If your computer has room for it, you can help keep some of the dust from getting too far inside the machine by placing a mesh filter behind the faceplate. The idea being to filter out the larger particles without reducing airflow by any tangible amount. If you can't find a suitable mesh filter, improvise and using some mesh from an old screen door, or even a swatch of old pantyhose. When the filter gets clogged up with dust and crud, just remove it, clean it, and reinstall it. Some things to note: • The closer your machine is to the floor, the more dust and debris it is likely to pick up. Because the average adult is somewhere between 5 and 6 feet tall, we don't see the dust we kick up as we walk around, which tends to hover about a foot or so off the ground. • It seems that carpeted areas are worse for dust, not to mention static in during the dry months of the year which is a hazard to PCs for other reasons. • If you have pets that shed, like cats, dogs etc., expect to clean out your PC more often than people who don't. Their hair and dander gets sucked up and create hair balls inside the front of your machine - much like the computer pictured on the left. • If you smoke around your computer, good luck with that. I find the sticky yellow residue left behind on computers by smokers is much harder to deal with than any amount of dust or animal hair. It's simply gross. Not to mention is tends to cause fans to seize up and stop working - which leads to overheating and eventually, component failure.
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computers suck... No, seriously, they really do. |
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Smoking around PCs
It's too bad the customer whose computer died recently didn't leave it to be recycled because photos of the ribbons alone would have illustrated how smoke does alter the inside of PCs.
If you all can imagine the regular light gray ribbons inside a computer case as being about the same colour of this comment area (minus the white typing space), and then imagine ribbons that are a yellow tartar colour, and you will understand.
And if that visual still isn't enough, you are the kind of tactile person who needs to feel what tar from cigarettes on computer components feels like to really get it. Imagine a film of icky but not quite sticky residue that feels as dirty as it really is, and you're half way there. At least when you have smoke in your furniture, you can wipe off or air it out, but with computers, it stays there for the life itself. Which, if you're a two pack a day smoker, surely won't be for as long as that of a machine a non-smoker owns and enjoys.
Yet another cost-effective reason to give up the ciggies! The customer I'm talking about now has to replace the gaming level machine, at a pretty penny because his motherboard is no longer manufactured and all of the components that work with it are useless to any new machine he gets given the age and technology changes in the last two years. He wasn't happy to get that news. I'm sure a lot of people don't plan for their machines to just up and die like his did because, if you're like him, you probably can't afford a new machine, and yet you can't live without the one you have.
Like you car, take care of your computer and what goes into it. Take it in for regular maintenance if you're not comfortable doing it yourself. A bit of money here and there doesn't add up to as much as a whole new machine -- even with today's bottoming out computer prices. I'm sure most of us spend money on dry cleaning and coffee daily, so why not a few bucks on your PC every 4-6 months?