Smith College TechNotes blog

What can you do to keep your laptop healthy? Aside from regularly running antivirus and spyware removal software, there are a number of steps you can take to extend your laptop’s life.

Prevent Accidental Damage
This is common sense, but I’ll say it anyway: laptops are fragile – they can’t withstand a lot of physical abuse or moisture. So, don’t shove your laptop into a full backpack, and be careful with water bottles and drinks near your computer.

Protect the Hard Drive
Fact: Hard drives fail. All hard drives, no matter what make or model, eventually fail. Some estimates say that hard drives have an average lifespan of 3 or 4 years. But that estimate assumes that your hard drive doesn’t suffer any trauma.

Your computer’s hard drive is one of the few moving parts inside of the computer, so it is especially sensitive to being jostled or dropped. To be on the safe side, and hopefully get those 4 years of life from your hard drive, you can take some precautions:

Power down or put your laptop into sleep/standby mode before shutting the lid and walking to class with it. Be careful! If you shut the lid and put your computer into your bag before the computer is actually asleep, you could easily damage the drive.

“Exercise” your Battery
Fact: Batteries wear out. Did you ever wonder why batteries have a shorter warranty than the rest of the computer? It’s because they wear out faster than the rest of the computer!

Like hard drives, batteries only live through a certain number of charge cycles (while you could argue that every hard drive only performs a certain number of “spins” in it’s lifetime).

“All rechargeable batteries wear out with time and usage. As time and cumulative use increase, the performance will degrade. For the typical user, noticeable reduction in run time generally will be observed after 18 to 24 months. For a power user, reduction in run time generally may be experienced prior to 18 months. We recommend buying a new Dell laptop battery when the run time does not meet your needs.” [Dell Laptop Battery FAQ]

At the same time, batteries need “exercise” to continue to hold a charge and charge fully. So, if your laptop lives on a desk or only gets used occasionally, make a habit of charging then discharging the battery at least once a month. (Apple calls this “conditioning” the battery.) If you don’t use the battery at all, you can take it out. Store laptop batteries at 40-50% charge in a cool place.

Batteries also have temperature “comfort zones” (50°-95°F) so don’t leave your laptop in a cold or hot car.

For more information:

• About Apple Lithium-Ion Batteries
• About Apple Notebook Batteries
• About iPod Batteries
• How to Prolong Litium-based batteries [BatteryUniversity.com] (scroll down to the “Simple Guidelines” section for a quick overview)
• Dell Laptop Battery FAQ