95% of the computer repairs that come to PCTech are laptop repairs:

PCTechs 4 Main Areas Problem/Failure Areas On Laptops:

Cracked, damaged, broken laptop LCD screens: Just in the last 3 months, approx 40 laptops came to PCTech for repair estimates from customers within a 20 mile radius of Augusta GA.

Reasons: Manufacture defect in LCD lid design (thin & lightweight), accidental damage, laptop mobility.

Failed Hard Drives: Hard drives in laptops I find also have a very high rate of failure. Just in the last month 15 laptops hard drives replaced. Maybe over 100 in the the year from laptops. Maybe 5 desktop hard drives replaced in the last year.

Reasons: Mobility of laptops, heat – lack of proper cooling within the tight compartment of the laptop, accidental damaged caused by user, lack of proper use & maintenance by the user. Hard drives do not like excessive HEAT, and hard drives do not like to be bumped, or dropped around. Another strike against laptops.
Anyone who owns a laptop who does not backup there important data on a regular basis, your setting yourself up for a big mess. Hard drive failure can happen at any time. Data recovery is not cheap, and is not guaranteed especially by cheap methods. Your data, your “stuff”, your work, your whole life on that hard drive can be lost. 1 in 20 clients that I ask, say they do backups. If the data that you have stored on your computer is “so important to you”,, why don’t you back it up? Any hard drive will fail at one time or another, but laptops hard drives fail much quicker than desktop systems.

Laptop Motherboard Failures: Also a very high rate of failure over desktop systems.

Reasons: Manufacture design, excessive heat due to lack of adequate cooling, lack of proper use & maintenance by the user. Use a laptop on your bed, couch or even on your laptop blocks the very small cooling vents off on the bottom of laptop, which generates more heat inside of the laptop. The #1 reason for computer hardware failure is heat, the internal hardware/electronics do not like heat,,, another strike against laptops in general.

Internal DC Power Jack Connector: The worst design, very common weak spot on Windows based laptops.

Reasons: The internal DC Power Jack Connector is a very small, very important part on the laptop, break it, and your laptop is out of action once the battery runs out. Normal use, or accidental damaged caused by one to many hard tripped over power cords, a hard yank on the power cord will eventually loosen or break the power connection internally on laptops. Resulting intermittent battery charging, nom power at all by the power adaptor at all, and a “no power on”, dead laptop. The DC Jack is repairable at approx $135, full laptop dis-asembly is required, if the DC Jack has damaged or shorted out the motherboard….. your basically in for a new laptop.

Tips To Help Maintain Prolong The Life Of Your Laptop:

Be gentle, very gentle with your laptop, the electronics and hardware inside are very sensitive and delicate.

Do not sit your laptop on the floor, or chair, or couch, for you are asking for trouble! Do not drop your laptop, do not step on, sit on, or put anything on on top of the laptop. The screen is very delicate!

When closing the laptop, close the screen lid by the middle of the lid OR by both corners. Grabbing it by one of the corners can flex, torque, twist the lid and LCD screen panel inside, breaking, cracking the screen.

Do not use your laptop on a your bed or couch. The material conforms around the laptop bottom suffocating the laptop from cooling properly.

Do not leave your laptop on overnight, remember it does not cool properly to begin with.

Purchase a USB cooling pad for your laptop. This elevates the laptop, and has a USB cooling fan which circulates cool air to the bottom of the laptop, it’s heat source.

Run a disk cleaner, defragment the hard drive periodically and keep it virus free. A virus infected, fragment hard drive has to work much harder, more work means more heat that the hard drive generates.

Do not spill anything on or close by your laptop, this will create major problems also. If you do, turn your laptop upside down, you want to get that liquid away from the inside of the laptop, and DO NOT TURN IT BACK ON. Take it in for service to have the laptop checked.

And last but not least, for your own sanity, and piece of mind, that “so important data” that you were going to back up, that you just have not got around to backing up, that you thought will be there forever and ever on your laptop……………………….. BACK YOUR IMPORTANT DATA UP today, before you regret it!

Tips When Looking For A New Laptop, If you Must:

Look for a laptop that is built sturdy, has some weight, that might take a bump or drop better then others. Do not let the light weight style, theme, the name, or the “bells & whistles” that attract you to the laptop fool you!

