Business owners are often cautioned to keep their business computers up to date and maintained. Since the advice often comes from the same folks who caution us to balance our checkbooks and discard expired food even if it smells fine, it can be easy to dismiss this advice. Maintaining business computers and technology, however, is just as important as maintaining any other technology or assets. Here’s what can go wrong if you forget to perform some basic maintenance tasks:
Dust Build Up
Computers generate a large amount of dust, which accumulates inside the fans, causing the computer to run hotter over time. This can break down your processor and motherboard, causing your computer to fail earlier than normal.
To fix this: open up your computer case (after disconnecting the power!) and use canned air to clean out the fans.
Software Patches
Your operating system and various programs will regularly release patches that need to be installed to upgrade different parts of your software. If you don’t install patches as they come out, you may find that the newest technology won’t connect to your system. You may also be exposing your system to malicious attacks and codes through security exploits.
To fix this: install security updates and other patches as soon as they become available.
Regularly Update Backups
A backup is a great solution to make sure information is not lost in a disaster or data attack, but your backup only automatically takes your data back to a certain point in time. It’s important to keep backups up to date. How often backups need to be updated depends on a number of factors. If most of your company’s day to day work is done in the cloud, it may be less crucial to complete a daily backup. If you store work on your computer’s hard drives, however, daily backups or incremental backups may be necessary to ensure that you always have all of your information saved.
To fix this: determine the best backup schedule for your business, and stick to it.
Does all of this sound daunting? For small to medium sized enterprises, without a full time IT staff, maintaining computers can seem like one more task that doesn’t offer an immediate return. If you need help, reach out to Nerds 2 You. We’ll happily analyze your current system and help you determine which processes you need to manage, and when.
