Stop doing these things to your computer ðŸ˜
You are hurting your computer and consequently, yourself 😢
Computers are people too, don’t believe me? Ask Siri or Cortana, I’m very sure they’d have a lot to say on the topic, Siri is probably eaves-dropping as we speak 😆
But all jokes aside, computers deserve our love, respect, and continual care, this is the only way we’d have them for long enough and get full value for the money we paid to get them. Imagine getting something like the most recent 16 inch MacBook Pro, which currently costs upwards of $2000, and a few months later, your battery is destroyed or your PC simply won’t turn on, welp!
Today, I will share a few things that you are probably doing to your computer that guarantee that you won’t enjoy it for very long and you will probably need to repair or change something soon if you continue. Embarrassingly, these things I am going to share with you are things I learned the hard way 😂
Leaving your PC plugged in all the time
Now, this is a very debatable topic, a lot of people believe that newer, computers will not be affected by leaving them plugged in beyond getting to a full battery but I beg to differ. Let’s consider a few things, while leaving your laptop plugged in 24/7 ideally, may not affect a modern computer, there are a few factors that could quickly make that untrue. For example, heat can significantly reduce the amount of time your battery stays charged(your PC will die more quickly). So imagine that you leave your battery plugged in all the time, this could very easily create more heat around the battery without proper ventilation and lead to the ions in your battery acting a little crazy.
Summary: Try to avoid leaving your battery plugged all the time, prevention is better than cure 🔋
Lifting your laptop from the screen
Now, a lot of us like to show off our strength, dexterity, and swiftness but chances are, our PC doesn’t admire us the way we imagine. If you think about the anatomy of a computer, you may notice that the base(body) is likely a lot heavier than the upper part (the screen). Now, try to imagine yourself as a kid, and every time your mom would go to carry you, she’d lift you by the head 😂 , you probably won’t have a neck attached to your body anymore! Not great yes? Now imagine how your PC feels, if you do this enough times, the hinges that hold the body and screen together will likely give up at some point and break off.
Summary: Avoid carrying your PC from the screen, you don’t want a headless or bodiless PC 😉
200% Volume on VLC
Now not many people know this, but VLC, while it comes with really nice benefits, can also be very bad for your PC. Most PCs have in-built speakers(unless you have a speakerless monitor), these speakers were designed with specifications and limits in mind and one of them is the level of amplification they can handle. Now, what VLC does with the amplification levels is, it doubles them, and by no fault of their own, your speakers are likely going to be unable to handle this doubled amplification, not for very long anyway. Analogy time, imagine your head was twice its current size, imagine just how much trouble your neck will run into carrying it around, some might even say your neck will one day collapse. Try to stick with 100% volume levels, for the most part, if you want a better sound experience, consider getting some good earphones or external speakers. You should only go beyond the 100% level if the sound level of the movie is REALLY low.
Summary: Be considerate, imagine if God doubled the size of your head whenever he thought he wanted to see more of it 🤔
Using your laptop until the battery dies completely 😞
I’m not going to beat around the bush, I’m just going to jump into my analogy here 😂 imagine you as a kid, your mom waited every single time for every drop of energy to leave your body before she fed you, you probably won’t be here today to read this article. PCs are the same, if you wait until your battery hits 10%, 5%, or worse 0% before you charge it back up every time, you can cause severe problems for either the battery or even the motherboard.
Just to keep your battery decently charged, a good place to consider plugging it back in is 20% or at the very least 15%. If you wait till 0%, one day, your computer may not start back up. On the upside, try not to charge your battery beyond 95% or unblock once it is at 100%
Summary: Feed your PC properly, it isn’t a slave, keep it adequately charged as often as you can!
A few other things you should avoid 💪
- Allowing your PC to fall or bump into surfaces, this can have significant negative effects on your hard drive and may probably even lead to complete damage the first time around! Hard drive damage can lead to the loss of all your files, pictures, and any other data you have stored.
- Installing more than one piece of Anti-virus software, it’s like taking different types of panadol for the same headache, your body will shut down.
- Plugging in all kinds of external devices and transferring data of them without scanning them first. This is like drinking poison and hoping it doesn’t kill you, you will eventually catch a harmful virus
- Downloading software from untrusted/unofficial sites, it’s like randomly picking strangers off the streets and letting them into your home, never a good idea!
Computers should be treated with respect, they deserve that at the very least, they help us do so much and they ask for very little in return, just proper care and handling. There are a few things I may have omitted to mention here and you might even have questions or objections about the ones I did mention, see you in the comments!
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Until next time! Thanks for reading and putting up with my scary/bad analogies 😂
– Dami
