You drop your computer in the bathtub, or your basement home office floods and the desktop is under water. Or you spill your tea across the keyboard. If any of this happens, you can guess right away that you’ll be dealing with liquid damage. Only it’s not always that obvious. Knowing the common signs to look for can help you diagnose liquid damage in your devices.
If you are right there when your computer is exposed to liquids, unplug it immediately. Wet components can short-circuit and cause issues for your motherboard, hard drives, and more.
Still, you might not know immediately that liquid damage is to blame. You might live in an area with high humidity. Or maybe someone in the family watches Netflix while in a steamy bathroom. That’s when you look for signs that there’s moisture inside your computer.
Signs you can see yourself
Liquid spilled inside your keyboard can make keys or the trackpad stop working. Even a few liquid droplets can cause the keyboard or trackpad to start responding to your touch erratically.
You might also experience screen issues. This depends on where the liquid penetrates your laptop. Look out for:
images not displaying properly;
pixel discoloration;
a display that won’t turn on.
These are pretty obvious signs that you need to get help. You might also see some discoloration on the outside of the computer. The white or green residue is not a good sign.
Another scary indicator? The computer won’t turn on at all. That suggests that internal components are damaged, and you’ll need to take action.
Signs that repair shops can see
Most people should not be opening up computers on their own. Even if you think there might have been liquid damage, it’s safer to take the computer to a trained expert. That way, you won’t do more damage trying to see what’s wrong in the first place.
At a computer shop, the person doing the repairs will look inside for corrosion around connectors and your motherboard. They’ll be looking for that white or green residue you were hoping not to see on the exterior.
Another sign? The liquid damage indicator shows exposure to water or liquids. The indicator is a small device inside the computer that’s used by manufacturers to deny warranty coverage (despite the consumer’s protests, the laptop never got wet).
What to do with a wet computer
Unplug it. Get help. The sooner you take a liquid-damaged computer in for repair, the more likely it is to recover. Work with a professional IT repair shop to diagnose and repair your device issues. We’re here to help. Call us at (651) 456-8655 or visit our Contact page. Check out our additional laptop services HERE.
When looking to buy a laptop, one of the main things you have to decide is how much storage you need. That’s a challenging question for many of us to answer. Let’s discuss the factors that matter and how to decide.
The short answer, for many people, is that you don’t need much laptop storage. Having 512 GB available is often enough for a regular user, but it’s going to depend on how you’re using the laptop.
For example, if you use cloud email, your account likely comes with cloud storage. Using cloud-based applications such as Google Docs also saves storage space.
If you’re using the laptop to stream videos on TikTok or YouTube, or watching your series or movies on Netflix or the like, you’re also taking advantage of the cloud. Very little data is actually stored on your computer.
Even so, remember to account also for your operating system. Microsoft and Apple recommend 32 GB of storage space to accommodate their OSs. Otherwise, you could encounter performance issues.
Also, if you edit videos or work in graphic design, you’ll likely want a lot more available storage.
How storage space impacts your computer use
Storage space is the capacity your computer uses to store files and data. So, when you have a lot of data, images, or video to hold and work with, more storage helps the PC recall them more quickly.
If you are a digital hoarder, that can also factor into your storage needs.
When thinking about storing photos, you’d have to have many albums to make a dent. If the average image size is about 4 MB, it would take 1000 photos to use up 4 GBs of space. But video eats up a lot more space. An hour-long 1080 p video could occupy 10,000 MB (10 GB).
If you regularly download new apps and games, you can quickly fill up your storage space. Purging unused files and apps consistently frees up space.
Considering the cost of laptop storage
More storage can mean a bigger price tag, so you’ll want to balance your storage needs against your budget constraints.
If you can spend freely, go ahead and get more storage. Otherwise, you’ll want to weigh hard disk drive (HDD) and solid-state drive (SSD) upgrades.
HDDs offer more storage for less cost, but slower reading and writing. SSDs can be three to four times as expensive, but you do get greater speed. SSDs are also typically quieter, more durable, and consume less energy.
One option is to buy a laptop with a smaller SSD and get an external HDD to meet both your speed and storage needs. HDDs can be better for data recovery and for storing large amounts of data you’re not accessing often.
Need help making decisions about your laptop purchase or storage needs? Our IT experts have the answers you need. Contact us today at (651) 456-8655 or visit our Contact page.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.AcceptNoPrivacy policy
Recent Comments