The beginning of a new year is a great time to make a few resolutions. Most of which we don’t keep. Starting the gym, losing some weight or starting some good healthy habits like attempting to get out of money troubles or fix bad credit. Your electronic gadgets around the house need a little TLC now and again to keep them operating properly and to hopefully keep them running for a while.
Some basic maintenance and cleaning practices should be done to your equipment on a regular basis and not just once a year. Some should be done daily if you're a germaphobe and some should be done weekly or every few months. Most are pretty simple and don't require much equipment but a cleaning rage and a few minutes of your time. In this Six Tips for Healthy Tech Gadgets, we will give you a few tips to help keep your tech gadgets in top condition for the coming year.
Six Tips To Healthy Tech Gadgets
1. Clean Up Your Gear
Keep your tech gadgets in good shape with a good cleaning. Use appropriate cleaners to wipe down your keyboard, mouse, and screen. Use a special cleaner for your screen as some screens can be damaged with an incorrect cleaner.
For your mouse and keyboard use a disinfecting cleaner. This will help kill the many germs that are on your mouse and keyboard. Your mouse carries three times more germs than your toilet seat. Put cleaner directly on rag instead of spraying directly on the device to avoid overspray that may cause damage to electronic components.
For desktop, computers use a vacuum to clean the fans and vents that may be clogged with dust, and debris. This will help ensure proper cooling for the unit. Vacuum the keyboard or use a pressurized air duster to blow out any crumbs and dust.
Vacuum around the sides and back of your TV and the dust bunnies around the cables. A good vacuum designed for computers may be a good investment to keep your computers dust free and operating cooler. Amazon has a number of Computers Vacuums to offer.
Wiping down your smartphone and tablets with a disinfecting cleaner on a weekly basis is also a great idea and will greatly reduce the germs on your devices.
Make a point in the New Year to wipe and disinfect your keyboard and mouse at least once a week it may help you avoid a cold or two.
2. Delete Unused Junk
Is your computer home screen covered with so many icons that you can’t see the photo in the background? Uninstall apps and programs that you no longer use.
Get rid of old media files and music you no longer listen to. This will free up space on your hard drive for new media downloads. After cleaning house of old files run a complete defragging to help speed up your device. Keep all your devices updated to ensure you are protected from the latest virus threats.
Many device updates automatically but you will still be required to install them manually on some devices.
3. Back-Up! Back-Up!
Backing up files is something many people don’t do until it is too late. Ensure you back files on an external hard drive to protect your important files from a power surge, virus, theft or fire. You can manually do it weekly or you can set it up to do it automatically. Buy an external hard drive with at least 1 Terabyte of storage capacity more if you have a lot of files and photos. HD Home videos take up a lot of storage room. Purchasing a hard with more storage is not that much more expensive.
If you have files like photos and home movies that are basically priceless. I suggest you buy an extra external hard drive to download your files and put this storage device in another location. Or upload them to a cloud service and give your family members access. If you have a fire and the external hard drive is sitting beside your computer. It will burn at the same time.
There are many different options to back up your files. There are many inexpensive external hard drives available or USB flash drives, but there are also many online cloud-based storage services that you can access your files through a secure password-protected app or website. Many are free but storage is limited.
Some of the most popular is One Drive, Google Drive, iCloud and DropBox.
4. Use Security Software
If you have paid any attention to the news lately there have been a number of high-profile internet attacks from vicious malware developers that want to do harm.
This makes it critical that you take precautions and use Security software that can safeguard your computer and tech gadgets from viruses, spyware hackers, and phishing attempts, many wanting to steal your personal information.
There are a number of free security options available but it may be best to purchase a complete suite for more robust protection that can protect you on multiple devices from a variety of online threats.
Speaking of protection make sure your smartphones are protected with a case and protective screen for when the inevitable happens and you drop it. I know for a fact it has prevented me from having a cracked screen on a number of occasions.
5. Reduce Unwanted Spam
Are junk emails promoting the newest diet, fix bad credit or the latest get rich quick scheme clogging up your inbox? Many email programs let you increase the filters to catch more junk. You can block specific senders or flag specific words. With some junk mail simply unsubscribe and many will not reappear in your mailbox.
Be selective of giving out your email address. A good idea is to set up another secondary email account specifically for sign-ups. Keeping your personal email dedicated to family and friends. Here are a number of Spam Blocking options at Amazon.
6. Protecting Your Memories Digitize Old Photos And Videos
Your old vinyl collection may hold out for a few more years but VHS cassette tapes will not last forever. Trying to simply play some of the old tapes may damage them and make them unusable. So the best thing is to get them transferred to digital format.
DIY is a popular option if you have the time. There are a number of conversation kits available to help you convert your VHS Tapes Hi8, and V8 cameras to Digital format and burn to DVD. Many for under $50 see Amazon for VHS to DVD conversation kit. Read my complete post on VHS to DVD Converter Guide before you get started.
If you don't have the time to send them to ScanDigital.com a company that has made converting old home movies, photos and various formats of film to digital or DVD simple and affordable.
They will ensure your memories last forever and you can now easily share your memories with family and friends by “ripping” on a disk or sharing on social media. Get a quote and get it done before it's too late.