Charleston Power Breakfast April 9, 2009 Booklet 

“50 Ideas to Seize Opportunity in a Down Economy”
Ingrid Tugwell spoke on ideas to save money with technology

The most significant was maintaining your equipment and putting a preventative maintenance schedule in place.  Millions of dollars each year is lost due to the lack of preventative maintenance and keeping the internal and external components clean.  This applies to all electronics.

All that is required is a screwdriver (some pc’s have snap locks now on the cases, so no screwdriver required), compressed air, cotton swabs, rubbing alcohol, anti-static cloths or paper towels and water.

Inside the case touch as little as possible.  Grab your compressed air and blow air around the components, into the back of the fan, floppy disks, cd and dvd drives as well as blowing off all internal peripherals.

Outside the case you can run a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol around all of the openings on the back of the case.

Keyboard can be turned upside down and gently shaken to get rid of debris collected.  Do this monthly.

Mouse can be cleaned by rubbing with paper towel and rubbing alcohol. 

Monitor cleaning requires a lint free cloth.  Do not spray any liquids directly on the monitor (particularly if a CRT).  Special cleaner is made for lcds.

Maintaining what you have can increase the life cycle by 12-18 months and save you hundreds of dollars.