Cleaning Your Beloved Dell Laptop
We all want our laptops to last for a long time. For a laptop to last a long time, we need to carry out periodic maintenance such as cleaning our laptops. Let’s face it, the portable laptop is used outdoors for most of the time. Otherwise, we would have opted for a desktop since a desktop is cheaper and more powerful for the same amount of money spent. Hence, in today’s article, we are going to look into three aspects of a laptop that often gets dirty and how to clean them properly. Always remember, when performing any sort of cleaning, it is always a good practice to shut down your laptop and disconnect the wall socket for safety reason.
Keyboard
Dust is the primary enemy of any laptop keyboard. Dell laptop keyboard is no exception. It is complicated to clean a laptop keyboard. A laptop keyboard is not the same as a regular desktop keyboard. You cannot pry open the keys on a laptop to clean them without a special prying tool. Even when you have the tool, prying open a laptop keyboard key can often lead to a damaged rubber membrane. Doing so can result in a damaged keyboard, that will cost you money in a repair shop.
To properly clean a laptop keyboard, you would want to get a can of compressed air and spray the can evenly underneath the keyboard keys to brush off dust underneath your laptop keyboard. Next, you can use a damp microfibre cloth to wipe off the dirt from the surface of the keys. Make sure you are not using a wet cloth as it can leave traces of water that can sip through from the key to the motherboard. You wouldn’t want to end up with a liquid damaged motherboard, would you? This could lead to expensive repairs at a local dell repair shop.
Laptop Screen
This probably gets the dirt for most of the time, especially when you’re working outdoor most of the time. Speckles of dust in the air love to settle on your screen. This is probably the main culprit of why your screen is dirty, but there’s a second factor that contributes to a dirty screen – saliva. Yup, you didn’t hear it wrong, it’s our saliva. When you speak in front of your laptop during a presentation or brainstorming session, you release a small amount of saliva that will end up on the screen. These salivae are so small that they are invisible to your naked eye.
If you have a touchscreen laptop, this gets worse. Frequent touches can leave fingerprint dirt and smear on your screen. When combined with the salivae and dirt, it can contribute to a dirty screen. If you’re the type of person that does not mind these, you might want to start cleaning often as a dirty screen can lead to damaged screen coating. When the coating gets damaged, you could possibly end up with permanent damage on your display that requires a visit to a local dell repair shop for an LCD replacement.
Fortunately, cleaning an LCD is not hard. There are many ready-made LCD screen solution for as cheap as SGD 2-5 at a local Daiso shop, that comes with the cleaning liquid solution and a microfiber cloth. All you need to do is apply the solution to the microfibre cloth and wipe your screen. Make sure that your laptop is switched off and disconnected from the power wall socket. You do not want to risk getting electrocuted when cleaning the screen.
Conclusion
Performing the two cleaning maintenance steps can extend your laptop life. However, these are just external maintenance that can be done yourself. From time to time, especially every 2 years, you should consider sending in your laptop to a professional dell repair shop for internal maintenance. Internal maintenance involves cleaning the fan from dust and reapplying thermal paste to the CPU. These preventive measures can then extend your laptop life, making your laptop a reliable companion for your work.