Bad Habits While Using a Laptop

[fasihxkhatib]

What are the bad habits while using a laptop that can cause short term as well as long term damage to it?
AND
is using it for extensive hours a part of it? (I use my laptop for like 7 hours in a stretch. I charge the battery to 100% and then discharge it to 20% and charge again. I also use a pad for cooling)

Thanks.

 

[szaboaz]

If you don't drop it, don't spill fluid into it, and you're careful with the connectors (use as little force as possible to join usb and other plugs, power cord doesn't get stressed), I'm sure it will be a nice and fruitful friendship.

Long hours won't hurt it, in my experience. They say that it's rather the startup that takes a toll on electronic devices. Still, if I don't use mine for half an hour, I tend to send it to hibernation. I like hibernation, because it doesn't use electricity when off, and it's faster, and more efficient than a normal startup. And I get to see the very same screen I left it.

If you want a long term advice: open/close your monitor panel (lid) as *rarely* as possible. The hinges tend to get hardened over time, to the point that they break (I've seen this with Dell laptops, and my 4 year old Asus laptop also developed this symptom in the last half year.)

 

[fasihxkhatib]

and how to find out of a hard drive has bad sectors?
How to correct them?

 

[Chainzsaw]

Bad Habits:

Playing your laptop on your lap (not good) as the heat can hurt your sensitive bits (or is that bytes, lol).

Moving it around while it's on (could cause your HDD to die).

Keeping it in direct sunlight - not a good idea. Can warp the plastic if it has any.

Never eat around the laptop - you might get crumbs in the keyboard making some of the keys unusable until you clean them out.

Constantly charging /discharging (nearly completely) causes your battery to wear out quicker.

Hmm what else? It's a good idea to keep a back up of your important files, especially on a laptop - if you consider your data worthwhile.

 

[szaboaz]

If you run Windows 7:
http/windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors

You can't correct a bad sector. It gets marked as bad, and the system won't try to write on it anymore. Unfortunately the data that was previously on the bad sector is lost, which means file corruption.

If your drive gets bad sectors, create a backup of your valuable files to another drive or other data medium as soon as you can, because if a drive gets some bad sectors, the chance to get more is high. If it's still under warranty, have it changed for an error-free one.

 

[AntiZig]

Hi,
to add to very good info already above, the real wear to electronics that happens over long term is the following - dust pollution, overheating issues due to dust, and then thermal wear. Dust on its own, will interfere with cooling which can lean to overheating if neglected. Dust can also cause problems for your optical drive. Thermal wear (not thermal damage from overheating) is from turning computer on/off - basically your CPU/mobo/ram/gpu going from cold to working temperature causes them to expand/contract imposing stress, which overtime can lead to various problems.

I will not agree regarding the hinges, the technology for them has come a long way and they are the most sturdiest parts of your laptop. What typically breaks is the plastic around the hinges that houses them. The hinges are metal, they can take a beating, the plastic unfortunately in a lot of cases cannot.

Scan disk will identify bad sectors on the HDD, during normal operation windows and SMART should be able to identify bad sectors and mark them if they are encountered during normal operation. You cannot correct them, bad sector means a physical defect on the disk. All your HDD is able to do is avoid writing data to those bad sectors.

Another few tips,
if you use your laptop on your legs, get a cooling pad to separate the laptop from your body (so laptop doesn't absorb heat from your legs). It's not as much an issue when on a desk. As mentioned before, make sure there's no dust hanging out of your vents, if there is, you're overdue for dust cleaning. If your laptop typically doesn't leave your desk except for once in 3 months to go to a quaterly meeting or something, at least once a month, lift it up from it's resting place and check the vents.

Make sure that the air vents are not being blocked/covered by anything, I'd even go as far as make sure you have 1/2" - 1" clear space outside the vent so there's sufficient volume for air to pass through.

Depending on where you live, typically you will know this already, but if power surges are common in your area, don't leave your computer on overnight and make sure to plug only through surge protector.

That's about it, the rest is general electronics common sense (like don't let animals pounce on your laptop should be a no brainer I hope)

 

[szaboaz]

Playing your laptop on your lap (not good) as the heat can hurt your sensitive bits (or is that bytes, lol).
.

Either way, it's based on a binary system.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Either way, it's based on a binary system.

Yes, your 0 and 1 lol.

 

[szaboaz]

Moving it around while it's on (could cause your HDD to die).

A little story from the past. My 4 years old laptop originally came with 512 MB memory, which I eventually changed to 2GB. Little did I know, that Windows had a known (well not by me) bug which resulted that the machine woke up from hibernation after a while, if the memory was 2 GB. Unfortuantely, it happened while I was travelling, and the laptop was in my laptop bag. The machine survived after all (though it certainly didn't help the battery, I guess), and a simple Windows KB fix took care of the problem. Still... thanks, MS...

 

[fasihxkhatib]

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