Clean Power, Healthy Climate for PCs

The following are the steps you need to take to provide basic protection to your PC from power and weather changes. Under normal conditions, these steps are all you need to take, to ensure that your investment on the PC is safe.

Tip	Description
Make sure your Desktop or Notebook PC is placed correctly, so that it is subject to least-possible damage. The following are silent PC killers! High Heat Severe Cold High Relative Humidity Dust	Dust, Heat, Cold, Moisture, Hard physical knocks… these are all bad for Desktops as well as Notebook PCs. Therefore; Do not run PCs in ambient temperatures above 45 Degrees Celsius. Your PC's components generate a considerable amount of heat. This heat cannot be expelled properly if the ambient temperature is high and would therefore lead to component breakdowns Do not run your PCs in ambient temperatures below 0 Degrees Celsius. Your PC contains Printed Circuit Boards, which are not designed to run at very cold temperatures. Component failures would again result if you attempt to run your PC in very cold climates Do not run PCs in places where the Relative Humidity is 95% or above. Water Vapor causes degradation of the Processors and other electronic components of your PC, including the Hard Disk, Memory and CD/ DVD-ROM Drives. If you do not pay heed to this, you could end up with a crashed PC due to failed components. In case you use Desert Coolers to bring down the ambient temperature in hot and dry climates (such as in North India), make sure that the blast of water vapor-laden air is never directed straight at your PC Protect your PC from dust. Dust is a silent villain: it strikes suddenly, leaving you with no clue as to what could have gone wrong with your PC! Thankfully, a Desktop PC can sometimes be revived by opening its cabinet and blowing the dust away with a vacuum cleaner or dry cloth. Our advise though is, "Don't push your luck too far!" Depending on just how dusty your location is, design a dusting schedule for your PC and stick meticulously to it
Make sure your home/ office has Earthed Power Supply: this is a sudden PC killer!	Earthing is a standard practice followed for protecting your electric and electronic equipment from lightning, short-circuits and other faults in your wiring. While most residences and offices are earthed, today, it is worth your while to check whether your home and office are earthed properly - it would do not just your PC, but all your electric and electronic equipment a world of good! Usually, bare Copper or Aluminum cable is used to earth the power supply. It is not sufficient that your home or office is earthed properly alone - you need to use 3-Pin Plugs in 3-Pin Sockets too. Even if you have correctly earthed the power supply, using a 2-Pin Plug or a 2-Pin Socket would not protect your equipment, it would have the same effect as no earthing at all! In the case of Notebooks too, it is suggested that a 3-Pin Plug be used with the Adapter. Some Notebook manufacturers supply a 2-Pin Adapter. If that is the case, try to get yourself a 3-Pin Adapter.
Make sure the Power Supply to your Desktop is good. The following slowly strangle the life of your PC! Black-outs Brown-outs Surges Spikes Prolonged Low-Voltage Power Waveform of the Power Supply Frequency of the Power Supply	Black-outs (no power), Brown-outs (low-voltage power), Surges (prolonged high-voltage power), Spikes (sudden and temporary bursts of high-voltage power) and sudden and temporary bursts of low-voltage power – these will slowly snuff out the life of your PC. Even if it does not crash your PC, it will still reduce the life of its components. So if the power to your PC isn’t clean, you need to put in a good UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) For a Desktop PC, we recommended that the UPS should have a 600 VA rating, with the Output Voltage matching the standard domestic supply voltage and frequency norms of your country. Notebooks are a lot less susceptible to Power Supply woes, since they run off a battery. The correct way to charge & discharge a Notebook’s battery is discussed right after this Table. You also need to ensure that the supply to your PC is a Sine Wave DC Supply, at the frequency specified by your country's Electricity department. Anything that is not a Sine Wave power supply will slowly degrade the life of your PC's components. Check out the Sine Wave kind of Electric Supply at the end of this page. Again, the frequency of your power supply should match the frequency for which your Computer's power supply is designed. Both higher as well as lower frequencies will slowly strangle your PC. Certain countries have a 50 Hertz (Hz) power supply, whereas others have standardized on 60 Hz.
Do not place your Notebook on top of a pillow or other soft surfaces, while working on it. Similarly, leave sufficient space between the back of your Desktop and the wall.	Notebooks are designed so that there are ventilation slits to the sides and back. This is so that its tiny fan may expel the hot air from inside it. If you place your Notebook on top of a soft surface like a pillow, you are cutting off its ventilation, causing your Notebook to overheat! Desktops usually have their vents at the back. Therefore, ensure that you leave at least 12 inches space between the back of your Desktop and the wall, so that the Desktop's fan may expel the heated air from inside the cabinet.
Keep an eye out for any unusual behavior/ sounds from your PC. When you notice anything unusual, study the symptoms and consult an expert, if the symptom does not go away	There are many varied reasons for unusual PC behavior, ranging from difficulty in reading a particular CD or DVD to loose cables/ cards inside the Desktop Cabinet. Just as you need to clearly convey the symptoms of a disease to even the best physician, you need to convey the symptoms of your 'PC's disease' to the PC technician - do not leave it to his observation skills! Its Your PC, You need it to be functioning normally much more than the technician does!

