I get asked this too often. I guess many people know how to take care of their cars, wash and wax, rotate tires, change oil, etc. Well, with laptops it’s remotely similar. There is not much to change, more so there are few preventative tips.

What not to do

By now, if you have a laptop you know not to spill stuff on it, right? Well, same goes for eating above it. It wont hurt the laptop, but typing with crumbs underneath the keys is no fun.

Performance and longevity tips

First of all, do not bump, shake or rapidly move your laptop. Why? Most of you have a regular HDD in your laptop. HDD spins and uses an arm, imagine vinyl players, that arm can get damaged, knock the sensors out so the geometry is wrong (had a case like that), or just plain corrupt data.

Heat

Meaning, do not put your laptop in your lap or on covers of your bed!!!! This is the easiest way how to say goodbye to your laptop in a matter of few months, if that.

What’s the solution for this?

Actually, it is easy and cheap! Laptop cooler is the answer. Refer to the picture bellow. What it is is a piece of plastic with 1 or up to 3 fans in it. Blows cool air into your laptop’s air intake, so the CPU gets cooler faster, also blows air onto other parts, which helps tremendously.

Screen cleaning.

How to clean the screen? Buy one of the kits for LCD screens, or just get distilled water and really good microfiber towel. Do not use paper towels or swiffer! You should not spray or use any chemicals on the screen because they have the glossy film on it, which is very sensitive to chemicals.

General Cleaning

Track pad, what do I use? Diluted rubbing alcohol or some degreaser, which is also diluted, gently apply with microfiber cloth and wipe off. You will see a huge difference with your track pad. For tight spots use toothpicks and Q-Tips, they work great.

Protection

How do I make my laptop protected and shiny? Try keyboard covers, some can get used to it, some can’t. Just google it or check out ebay. I use car wax or sealant on my laptop, makes it shiny, deep gloss, and bit more protected. I also have neoprene case, which except for the seams is water proof, I put that in my bag when I travel. The case is also squishy, so it kind of protects the little bumps from damaging the laptop.

Other tips:

1. If you use laptop once a week or so, take out the battery, it will last longer.
2. Try to completely discharge your battery as often as you can, somewhere around once every few days, even once a week.
3. Get a spare charging cable/cord if you use laptop frequently or it is your only computer. Why? Majority of cords get damaged within a year, either they suck or you damage them. Ebay has plenty of cheap ones for around 12 to 20 bucks. Imagine no power cord, or paying $80 for a new one. Besides, if you like to be in more than one place around the house, it’s nice not to drag the cord around.
4. Don’t be in/near/around dusty areas as the heatsink will get clogged, and your laptop will bake itself.
5. If you have more, post comments

There you have it, follow these suggestions and your laptop will last lot longer.

What I mean by that? Finally, some high up CEOs of big cellphone companies have decided to standardize phone chargers. I hope that they will wind up using Micro USB, since it is useful in being able to connect and charge phone into my computer or laptop at the same time. With USB 3.0 released the transfer speeds will be very fast, easily above 50 MB, basically limited by the device not the technology.

Apple has decided not to wait that long to release iPad number 2. The Ipad 2 release date seems to be between

February up to June. Who knows when the iPad 2 release date will be, but one is for certain, I can`t wait because I am going to grab one. I was going to wait for Android tablets, but since Apple is so far ahead with their technology, I am not going to suffer with less able devices. Sadly, not knowing when the iPad 2 release date is, I might even consider, if something cheaper and similar quality comes out to test it. I hope that before iPad 2 release date, there will be a official list of upgrades, the most important one so far would be a USB port. Given the earliest iPad 2 release date is in February, there are no confirmed speculations about the USB port.

Ipad 2 release will also bring many differences between the first iPad and iPad2.
For example iPad 2 has only 7″ screen, but the original iPad has almost 10″ screen.
Ipad 2 will have a better and clearer resolution.
Ipad 2 will have a video camera and similar to Apple Face Time app.
Ipad 2 will also have the same functions as the first iPad.
The dimensions, other than the display size, have not yet been released, nor the official iPad 2 release date.
However, Apple will have between 400,000 to 600,000 units on the iPad 2 release date ready for the shoppers. The price on the iPad 2 release date was not released yet, let`s hope for low $400 since the screen is smaller, but honestly I doubt that. The first iPad was sold at starting at $499

There are also rumors that iPad 2 will have a camera

iPad2 Release date is between February and June 2011,

Honestly I have been looking for something to put in my friends computer, a typical budget build, and I found a GTS450 from EVGA for some nice amount of 68 after mail-in-rebate. That was a great buy just because, the cheapest possible, not counting black Friday,

gts460 was around 130 after rebates. I got the deal for almost half the price next best up. This is just a short post, but an advice for all, get gts 450 for now and see how the new series from NVIDIA and ATI affect the market. Also, don` forget to beef up your ram, some places are around $10 bucks per gig of ddr3 1600, name brads of course.

Merry Christmas, enjoy the snow!

sleek doctor

Designers Marc Salagnac, Ludovic Diallo and Cédric Dervillier designed this sleek looking gadget to organize your meds, keep up with your appointments and hold the whole family health records, even update them.

Aperture: Volume-Aware Shower Head

Do you want to find out while taking a shower the water temperature, water flow, and water consumption?

Well, this shower head does all that.

vivace

The Vivace has everything a band would use, except designed for one person.

Designed by Young-Shin Lee & Hae-Jin Jung.

Dell XCS

Well, Dell has been certainly busy with this modular design, there is no reason to tuckaway your PC but to make it a center point.

see through iPhone

Even though I am not a big fan of Apple, the design looks very cool.

Designed by Robert Davis

EyeMove PC

EyeMove PC combines touchscreen keyboard with projector, great way to stay mobile, and still enjoy big screen wherever you go.