Dust sneaks its way into Laptops

Dust is a forgotten enemy when it comes to computer maintenance!

No matter what you do (unless you have a high tech lab) you’ll end up with dust all over any room and it gets attracted to computers in two different ways:

1. Static from the monitor attracts it with magnetism
2. Computer fans need to suck in air constantly and dust is always floating around

Why does dust slow a laptop down?

It coats the fans used for cooling the hot components down and they become less effective as air doesn’t flow around the heat sinks as much.  It’s like the hottest parts of your computer are wearing a furry coat!

If anything gets too hot internally in laptops the whole system has to slow itself down using less power (and generating less heat).

If you took the time to take apart the laptop then you can easily remove all of the dust with a soft paper towel or cotton bud, you may want a professional to do this if you are unsure or worried about taking your laptop apart!  It shouldn’t cost more than £5 ($8) so don’t let a computer technician rip you off.

An added bonus of removing the dust on fans/heat-sinks is that the fans can run at a much slower speed using less power and more importantly make a lot less annoying whirring noise.

A hot room or direct sunlight will slow the inner working of laptops down

Did you know that NASA scientists put some of thier computers in liquid nitrogen so they can run them uber-fast?!

The cooler a computer is, the better it runs.  A laptop already gets mightily hot inside with all it’s power hungry components, these get cooled by lots of little fans and air racks called “heat sinks”.  If the air being drawn into the laptop is already hot then it’s not going to work half as good is it?

If a laptop gets too hot then it starts using less power to product less heat from the electricity; this unfortunately means a big slow down for all programs and operations.

Get your laptop out of direct sunlight and keep it in a well ventilated, cool room.

If you cannot achieve this environment then one option is sticking a big fan just above the laptop.  Make sure you don’t point the fan directly at the laptop or you may ruin the flow of air inside, we just want the wasted hot vented air to be blown away.