Letter to the Editor: Preventing computer meltdowns
I was compelled to write this, especially after witnessing the hard drives crashing intermittently on machines and students getting upset about it. When I was in college, and still now, my biggest fear in terms of technology was losing my important documents, music and pictures I’d accumulated by traveling all over the country. I think 99 percent of the student body of any given college will agree with me on that. We have come a long way in usage of technology that it is not even funny anymore to think of a life without a computer or without a cell phone that doesn’t have text and camera capability. As that technology has made us lazier, I beg to provide some solutions to the basic dilemmas of technology.
If your work is really important, please — I have to be polite — buy an external hard drive and back it up, and if you think you just do not have the money to invest in that, buy CD-RW’s and burn your pictures and important documents on to a CD-ROM. Not a hard thing to do, in my personal opinion, especially if you truly care about all that information stored in the computer that (mark my words!) does have the capability to crash any day, hour or minute.
DO NOT download unsolicited software, especially if you are unaware of its purpose. Software like Lime Wire, BearShare or other P2P are quite capable of creating havoc on your computer.
DO have an anti-virus activated on your machine and RUN the anti-virus periodically to make sure the computer is not infected.
DO install anti-spyware and anti-adware on your machine. Google stock prices are high because it happens to be a really good search engine. Look them up!
DO NOT install games that take up half of your hard-drive space. Your laptop is meant for portable computing, meaning that you can take your laptop anywhere you want and work on your papers and other work and college-related stuff and such. Installing games that take too much memory or hard-drive space does have the capacity to slow your computer down.
DO defragment your machine periodically. People reading this article who have had experience working/dealing with Windows 98 or 2000 will tell you how important defragging the computer is. If you need help with that, reach for the phone and call the Help Desk at ext. 3000.
These happen to be some of the basic to-dos to keep your computer, PCs particularly, running healthy and wise and perhaps not leave your side when you really want it to work. If you need help, your answer is a call away.
“Greetings, this is the OIT Help Desk, how may I help you?”
— Sukhi Bedi
Help Desk Specialist