If the laptops are on display, and turned on, lift the laptop up, and put your hand on the bottom of the laptop. Does it feel hot just sitting there on there counter at idle speed on the underside, with nothing intensive running? While you are under there, check the cooling vents on the bottom, are they large enough to properly cool down that laptop? Run your hand over the keyboard from left to right, do you feel heat thru the keyboard area………….. if you do move on, you are not interested in that laptop.

Grab the LCD lid, is it so thin does it flexes the screen? Slowly close it by one of the corners, does the lid flex or twist a bit? If it does, move on, your not interested in that laptop either. Last Christmas I was in Walmart here in town, they had 8 laptops turned on, and on display, they were also chain lock to the counter for security. 5 of the 8 laptops they had on the display counter, turned on had cracked screens,,, I don’t think they fell off the counter, I think they cracked from customers moving or closing the lid.

And if you find the right laptop, and they offer an extended warranty, find out what it covers, and take it for the maximum length.

In general, to sum it up here, laptops are VERY delicate machines that are not designed very well to really last. IF you take very good care of it, follow regular maintenance, follow user maintenance practices (keeping it cool), and keep your fingers crossed, it might just last you ok.

Everything else on the network appears to work properly, shared files, internet access, etc. However, you just cannot access the shared printer and print.

The solution is to add the printer as a local printer and then try printing. Follow the directions below to accomplish this.

1. Go into Control Panel
2. Underneath the Hardware and Sound category, click on Printer
3. Click on Add a printer from the top menu
4. Click on Add a Local Printer
5. Choose Create a New Port with type of port remaining Local Port, then click Next
6. In the Port Name box type the path to the printer you wish to connect to and Click Ok

Ex. \\mycomputer\myprinter

If the computer you wish to connect to is named Bob and the printer is called HP then the path would be \\Bob\HP

7. In the Install Printer Driver screen, select your printer from the list or choose Have Disk and find the location of the printer drivers on the computer then click Next and then click Finish.
8. You should now see the printer installed in the Printers window.
9. Right-click on the printer and click Properties
10. On the General tab, click Print Test Page to test the printer.

You should now be able to printer from Windows Vista to this networked printer with any problems.

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Firefox: The worst thing about losing your laptop isn’t the cost of replacing your gear; it’s the loss of personal info and saved passwords. Firefox extension FireFound tracks your lost laptop’s location and nukes your personal data in a few clicks.

Once you install the add-on for Firefox or its mobile version Fennec, FireFound uses geolocation to track where you are every time you open your browser, sending that information to a secure server (or your own server, if you prefer.) If your laptop is ever lost or stolen, log into FireFound’s web site from any computer and find out where your laptop’s being used—handy information to pass on to the cops, though not necessarily info that’ll get your laptop back. You can also choose to nuke the personal data in your browser, including history and saved passwords, to protect if from prying eyes until you get your computer back.

FireFound lets you tweak several settings according to what level of security you desire, including the option to receive email notifications if your computer is used more than a certain number of miles from its last location. The data protection feature instantly annihilates some or all of the personal information contained in your browser if someone can’t provide a password to use it.

We’ve seen a fair amount of similar tools for Windows users on a whole in the past (see our laptop thief-proofing guide for more details), but FireFound is the first Firefox-specific version we’ve seen, and it’s got some solid features of its own.

Keep in mind that none of these tools are guaranteed to keep your data safe or recover your hardware, and remember that your best bet to safeguarding your data is encrypting your data. What other steps do you take to protect your laptop’s data besides securing your browser? Talk about it in the comments.

Ed. note: Incidentally, FireFound also just won the Extend Firefox contest, for which both Gina and Adam served as judges.

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Windows 7 only: If you’re not into Windows desktop gadgets, there is another way to easily monitor your computer’s CPU and RAM: Taskbar Meters puts simple, attractive resource monitors right on your Windows 7 Taskbar.

Taskbar Meters contains two programs that you can pin to your taskbar—one that monitors CPU, one that monitors RAM. Each has a colored bar that shows how much of that resource you are using, complete with color coding. In the program’s preferences, you can decide how often to update the meter and what percentage of usage constitutes “yellow” and “red” colors on the taskbar. Each icon also has a jumplist that lets you easily open up Task Manager or Resource Monitor to get a more detailed report.

Taskbar Meters is a free download, Windows 7 only.

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