Summer Tips 2017 by Fixingfox

Summer is here and it is going to be hot and sweaty under the summer sun here in Pittsford, NY. Luckily, this year the technicians here at Fixingfox have put together a quick tips to be proactive and avoid keeping your computer at risk during the summer.

1. Don’t Leave Your Computer in Hot Locations

Your computer has many sensors, delicate parts such as your processor, motherboard, and they all need to be kept at relatively cool temperatures. In laptop computers, components are even more delicate as the cables, ribbons are more compact in design and ventilation is even more crucial to keep the laptop and it’s lithium ion battery, and LCD screen/touchscreen and sensors cool. We can’t stress this enough but simply put, don’t leave your computer in hot locations and under the direct sunlight where temperatures can get extreme and will put the computer in a compromising environment.

2. Unplug and Power Down Your Computer During Thunderstorms

The technicians here at Fixingfox highly recommend investing in a decent surge protector power outlet to connect your devices to. The purpose of the surge protector is to avoid voltage spikes that usually occur during lightning/thunderstorms or just before an electrical fuse shorts. What a lot of people don’t know is that surge protectors are not 100% guaranteed to protect your devices as there is still a chance that it could malfunction and short out the power supply unit and motherboard on your computer. For this reason, we recommend to save whatever file/document you were working on, promptly shut down the computer and unplug it from the socket until the storm passes.

Follow the 3 Rules for a Laptop Computer

Our technicians have seen so many numerous damaged or malfunctioning laptops that we have came up with the 3 Rules for our customers to follow in order to best avoid majority of mishaps in the future.

Rule 1 – Don’t drop it.

Rule 2 – Don’t Spill on it.

Rule 3 – Be careful who you let use your computer.

Don’t Drop It.

There have been many technological advances that have disrupted traditional business models and have changed our lives via application, faster and more efficient processors and such. However, none will ever defy gravity (Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation). When your laptop drops, it is falling at the rate of 9.807 M/S2 which may not seem like a lot, but it is more than enough to cause serious damage. For example, the repair technicians at Fixingfox have noticed that when customers drop their laptop, many times the force of the drop can cause a wide range of computer damage such as the screen to shatter, DC jack power outlet damage, hard drive failure, dent to the uni-body frame of your apple macbook, sensors to fail, cause cooling systems to malfunction and more.

So, please don’t put your computer in a compromising spot where it can fall off and drop. Don’t leave it near the edge of the bed, don’t have it on the edge of the sofa, don’t leave the power cord in place where you can trip over it and cause the computer to drop and so on. Just have it at a good dedicated location and when you are done using your laptop computer, store it away in a safe location.

Don’t Spill On It

So with the hot warm weather during summer everybody will be hydrating and grabbing refreshing drinks.
Please do your best this summer to not spill any liquids on to it. We see a lot of computer setups in social gatherings where people actually bring their laptop to bar-b-ques and play their music from it. We strongly advise against this approach for playing music but rather suggest that you should invest in a quality Bluetooth speaker so that you can stream your music from a safe distance and not put your computer in a compromising position.

Be Careful Who You Let Use Your Computer

For one moment, think about all the data (family photos, music library collection, spreadsheets, documents, and costly programs) that are on your computer. Not to mention the use of your computer to access sensitive financial and medical websites and documents. Now to put things in perspective, there is an ever evolving malware, spyware, ransomware and computer viruses that seek to exploit careless and negligent users all over the world. This summer we advise you to always keep your computer away from guests (plus we advise to always have a login password as well) so that at social gatherings you can have a peace of mind that your computer and its valuable data are not in a compromising position.

Last thing any computer owner wants to experience is that they gave permission to a friend to check their email only to find out that their friend opened a sketchy email attachment that gave remote access and now the computer keeps getting pop up messages with links to sites demanding paypal payments. Or in other cases, where a computer was loaned to a friend only for it to be returned with a sticky keyboard and soda residue on the case of the laptop computer. Nowadays, majority of people have smartphones and are able to check their emails, facebook and social media accounts on their smartphones.

Lastly, if you do encounter any computer related problems please contact Fixingfox or walk in to our repair facility located at 5 Monroe Avenue in the Village of Pittsford. Walk ins are always welcome but we encourage customers to call us in advance as the shop tends to get busy form time to time.

Fixingfox provides computer repair services for desktop and laptop computers. Fixingfox repairs Apple Mac computers such as Mac Pro, iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro, Mac Mini as well as screen repair services for Apple iPhone and Apple iPad.

Fixingfox provides repair services for PC laptop and desktop computer using Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10

For More information visit Fixingfox or call us at (585) 473-7035