Regular Computer Maintenance – Cost effective and worthwhile

One of the best ways to keep your computer consistently secure and performing at its best is through regular planned maintenance. Especially when that maintenance is provided by a computer professional.

People with regular and planned maintenance generally experience the following benefits:

  • A computer that more likely continues to run fast and stay secure on a consistent basis.
  • Experience cost savings by avoiding unnecessary premature replacement of their computer (or greatly lengthening the time that such an upgrade becomes desirable or necessary) because their system is kept running well.
  • Receive performance tune-ups that help in keeping their computer performing fast and well many years longer than those users that don’t arrange for regular maintenance.
  • Have increased confidence that their computer is up-to-date and secure (likely more so than many other computer owners) and thus less likely to become infected with malware or have identity-theft issues.
  • Have the confidence and well being of knowing they have a pre-determined scheduled visit from their computer professional who will have the latest information about security and performance updates for their system.
  • Knowledge that their computer professional will be on the lookout for signs of concern that might not be obvious and hopefully catch them and let them know about them early before they become surprising expensive issues that could end up costing a lot more to fix if gone undetected or worse, result in loss of data or render your system useless.
  • Know they have someone they can trust to answer questions about their computer or incidents they may have experienced and wondered about.

Regular professional computer maintenance should typically offer:

  • Cleaning your system of unnecessary temporary and junk files that build up over time and can slow down your system.
  • Performing a number of tasks with the intent of bringing your computer performance back to the level it should be based on your system’s capabilities and the types of software you use. In some cases specialized software or hardware upgrades may be recommended to improve your system’s performance.
  • Checking that key software is getting updated on a regular basis. This includes your operating system, security software and certain applications you use frequently.
  • If needed actually performing updates utilizing knowledge to avoid known “tricks” used by some legitimate software companies that attempt to trick users into installing unnecessary extra software onto your computer.
  • Reviewing installed software and software that automatically starts up with your computer looking for signs of unnecessary or undesirable software that may have slipped onto your system, possibly slowing it down, possibly exposing you to security risks.
  • Scanning your system with top-rated security software.
  • Reviewing key system and security log files for possible issues.
  • In some cases physically cleaning key internal computer components of dust and animal hair build up which can severely impact the performance and life of your computer.
  • If you have a backup system or some specialized software you may have made additional arrangements for your computer professional to look over and maintain those areas as well.
  • Depending on how the maintenance is provided and time available, this may be a good time for you to ask and get answers to questions you’ve collected since the last maintenance session.

Regular maintenance can provide peace of mind knowing: your computer is running well, performance has been kept in check, software is up-to-date and your system is secure. Over time you will likely learn how to get better use from your computer as well as early knowledge of possible issues that you otherwise may not know of until it’s too late.

Without regular maintenance your system is likely to get slower and slower overtime, you increase the chance of having an insecure system becoming a greater target for possible infections, you may have lingering and growing problems that are easier to solve early but can be devastating if not detected and resolved early on.

Many phrases like: “you need to replace your computer” or “your computer is busted, you need to replace it” unfortunately likely originated from minor issues that started long ago, unknown to the user, lack of maintenance and grew to become major issues. Issues that could have been solved or controlled with regular maintenance for modest cost vs encountering a sudden need to replace a failed system or worse – irreplaceable loss of photos, music, documents and data. At this point people may have already experienced identity theft, computer hardware or software failure, loss of data, expensive data recovery, total loss of all data, expensive system rebuild and more. In most cases the cost of regular computer maintenance is less costly than dealing with the above problems.

Problems can still happen if you do arrange for maintenance on a regular basis. It’s a fact of life that stuff happens. But with regular maintenance you are much better situated to reduce the likelihood of these issues or to have them discovered and dealt with much sooner and before they get bigger.

If you would like learn more about regular planned maintenance options and manged services options that Ingalls Computer Services can provide please give us a call or email!

– David Ingalls

Additional thoughts …

People without regular maintenance are more likely to come to an eventual belief that their computer has unsolvable problems, has become unrepairably slow and thus believe the only option is to replace their computer when investment in some regular planned maintenance could have extended the user of their computer for years as well as allowed them to enjoy the benefits of using a well maintained system all that time.

Ingalls Computer Services has many clients on a regularly scheduled maintenance plan that have experienced the good fortune of many years of using safe and fast Windows XP systems. The benefit of the maintenance allowed those users to avoid needing to purchase a Vista computer during the same time that many other people felt forced to do so. Some clients continue to have Windows XP systems maintained by us that perform as well or even better than some people with Vista or Windows 7 computers.

At first blush the cost of a new computer may seem less expensive than regular maintenance. Granted, the cost of computers has dropped quite a bit over the years. However getting a new computer has more costs and hassles than people realize at first. Many times people purchasing replacement computers don’t realize the full extent of the cost until they are finally done with the move. The apparent lower cost of computers is attractive but if you consider the likely need to purchase upgraded software, new printer/scanner and other accessories, transferring of your data so everything works like you desire it to work, securing the computer properly, removing undesirable software that comes with the new computer … well the costs can become significant. To be able to safely delay such a cost and hassle by years can be very worthwhile. Plus – even a new computer should still receive regular maintenance to maintain security, performance and stability. In fact, most ‘new’ computers come with software that already requires updating immediately after purchase!

Many people don’t realize how many essential bits of software used everyday in the normal use of their computer or ‘surfing’ the internet. They assume and depend that all the various software components are secure and up-to-date. The odds are rather high some of the software is actually out of date, contains known security issues and an update is actually available to fix those issues! Over the years software vendors have gotten better at automatically notifying users of updates but there is still a lot of software out there that require manual updates.

Malware criminals also have very convincing tricks to try and get you to install unnecessary software on your computer. A computer professional is much more likely to be familiar with recognizing malware trying to install itself on your system (vs a legitimate software vendor update) or recognize malware already on your system.

If you would like learn more about regular planned maintenance options and manged services options that Ingalls Computer Services can provide please give us a call or email!

About David Ingalls

Chief computer guru at DavidIngallsOnline.com and Ingalls Computer Services (ingallscomputerservices.com).
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