Jim’s Public Service Announcement: Have Your Computer Professionally Cleaned

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written to you good people, but I have an excuse. Over an excruciating (at least for me) nine-day period, my computer was in emergency surgery. It just whimpered into silence and curled up, a useless blob in the corner of my desk. Unknown to me, it was dirty, clogged to a standstill and unwilling to go further.

Why is it there are no maintenance instructions included with a thousand dollar computer?

That’s the question I posed to my computer-surgeon in the operating theater. “They want you to buy a new computer,” he told me. “It’s part of the built-in obsolescence of everything expensive today, including automobiles. Ever notice that gauges on your car have disappeared? Got a ‘check engine’ light on there now that doesn’t tell you what to check for, so you finally ignore it. Overheating, or missing the change-date on your timing chain and cost you a ruined car.”

(Disclaimer) My car is a 28-year-old Subaru and still has a temp-guage, but he’s right. There’s an entirely useless ‘check engine’ light I’ve learned to dismiss.

Stay with me for a moment, I’m trying to save you from a disaster

The grungy photo at the top of the article is my computer innards after five years. And you shouldn’t try to clean it yourself, because there’s a bunch of stuff that must be disconnected to get the job done. It’ll cost about $50 instead of the $300 I got tagged for saving content and installing a new hard drive. Forensics showed that my Acer laptop had been overheating until the hard drive finally cooked itself.

Symptoms?

A general slowing-down and my taking that to mean my internet connection was at fault. Then full-screen Microsoft announcements began to increasingly occur with an ‘oops’ message that something had gone awry, and it would have to restart my computer. Trust me, you don’t want to see those.

Now I admit to being mostly a Luddite but, who knows, you may be as well

My repair guy, who has proven to be a technical marvel and dedicated to saving me both time and money, advises having a computer cleaned at least every two years. Not entirely jokingly, he says, “and if you’re a teenage gamer who has a pet, smokes and operates mostly when lying in bed, clean it every year.” Of those options, I only have a Labrador, but she sure does shed.

I wish you all well, but please have your computer cleaned