Maintenance for your mac
Mac Maintenance- How To
Keeping your Mac in pristine condition should be a priority, after all we all want to get the most out of our Mac and want it to last a long time. Below are some things you can do to ensure you get the most out of your Mac.
Keeping Your Hard drive Healthy
Use Apple’s Disk Utility or a third-party program to verify your disk directory. Make sure the disk hardware is healthy too by looking at the SMART status at the bottom of the Disk Utility window. It should say OK. If it says Fail, backup your disk immediately and replace the drive.
Cleaning the exterior of your Mac
Use a damp cloth to wipe exterior; use compressed air or an anti-static vacuum to remove dust from keyboard and vents. If your LCD display is dirty, use a micro cloth.
If your screen is really dirty DON’T USE WINDEX OR PAPER TOWELS this can damage your screen. You can either specialized cleans from the store or make your own. To make your own solution, use one part isopropyl alcohol and one part distilled water. DISTILLED WATER is not the same as tap water.
Use the following steps to clean your Mac
- Turn off your laptop.
- Have your cleaning solution made in a spray bottle
- Use a clean, soft, lint-free micro-cloth; paper products or rough fabrics can scratch your screen.
- Spray your cleaning solution on the cloth, not the screen; this keeps the liquid from dripping into the laptop.
- Place a towel or another soft fabric on a flat table, and then lay the back of your laptop’s screen on the fabric, holding the laptop’s body up with one hand. With the other hand, use the dampened cloth to wipe your laptop screen, gently, in a circular motion. This keeps the screen stationary and reduces the risk that you’ll damage it during cleaning. Don’t worry about absorbing all the liquid; small streaks should evaporate on their own.
Keys to a clean keyboard
The keyboard is the grimiest part of any computer. Unfortunately, it’s also the most difficult part of a computer to clean; there are just so many places for dirt, dust, and hair to hide. Although it’s impossible to get a laptop keyboard as clean as it was when it was new, there are a couple of things you can do to freshen it up.
First, you can get a good deal of the crud out of a keyboard by using compressed air; Hold the can’s nozzle close to the keyboard surface and then blow air across the keyboard, along the horizontal spaces between rows of keys. Be sure to keep the can upright; tilting it risks expelling the can’s contents in liquid form.
Second, you can wipe down the surfaces of your keys with a soft cloth and a solution like the one you used to clean your screen; again, dampen the cloth, not the keys. Although it’s best to do this when your laptop is turned off.
Clean your hard drive space
Delete files (especially unwanted programs, music, and movies) that you no longer use.
Check Inside of Mac
Open your Mac Pro or older Mac tower and make sure there’s not a bunch of dust inside. Use compressed air or an anti-static vacuum to remove.
Weed Login Items
Go to the Accounts preferences pane, select your user account, and then click on the Login Items tab. See anything you don’t want or need? Delete it.
Check for New Software
Set Software Update (Apple Menu: Software Update) to automatically check for Apple updates weekly. Check for third-party software updates.
Relaunch Web Browsers
Does your Mac seem slow? Relaunch your browsers. However, if you’re shutting your Mac down each night or restarting your Mac today you don’t need to worry about this.
Restart Mac
Avoid performance problems by doing this once a week or by shutting down your Mac each night. (You can instead use the Energy Saver preference pane to schedule automatic shutdowns and startups.)
Empty Trash
Get rid of hard drive cluttering data by control-clicking on the Trash in the Dock and choosing Empty Trash
There you have it, simple tricks to keep you Mac running smoothly.
Until Next time,
Megabite
Categorised in: Technology Information
This post was written by Karen
