Like people, computers and technology need downtime to recharge just like you and I need sleep to recharge. Do you blame them? Our devices are on call 24/7, almost like Alfred Pennyworth is for Batman. I'm surprised our tech devices don't rise up and revolt from being overworked. Stop the revolution before it begins. Refreshing your devices from time to time is a great way to help them last longer. No one wants to have to replace their tech devices every couple of years, especially when the life expectancy of desktop computers is 10 years and smartphones, tablets, and laptops can last up to 5 years. The fall and winter months are a good time for you to slow down and for you to allow your devices to slow down. Want to help give your tech devices a break and help get your money's worth out of them? Follow these steps.
1. Restart Your Devices. For your devices to feel better, they need to be restarted on a regular basis. This means ALL tech devices. Computers, printers, smartphones, tablets, even your smart home devices. The longer your devices are on, the more tired they get. Leaving them on can cause them to slow down, start acting weird and may even freeze up on you. Give your gadgets a break at least once a month by shutting them down for a few minutes or simply restarting them. Your devices will thank you by running better and faster.
2. Reset them to Factory Default. If you've reset your devices and turned them on and off and you're still having issues, resetting them to factory defaults can help them get a new life. Hardware issues are rare with newer tech products, but software issues like virus infections and random glitches can occur from time to time. Before you go and hit that reset option on your devices, understand that resetting your devices puts them back to the way they were when they came out of the box ... and will wipe out all of your data. So backup your devices before you take this step which leads us to my tip ...
3. Reduce Your Stress with Automatic Backups. Are you performing automatic backups of your computer? We "preach" about this quite a bit at Integral. Losing your data is costly in terms of losing family photos or important business documents, but data recovery is also expensive. We've seen data recovery cost as much as a $1,000 when a customer of ours was not backing up and their computer crashed. Take advantage of cloud backup services like Carbonite, Backblaze, Google Backup and Sync and iCloud Drive.
Don't overwork your tech devices. Give them a break once in a while and they will last for a long time.
Want to ask me a tech question? Contact me at burton@burtonkelso.com and send it in! If you prefer to connect with me on social media, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter and watch great tech tip videos on my YouTube channel. I love technology. I've read all of the manuals and I want to make technology fun and exciting for you.
If you need on-site or remote tech support for your Windows\Macintosh, computers, laptops, Android/Apple smartphone, tablets, printers, routers, smart home devices, and anything that connects to the Internet, please feel free to contact my team at Integral. My team of friendly tech experts are always standing by to answer your questions and help make your technology useful and fun. Reach out to us a www.callintegralnow.com or phone at 888.256.0829.