Taking care of your Laptop

Protecting and cleaning your Refurbished Laptop

Taking good care of your refurbished laptop is very important. If you clean it, and protect it well, you will be able to increase its life span and performance. And besides, you will always enjoy working with a neat, clean, well-functioning machine. Not to mention if you ever plan to sell your refurbished laptop, keeping it in good shape would raise its value, since people would pay more for something that is in great condition.

Cleaning your keyboard
The part that always gets the dirtiest is the keyboard. Even if you clean your hands before using your refurbished laptop, there is always dust, hairs and other unwanted particles that can contaminate your keyboard. First of all you have to clean the surface with a soft cloth and a light cleaner. (e.g. Simple Green, ArmorAll, Windex, or you can mix rubbing alcohol or dish soap with water) Wipe thoroughly the palmrest, tops and sides of all keys and buttons you can find on you keyboard. You don’t want to get your cloth too wet, otherwise the liquid might drip in between the keys, damaging the interior. After wiping the surface of the keyboard, it’s time to clean the spaces in between the keys. The best method to do that is with compressed air. Start with short blasts from one side and work your way across the keyboard. This will bring all the dust, hairs and other stuff out, before they can work their way down and damage your refurbished laptop. There still might be some unwanted visitors hiding under your keys. In this case try to remove your keys by popping them off of the keyboard, clean them, and pop them back on.

Cleaning your display
Your monitor is the most sensitive part of your machine when it comes to pollution. Even if you just barely touch it, your greasy fingerprint is going to stay there, affecting your view, until you clean it. Not to mention if you sneeze or spill liquid on it. This is why you have to clean your display on a regular basis. The best way to do it is using a mix of half isopropyl alcohol and half water. Use a clean, soft cloth and wipe off your display thoroughly. Don’t try to clean it with other household cleaners, or rubbing alcohol because they might damage your screen. If you do not want to mix your own cleaning solution you can always get special monitor cleaning fluids (e.g. PolaClear, PixelClean etc) or even a microfiber cleaning cloth.

Cleaning the inside of your laptop
Dust, and other particles can get inside your refurbished laptop through the keyboard and through other openings. They can slow your machine down or even damage your hardware. They can cause your laptop to overheat by clogging the fans, disabling the delivery of cool air inside the machine. You can get rid of them by using short blasts of compressed air inside. For that, first you have to remove the keyboard. Get information from the manufacturer on how to remove the keyboard. Make sure by removing it, you will not void the warranty (if there is any) on the machine. It is usually pretty easy: all you have to do is remove a few screws. After removing the keyboard use short blasts of compressed air to get rid of the unwanted visitors. Be careful with the hardware, the inside of the machine, especially the motherboard is very delicate. You can also blast some air in the opening of the ventilation system. This will get your fan to start spinning, getting rid of the dust caught inside. Maintaining your refurbished laptop this way, will give it a better performance and increased life span.

Cleaning the optical drive
It is also important to clean your CD or DVD drive. You can use the same method with compressed air or a Q-tip. When doing so, make sure you do not touch the little eye of the optical drive, the one responsible for reading the discs. It can cause serious damage to your hardware.

Protecting and cleaning your refurbished laptop is very important. It will help to make your computer run better and live longer. If you don’t mind spending a little money on the matter, you can get excellent laptop cleaning kits that will help you do your cleaning job more efficiently.