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Best Practices in charging and discharging Notebooks

One of the main attractions of a Notebook is the complete mobility it gives the user. So much so, that you may not need wires for connecting to the Internet (if you have built-in Wi-Fi) and you can work on the Notebook without the need to be plugged into an electric socket. For many users - both corporate as well as home users, these advantages overrule the fact that a similarly-configured Desktop would cost much less than a Notebook.

If you prefer a Notebook over a Desktop, you ought to be interested in the best practices for ensuring that it's battery lasts the full course - a replacement battery costs a pretty packet! Today's Notebooks come with Lithium-Ion Rechargeable Batteries, while older Notebooks came with the Nickel-Cadmium Rechargeable ones. Whatever be the technology behind your Notebook's battery, you should be aware that it is designed for a certain number of charge-discharge cycles - usually about 5,000 cycles. Hence if you charge-discharge your Notebook twice daily, that works out to a little less than 7 years. Sounds good?? Not quite - for, around the second year of the Notebook Battery's life, its capacity to charge diminishes. You would therefore be forced to charge-discharge more than twice daily.

In real life, an entry-level Notebook's battery therefore lasts no more than 3 years, even when it is used very, very carefully. Now, what you need to do, right from Day - 1, is to ensure that you use each charge-discharge cycle to the maximum. In other words, charge the battery to 100%, then switch off the power supply - let the battery drain off as much as possible (while you work, of course!!). Your Notebook will go into Hibernation when the charge in its battery goes down to your pre-set level. When your Notebook goes into hibernation, you must of course plug it back into the mains and let it charge up to 100% again. Repeating this process ensures that you squeeze maximum life from your Notebook's battery. It is absolutely important that you carry out five charge-discharge cycles at least, when your first use a new Notebook battery - either on a brand-new Notebook or an old one.

Naturally, the 'ideal' charge-discharge process cannot always be followed: there will be days when you need to quickly charge and rush off for an important presentation, before your Notebook is 100% charged. That's ok - it won't kill your Notebook! :) Even if you are able to do one charge-discharge cycle every week once you have begun using the new battery, that would be just fine.

PCPower

While the Ideal Usage graph (in Dark line) has charged and discharged the Battery 3 times each above, the Non-Ideal Usage graph (in Dark Red line) shows that the Notebook has been charged and discharged 6 times during the same period. Hence, the user adopting the 'Not Ideal' way would only get about half the life that the 'Ideal' user gets from his Notebook battery!

Now, this is of course the ideal way for prolonging your Notebook's Battery life. You would obviously not be able to let it drain off completely or let it hibernate each time it is due for charging - you could be in the midst of a file download, in the midst of important work, you could be going off to a client to make a big presentation, where it would just not do to have to charge your battery...

The recommended practice is therefore to let your Notebook's Battery drain off until it hibernates, at about once a week. On other days, you may begin charging it before it drops down to hibernation levels.

SineWave

The Sine Waveform is shown alongside in Black, while the Square Waveform is shown in Red.

The waveform shown alongside in Black is relished by your PC, while the Red waveform is Slow Poison!