Last week a man in Colorado sparked police action for shooting his computer eight times after becoming frustrated with it malfunctioning. He was detained for discharging a firearm in the city.
“He was having technology problems, so he took it to the back alley and destroyed it” a police spokesman said.
The article in The Gazette amusingly say that “he got tired of fighting with his computer for the last several months”.
I wonder how many of us would like to seek revenge on our computer or device by taking it outside and destroying it. I recently could have done this to my home printer that for some weird reason would no longer connect as a Google Cloud Printer.
The good news is that keeping your computer running quickly and smoothly is not a difficult task. I’ve outlined five tips below that should help keep you from losing your temper with your device!
- Run a full system scan to ensure your machine is clean, simple instructions for this are here.
- Ensure that you have up to date Anti-Virus software, not only does it need to be installed but it needs to be active and updated. You can download AVG Free Anti-Virus from our website.
- Test the configuration of your security software to ensure it is performing the way you expect it to. A simple way to do this is to run the Security Features Check on the AMTSO website.
- Once you’re confident the machine is ‘clean’ then download and install a performance enhancing product, there are many on the market and you need to make sure that you choose one that is not snake oil, you can easily check this through third party awards and reviews. I, of course, recommend AVG PC TuneUp, you can download a trial version here and also checkout the independent reviews listed there.
- Once downloaded and installed there are some automated task that you will be prompted to do, I would recommend supplementing these with the following
- How to speed up your PC in 3 steps
- How to boost battery life in 2 simple steps
- How to clean up your PC in 4 steps
Hopefully the above will keep you from resorting to taking up arms and destroying your machine. I do understand the frustration though and I am sure shooting the PC felt good at the time.
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