While I’m not the techiest of all, I’m astonished by how people treat their computers on campus. I hear horror stories of people dropping their computers, scarier stories of people sending their computers to get fixed, and sad stories of Justice papers getting lost.

If you aren’t sure what preemptive measures you should be taking with your computer, this post is for you.

1) BACK IT UP

Please do this. I don’t mean emailing yourself the occasional draft of the 20-page paper you’re working on. Get yourself an external harddrive that will pretty much back up your computer with one touch, or on a certain schedule (e.g. 8pm each night).

Ask your parents for an external hard drive for Christmas. They’re fairly inexpensive now. Get one as large as the disk space on your computer. And then, make sure you use it.

Don’t think that just because you have a Mac / are super over-protective etc. etc. that you’re computer is safe. It’s not. Laptops, while fairly sturdy, aren’t made like rocks.

All it takes is one spill of water, one drop, one software freak out, and BOOM, you lost all your music, pictures, videos, documents from the past X years you’ve had the computer. The cost of getting data recovered is more expensive than getting an external drive in the first place.

2) Get a keyboard cover for your laptop

Your motherboard (and it is as important as it sounds) is right underneath those keys. I’m sure you’ve worked on your laptop while munching on dhall food, or while drinking hot chocolate. But what if, some douche accidentally bumps your chair and whooosh, you spill half a glass of water on your laptop.

Sadness. :(

While a keyboard cover is not foolproof, it acts as a little umbrella. It won’t protect against torrential down pours (but you shouldn’t be using your computer in hurricane weather anyways), but it’ll save you from having to send your laptop out to tech repair because you accidentally spilled some water on it.

3) Don’t download what you don’t understand

Although certain types of downloads do indeed occur on campus, that doesn’t mean you need to personally expose your computer to the world of malicious software. If you don’t know what you’re doing, or how to do it the right way, or if this whole discussion about file sharing confuses you, then chances are, you should not be downloading software that allows to you to download other forms of software.

See point 1. If you persist, get yourself an external hard drive and learn the meaning of System Rollbacks and Restore Points. They essentially allow you to “go back in time” to restore your system to a state when it had no idea what software sharing was or how dangerous it could be.

4) Use your battery

I think my battery life is about 2 hours now. I know some people’s batteries only last 15 minutes.

You should accept this as a fact of life: batteries will get old and will need to be replaced.

As always, order the right battery. And once you get a new battery, treat it right. Make sure you use it until the computer shuts down on your behalf at least once a month. Batteries lose charge if you don’t use it.

So, don’t keep your battery continuously plugged in. It’s bad for it. Go off the grid for a while. Use your laptop untethered, like it was meant to be.

5) Defrag or Disk Repair Regularly

Windows users should “defrag,” mac users should “disk repair.” A quick google search will tell you the specifics on how to actually perform these two operations. But you should be defragging at least once a week.

Think of your computer like your desk. Throughout the week, you toss your stuff on it. Your midterms are hiding somewhere under that pset for some other class, your cellphone is perched ontop of your project proposal, your holiday cards are sporadically tucked in your Justice reading, etc. It’s messy.

Defragging re-organizes your computer’s memory so that using your computer will be faster for you. How many times have you bugged someone for class notes and they had to wade through 2 or 3 binders just to find it?

Be nice to your computer.

6) Don’t let your computer overheat

That means, don’t leave your laptop hanging out on your bed, or underneath your covers. (I have known of one computer that has failed this way.)

Fabric is obscenely bad at distributing heat. Overheating is one of the main causes of laptop failure (and of many other tech devices’ failures).

If I plan on working in bed for an extended period of time, I generally put a book underneath my laptop to keep it cooler than it would be if it were just sitting on my mattress. If you’re super concerned, consider getting a USB-powered cooling pad.

And yes, you can check out how hot your laptop is by feeling its bottom. *insert snark*

7) BACK IT UP

If you take anything away from this post, it should be a strong urge to add an external hard drive to your wish list.

Don’t lose your thesis / final set of papers / life’s memories because you were too lazy and cheap to buy and then use an external hard drive.