Your Tech Needs Spring Cleaning, Too. Here's Where to Start.
In this edition of Clean Everything, we share a few tips for cleaning your tech, including how to make an old laptop feel new again. Plus: the best microfiber cloth and the tiny drawers our charging expert uses to organize her cords.
If your laptop is slow to boot up or takes a long time to load apps, you might not necessarily need to splurge on a new one just yet. Tech expert and senior staff writer Kimber Streams has a few simple (and free!) cleaning steps to breathe new life into an older laptop: Refresh the operating system: The quickest way to make your old computer feel new again is to reset the operating system to its initial state. Kimber recommends this for laptops older than three years. If you have Windows, just make sure to make a list of any programs you use frequently, so you can reinstall the essentials.
Blast out the dust: Over time, dust can build up inside a laptop, making it run hotter and slower. If you can, take apart your computer, and use compressed air to blow out any dust you see, especially in vents and fans. Alternatively, you can angle the compressed air to remove dust from vents and ports—just avoid blowing it deeper inside.
Limit which apps launch on startup: Turning some startup apps off will make your computer boot up more quickly. And it'll feel faster with fewer programs running constantly in the background. Kimber advises toggling most startup apps off—keep only those that you want running every single time you launch your computer, like your password manager or backup software.
Declutter your files: Computers run slower when their drives are nearly full, so take a second to organize your files—see what's taking up the most space in your drive, and remove the things you don't need.
Less than five minutes of attention each week can keep them feeling fresh and not sticky.
It's time to delete those duplicate screenshots.
She swears by these stackable and minimalist Muji drawers.
Michael Hession/NYT Wirecutter
For giving your tech a good wipedown: The humble microfiber cloth is excellent at wiping away all manner of fingerprints, smudged streaks, and oily marks on your screens.
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