Chances are, your PC is full of unnecessary data and your work area is filled with unwanted hardware and peripherals. Clean up your PC and related hardware to create a friendlier work space.
External gunk can cause plenty of problems related to productivity. The dirt and grime that accumulates inside a mouse or on the mouse pad will make it skip and jump. The smudge on the scanner can make your pictures look weird. You might have a USB port that’s not the right type or is limiting or causing problems with the available bandwidth to devices. You might still be using a dial-up connection to the Internet and want to move to something else but don’t know how. Here are some other signs that you have external gunk, each of which we’ll in articles spread across the BrightHub Home Office Tech channel:
- There are fingerprints and grime on your flat-screen monitor, and you don’t know how to clean it without harming it.
- You can see dust on the intakes of your PC.
- Your ink-jet printer always prints vertical lines on your prints, or the ink isn’t applied properly.
- You purchase printer after printer because every time you replace a cartridge, you can never get it to print right again.
- You receive memory errors with lots of weird numbers listed.
- You can’t pay a bill at your desk because of all the hardware on it.
- You use power strips but you don’t know if they also protect against power surges or sags.
- You have hardware that you don’t use or is broken and you don’t know what to do with it.
- You can’t vacuum under your desk.
- You can’t reach the back of the PC to switch out your USB printer for your USB camera.
Gunk happens!
So, Now What?
So what’s a body to do? Well, that’s what we’re here to show you. In this channel and through various articles you’ll learn first just how much gunk you have and then what steps to take to reduce or eliminate it. Our Complete Guide lists these articles. Depending on how long you’ve had your PC and how many hobbies you’ve acquired (scanning, digital photography, chatting with microphones and Web cams, and so on), you may have quite a bit of work to do. If you’ve only been computing a year or so, maybe all you need is some physical cleaning and to perform a few organizational tasks.
The first order of business is to take the “Vacuum” and the “Bill Paying at Your Desk” tests. If you can’t vacuum under your desk, or if you have to move anything to pay a bill, you’re gunked!