How to Clean Laptop Screen

Properly cleaning and maintaining your laptop will insure that you get the most from it, over your laptop’s lifetime. Once you know how to clean a laptop screen correctly, there is no reason you cannot have a screen that looks like it has been turned on for the first time.

What you will need:

• Isopropyl alcohol (Not Rubbing alcohol, it may contain oil, that can stick to the screen)
• Distilled water (Not tap water, it can leave mineral spots on your screen)
• A soft cotton cloth (not a paper towel, it may scratch your screen or leave bits behind). The larger the cloth the better as it will reduce streaks on the screen.

Cleaning steps:

1. First you create your cleaning mix. Mix 50% alcohol with 50% distilled water. If you do not have Isopropyl alcohol you can replace that with white vinegar. This mix is basically the same as the ones found in commercial laptop screen cleaning fluids.
2. Put the mix into a small spray bottle, the kind that sprays a fine mist.
3. Spray the mix onto the cloth not onto the screen.
4. Clean the screen with a fast circular motion. Rapid circular movements greatly reduces streaks. Apply an even pressure to the cloth but take care not to press your fingers into the cloth or screen.

Six laptop care tips:
Knowing how to clean laptop screens is an important part of laptop care, here are some other tips to help you take care of your laptop.

1. Don’t block any of the laptop fans or allow it to get clogged up with dust. If you allow this, your laptop will overheat.
2. Install a good anti-virus program on your laptop and keep it up to date. Generally you will be able to setup the program so that it updates itself every couple of weeks.
3. Use a good firewall to keep nasty programs out.
4. Occasionally use a spyware detection program to check whether any spyware programs are running on your laptop. Your anti-virus program may not detect these programs as they are not viruses.
5. Don’t drop it, laptops are more fragile than they look. Impact damage can break your laptop easily.
6. Don’t spill drinks on your laptop, just a few drops can short out your laptop.

Laptop Deals

Finding the best laptop deals, at a price cheap enough for you, is achievable. The two things you need to know is what you want and where to look for it.

What you want

I would suggest you make a list of the features you want the laptop to have, before you start shopping for one. The three most important factors to consider are the CPU, the memory and the hard drive. They are the core of the laptop and will determine how well the laptop runs programs. When it comes to the RAM, I recommend you get at least 1 Gig of DDR2 RAM with the ability to upgrade that. The hard drive needs to have at least 100 GB of space on it. Comparing laptop CPUs are tricky, research the CPU online before you buy.

Other factor to consider in finding the best laptop deal

• Screen size: The screen size tends to be between 15 and 17 inches. The higher the more expensive the laptop.
• Communication: I recommend making sure that the laptop supports an ethernet as well as a wireless connection(WLAN). Without these, you will have problems connecting to LAN networks and the internet.
• Video Card: I recommend getting a GForce graphics card. You can compare how powerful the card is by going to the NVidia home page or by Googling the cards.
• The OS: If you are getting a high end laptop get Vista. If you are looking for a cheaper deal, consider getting XP, it is much lighter on the laptops resources than Vista.
• Warranty: Make sure the laptop has an one year warranty. If you are concerned about theft, the retailer will normally offer some kind of insurance, as an optional extra.
• Weight: The lighter the better, 2.5 kg is about middle of the road.
• Touch Pad: Touch pads are horrible. Consider getting a cordless optical mouse with your laptop.
• Anti Virus: You have to have an Anti Virus program for your new laptop. If one is not included you have to buy one separately.

Use The Internet

You are no longer confined to a small shopping area. With the internet you can shop all over the world, that kind of competition drives down prices. Also online retailers don’t have to rent a shop and hire staff, they ship the laptop straight from the manufacturer to you.

The first place to look is the big retailers. They can afford to buy thousands of laptops in one go. The manufacturers will give them huge discounts which they can pass on to you. Generally the big online retailers will place large orders for three laptops. One would be extremely cheap, one middle of the road model and one top of the line model. All three are great value for money.

Ebay
If, you just can’t find the laptop specs you need, for the amount you are willing to pay, it’s time to look at second hand laptops. Ebay is the most reputable place where you can buy used, cheap laptops. The key is to shop around, there more you shop the better the deal that you are likely to find.

Remember the key to not getting burned on Ebay, is to check out the seller’s history.

Haggle

People these days are conditioned not to haggle. If you are not buying on the High Street you need to haggle for a better deal.

Kids Laptops

Before you buy your kid a laptop ask yourself: what are they going to use it for?

Chances are you want them to use it to help further their education. Your kids can use the laptop for education in many ways.

1.They can use the internet to research school work.
2.They can research topics that interest them like math and science, beyond that which is available to them through school and the library.
3.They can use the laptop to write their projects and then print out professional work.
4.They can keep in touch with friends through email, much cheaper than being on the phone.
5.They could learn how to edit video and photo content and share their creations online through sites like youtube.

Those are just five possible uses, off the top of my head. With younger children you might want to keep them away from certain web pages and restrict the amount of time that they can spend on the laptop, on any given day. For tips on how to do that read our review of internet filter software.

If your child is reasonably young, I would go for a budget model. The older your child the more power they will need in their laptop. As they will want and be able to do more with it.

Deciding what laptop to buy, really depends on what your child wants to use it for. Below I have written down some common sense guidelines, to help you find the right laptop for your kid.

What to look for in kids laptops:

• The laptop should be cheap, a good laptop for a kid runs in the area of £300.
• It should be small and light.
• It should run Windows XP or Vista. Realistically considering that you want to keep the price down, you are looking at Windows XP home edition. The problem of Vista is not only the cost but the increased hardware requirements that it has.
• It needs to be powerful enough to run Microsoft Office 2007 Student and most other educational software packages.
• The laptop should be age appropriate.
• It should have an internal wireless network card. This allows the child to connect to the internet on a wireless network. Your child can use this at school or wherever a wireless network is available.
• It should have more than three hours of battery life. If it has less, mobility can become a big problem.

I would recommend that you get some cheap insurance for the laptop, against theft and accidental damage. You know how kids can be.

Why not leave a comment and tell us how your purchase worked out. Were your kids able to use the laptop successfully, was the laptop powerful enough for them to do their school work on?