About Technology

By Scott Jackson

You've just made the best computer buy that you have done in a long time. A real screaming hot system with plenty of ram and the new Vista operating system is something you have been dreaming of for a while. You begin exploring your system to find all the features this new baby has. Fast speeds, new graphics, new programs, widgets and tons of web surfing power are what you got in your new system. You feel like you just got a Ferrari. But remember, even those sports cars need tune-ups and maintenance every once in a while.

Web apps leave little cookies, adware, spyware and other bits of code. When you install and uninstall programs they leave parts of themselves on the computer, in the registry and the operating system folders. So you have to tune up your new system every once in a while and begin performing regular maintenance after you get your best computer buy.

Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Clean out the history and internet cache. This will free up valuable space on the hard drive and you browser will run smoother.

2. Defrag the system on a regular basis. Defragging puts all the files in a uniform order. It takes a while on larger hard drives but improves performance.

3. Use a registry program to clean and maintain the registry. This will remove those left over bits of code and correct active x problems and other registry quirks.

4. Scan for viruses. You should get a good virus and firewall program (many are available from very expensive to free programs) and scan on a regular basis to keep you computer running safely. You should also update the virus library quite often to keep up to protect your system.

5. Scan for adware and spyware. There are many good programs out there that will keep an eye on your system to protect you and your computer. They can rob you of computer performance and can even steal information off your system with really bad ones. You may not even know that you have them. Just visiting some sites or download some web apps will put them on your system.

You just spent a ton of cash on your best computer buy so you want it to last as long as possible. Protect and maintain your investment and it should last for a long time to come. You can set many of these safety procedures to automatically happen from your operating system and the program that you got with your computer or purchased to take care of them.

Down time due to bugs, little hard drive space and a ton of other preventable issues can cause you a ton of grief and headaches when a little preplanning and maintenance would have taken care of this.

Scott Jackson has been working and maintaining computers for over 20 years. He started with the old Comodor Vic 20 computers and has been building his own systems since. Stop by his page and give a try to a registry maintenance software he recommends. Try if for free and see if you need to have work done on your registry. To get the free scan visit: http://www.squidoo.com/maintainbestcomputerbuy - Scott believes in keeping a computer running smoothly and error free.

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