When necessary, clean the LCD screen with a soft, lintless cloth barely moist-
ened with water. Allow me to emphasize the high-tech cleaning solution
involved: plain, clean water. After you have carefully cleaned the screen, dry
it with another soft cloth. You can wipe down the external case with a gentle,
non-abrasive cleaner and a soft, lintless cloth. But I’d rather see you stick to
good old water.Never use an abrasive cleanser or an ammonia-based window cleaner like
Windex. Just water.On a regular schedule, clean your hard disk drive. No, I am not talking about
wiping it down with water. Rather, I am recommending that you use a suite of
maintenance utilities such as Norton SystemWorks or individual components
such as Norton AntiVirus or Executive Software’s Diskeeper. Install these pro-
grams and keep them current to check such things as the Windows registry
and the general state of health of your hard drive. In Figure 2-1 you can see
the detailed report generated by Executive Software’s Diskeeper 9, a third-
party defragmentation utility that’s faster and more comprehensive than the
defrag program included as part of Windows XP. The program can be set to
work in the background, to start when the machine is idle for a specified
period of time (like lunch), or run at a scheduled time.Schedule antivirus and maintenance scans of your system appropriate to the
level of use of your laptop. If your machine is in daily use, it should be fully
scanned once a week; if you only use your laptop when you travel, you can
schedule a scan before the start of each trip.Figure 2-1:
Diskeeper 9
Professional
Edition gives
your hard
drive a
complete
checkup.
Chapter 2: How to Treat a Laptop 19