others. It also depends a lot on what your PC is being used for. The interval for preventive maintenance on PCs can be determined based on elapsed time or on usage metrics. This is similar to how your car’s oil and filter should be changed “every 3 months or 3,000 miles, whichever comes first”. PC maintenance activities are usually specified as time-based, because this is easier (a PC has no odometer) but they should be performed more frequently depending on prevailing conditions. A PC used on the manufacturing floor of a steel mill needs to be cleaned more often than one being used in a hospital. A disk that is doing heavy Internet file transfers needs virus checking much more often than one that is used as a standalone and has no modem or floppy disk. It’s one thing to say “I will clean the read/write heads on my floppy disk every six months,” and even to mean it. But how will you remember when the six months are up? One way to address this problem is through the use of a preventive maintenance schedule, which will remind you of when to perform key maintenance activities on your PC. Some software preventive maintenance activities can also be automated. There are software-related preventive maintenance activities that can be automated. By using system tools that automatically run programmes at a specific time, you can set up your system to perform various software checks and maintenance activities without having to remember to do them yourself. Most modern operating systems either have this capability built-in, or support third-party software packages that will do it for you. Of course, you can’t set up your PC to perform hardware-related maintenance (cleaning, adjustments, etc.) automatically.
Taking care of hardware Even though some of us may not notice the environment and how it affects us much, it affects your PC as well. We’re much more important than PCs of course, but as it happens, many of the things that make humans sick or uncomfortable, have a similar impact on computers too! A critical factor in prolonging the life of your PC hardware is the temperature of the components. Components that run hot die young; those that stay cool last a much longer time. One aspect of keeping components cool is using cooling equipment and specific cooling procedures. Another is providing a room environment that is appropriate for the hardware. The general rule of thumb for room temperature is that PCs like the temperatures that an average person likes. Generally speaking, good operating temperature for a PC is about 60 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (15 to 24 or so Celsius). Operating a PC in a room that is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit can make it very difficult to cool. Most PC hardware can tolerate being at much lower temperatures (or moderately higher temperatures) when they are not running. If you are transporting equipment or storing it, the temperature concerns are much less than if the equipment is in use. However, if you have equipment that has been exposed to very low temperatures and is then immediately turned on, you risk permanently damaging the equipment. It is essential that very cold equipment be brought up to room temperature gradually before use. Even more dangerous than this is the possibility of condensation. If you wear glasses or know someone who does, you’ve seen what happens when you are inside an air-conditioned room for a period of time and then go out - the glasses “fog up”. It is quite possible for this to happen with electronic equipment as well. This does not cause any problem as long as you give the condensation enough time to evaporate. If your hard disk platters are “moist” when you spin them up, you risk destroying the drive. As you can see, there are plenty of ways you can ‘screw up’ your machine, and as many things you can do to prevent damage and increase and improve the performance and life expectancy of your computer. Next week we will discuss other factors like humidity, ventilation and power-care factors. Until then, keep those emails rolling in. Improve
your computer literacy RWU In the past, if they weren’t left on, personnel had to manually turn them on. But, with wake-on-LAN, client systems can be remotely and automatically powered up. Wake-on-LAN is considered a form of remote wakeup, but not all RWU systems are Wake-on-LAN as it is possible to wake a computer remotely using a dial-up connection from outside a local-area network. News Berners-Lee was named in the New Year’s Honours List for “services to the Internet” creating the system that has revolutionized computer use across the globe. He devised the system in his spare time in 1991 while working as a researcher at the European particle research laboratory CERN, which is based in Switzerland. Instead of patenting the system or restricting its use, Berners-Lee gave his invention away, making it possible for the Web to grow at a fast rate.
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