Author: Bill Gilbert

This tip is especially for those who keep their computers on a carpet, have pets, and don't clean the house as often as they should (you know who you are). And actually, everyone should be checking out the interior of their computer every few months, even if you think you are Mr. Clean himself. Some people have wiped their computer clean of spyware and yet still have a slow running computer. Well, today we are going to take a look at the other way to clean your PC.

The floor of a carpeted room is the worst place to keep your tower. Cookie crumbs, ashes (from those who smoke), pet hair and dander, and dust all wind up on your carpet - and then inside your computer. You ask "How can all that get inside?" It's the laws of physics. You have at least one fan in the back of the tower pulling warm air out of the computer - which creates a suction effect and pulls cooler room air into the front, displacing the warm air. With this suction effect, anything light enough to be drawn in likely will find its way into the innards of the computer. Once the fans are blocked with debris and the temperature rises enough inside, the tower will slow the processor down to protect itself. Continued overheating of the system will cause component failure. The older the computer, the worse it seems to be.

"So what can I do to prevent this?"

There are a few things you can do: READ MORE

If you're not using your inkjet printer regularly, shut it OFF. Leaving it in 'Power Save' mode won't allow the heads to fully park, and often time ink will dry out in the cartridges. It also lets unspent ink dry in the heads, which means running the cleaning cycle more often (and wasting more ink in the process). Not only are you saving a few bucks on ink, you'll save a few bucks on electricity as well. Also, your image quality will remain high for a longer period of time, so you may not be as quick to whip out the old Louisville Slugger on the ink guzzler.

And don't worry about boot up time compared to power-save mode. Modern printers are ready to print from a cold start in less time than it takes Lindsay Lohan to tell a judge to eff off (15 seconds or so).